A/N: Posted in response to JAT.NJ's "Five times Lee and Kara bent the rules" challenge. Sorry it took so long to get it done, Janet. :)
A/N: Unrelated and unconnected. There is no one storyline.
1.
It was an unspoken rule.
Maybe it wasn't even a rule so much as just something that everyone believed to be true. Without fail and without question.
Starbuck and Apollo were connected in a way that was near-supernatural. Starbuck and Apollo would find a way to be together.
It wasn't that people didn't start to wonder. Especially after Apollo came back bloodied and broken from Cloud Nine, Dualla constantly at his side. Or when Starbuck found herself on the brink of madness, guilt over a lost lover driving her to return for him.
Everyone just thought, everyone just knew, that these other loves were just pit-stops on the way to where their two roads converged.
Even when marriage vows were exchanged, exchanged with the wrong people, there were still some that held on to the belief of "Starbuck and Apollo: Together Forever."
"He's going to divorce her, right?"
"She's going to leave him, isn't she?"
"How long are they gonna keep this up?"
"Don't they know the rule? There's no Starbuck without Apollo. No Apollo without Starbuck."
But it seemed that Starbuck and Apollo bent the rule. Stayed friends, comrades, family. Found a way to be together without actually being together.
It wasn't what everyone thought it would end up being, and some thought that it was merely a half-life, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances.
On Apollo and Dualla's fifth anniversary, the VIP room on the Rising Star packed to capacity with friends and well-wishers, the Cylons decided it would be a good time to activate one of their remaining sleeper agents.
The bullet was meant for Roslin, but Apollo was being brave, so he stepped in front of it.
Starbuck was just being Starbuck, so she stepped in front of him, taking the bullet as her own.
It ripped into her chest, but broke his heart.
Holding her in his arms as others screamed and scrambled around them, he only whispered one word: "Why?"
She used her remaining choked breaths to let out a sorrowful laugh. "I took the coward's way out, didn't want to be the one who was left behind." She clutched his hand a little tighter. "I didn't want there to be a Starbuck without Apollo." Then she let go.
There wasn't much left in him after that. And three months later, his broken heart finally put him where he belonged.
With her.
Dualla watched the airlock open and her husband's coffin float out. She then felt Sam's hand slip into hers—the same way her hand had slipped into his when they were at his wife's funeral.
"You okay?" He asked softly.
She nodded. "It was just the rule." Her eyes closed along with the airlock door. "There's no Apollo without Starbuck."
2.
Dualla found herself searching the ship for her husband. It wasn't an unusual occurrence, and at first she was enraged by what it meant.
Then not-so-enraged. Then indifferent. Then numb. Then finally something that neared acceptance.
She walked into the rec room to find Starbuck sitting alone at a table, nursing a bottle of liquor.
She began quietly. "Do you know where he is?"
Starbuck didn't even look up at her. "I don't keep track of him. He's not my husband. And we don't spend quite as much time together as your over-active imagination seems to think."
Dualla shook her head at Starbuck's slurred words and bloodshot eyes. "Whatever." She began to walk back to the hatch. "Tell him I'm looking for him…..if you see him."
Before she reached the door, she was stopped by a question. "Did I ruin your life, Dee?"
Dualla's whole body slumped and she turned around to face her rival. She pointed to Starbuck's bottle. "If I'm gonna answer that, I'll need a drink."
Starbuck kicked out the chair across from her for Dualla to take and began to pour her a glass.
Dualla took her seat and downed the shot, grimacing as it burned down her throat. "I don't know, Starbuck." She sighed. "Sometimes I think I ruined yours."
Starbuck laughed. "Nope, wasn't you. I've got that part more than covered on my own."
"Still." Dualla snorted. "Sometimes I think I'm just getting what I had coming to me—for stepping into a place where I didn't belong, trying to claim something as my own that was already somebody else's."
"I don't think this is where either of us pictured ourselves being when we said our wedding vows." Starbuck laughed.
Dee grabbed the bottle and poured herself another. "I think you might have some competition in the fleet-wide masochism contest." She swallowed the drink loudly. "Because deep down, I knew what I was getting myself into. I think I knew this was where I'd end up."
"At least you're not there alone."
"Yes, I am." Dualla chuckled sadly before locking eyes with Starbuck. "We're supposed to hate each other, you and I. Isn't that the rule? The wife and the mistress are supposed to hate each other? The one woman that's standing in the way of our happiness?"
"I stood in the way of my own happiness, Dee. It wasn't you." Starbuck smiled slightly, but sympathetically. "You can hate me if you want, you've certainly earned that right." She put her feet up on a nearby chair. "But in spite of everything you represent, I can't seem to hate you. After all, I was never a big follower of the rules."
"My husband loves you above all others. Above me." Dualla stated simply, in an even voice. "But I can't seem to hate you either." She shook her head in amazement. "What the frak is that about?"
"Well, you're with a man who loves somebody else, and I love a man who's with somebody else." Starbuck's eyebrows lifted and she brought the glass to her lips. "I don't know, Dee. Maybe it would be easier for us to hate each other if we didn't know that we were both so well and truly frakked."
3.
Lee pulled Sam over to the side of the hangar deck and began in an almost-whisper.
"You're absolutely right, Sam." He said. "There are rules to being an officer, rules to being the decent and honorable man."
He looked over at Kara as she unloaded crates from her Raptor. "And my whole life, I've tried to follow those rules. I've held onto them like they were the most important things in my life." He looked back to Kara's husband. "But when it comes to Kara, the rules mean nothing, because she is so much more important to me than they could ever be."
Lee pressed his finger against Sam's chest. "She's gonna try and do what she thinks is right. And it might kill me, but I'm going to support her. I'm gonna do what's decent and honorable. So as long as your marriage is still real, as long as you're good to her, you won't have to worry about me getting between you."
Sam's eyes glinted, knowing that wasn't the end of it. "But?"
"But know this: the moment you step out of line, turn your back for too long, take her for granted……I'm gonna be there. And then there will be nothing in existence that will stop me from taking her away."
Lee breathed deep and calmed considerably. "And maybe that's not decent and honorable, but that's just the way it is."
"Not decent and honorable?" Sam questioned as he snorted in disbelief. "Adama, you just told me the honest-to-gods, no-holds-barred truth." He pushed Lee's finger away. "That may be the first decent and honorable thing you've done since this whole mess began."
4.
They'd both been sleeping in the pilot's bunkroom since the "ends" of their respective marriages. His was official. Hers wasn't.
But they'd never shared a bunk, never slept with each other since they left the algae planet.
Lee came awake slowly from a sound sleep when he felt a pair of arms snake around him.
"Move over, would you?" She groaned, nuzzling her face into his neck. "You can't expect me to sleep on six inches of bunk."
"There's forty-six inches of bunk across the room." He mumbled, still half-asleep, but wrapping her up in his embrace as he moved to the side. "Why aren't you sleeping there?"
"I wanna sleep in here with you." She said matter-of-factly.
"Sharing a bed with me in a room full of pilots while you're still married to someone else……..that's not bending the rules, that's snapping them in two." He yawned. "What would your husband think?"
She curled against him further. "He wouldn't care." She slid her leg in between his. "Cause he's not really my husband."
He could feel himself floating away again. "Except on paper."
She yawned too. "Not even there anymore. We've been meeting with the lawyer all week."
He was sure he heard her wrong. "What?" He breathed softly.
"We signed the divorce papers this morning."
His eyes came wide open. "Frak! Kara, why didn't you—." He shot up in bed and soundly hit his head on the top of the bunk. Yelping, he grasped it in his hands. "Holy mother……."
She let out a long and loud cackle, prompting the others in the room to shout at them to "Go ahead and frak each other already, just shut the hell up!"
She carefully sat up next to him and kissed the sore spot on his head. "Aww, poor Apollo."
He pouted at her. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I wanted to surprise you." She laid back against the pillows, laughing again. "Granted, you bashing your head in was more than I could have anticipated."
He rubbed his head, not only in pain, but in amazement. "What happened to you not wanting to break the rules……only bend them?"
She waved the comment away. "Oh, that "bending the rules" crap was getting old. Clichéd. Bordering on the predictable, even." She grinned up at him. "It wasn't shocking anyone anymore. And I've got a reputation to uphold, couldn't let that go on for very long."
"So what are you gonna do now?"
"Get married again." She stated simply. "Husband, 2.5 kids, dog, happily ever after. The whole nine yards."
His entire face lit up. "And that's not clichéd and bordering on the predictable?"
"But you see, that's the last thing people would ever expect of me." She took his hand and twined their fingers. "And bending the rules is only fun when it shocks the hell out of people."
"The Gospel According to Starbuck." He teased.
"Uh-huh." She bit her lip. "So what do you think? Would you be interested in helping me raise some eyebrows?"
He looked away from her and shrugged. "I'll think about it."
Her eyes got wide. "You'll think about it?" She sat up quickly. "Adama, what the hell is that supposed—."
The thunk of her head against the top of the bunk was loud. As was her curse of: "motherfrakking piece of sh—.", which caused everyone to wake up again, groaning miserably.
Lee chuckled and ran his hands through her hair, kissing her injury. "Aww, poor Starbuck."
5.
They stood wrapped up in each other, alone in the locked equipment room, breath heavy and hot, steaming up everything around them.
Her hand danced under his shirt as his fingers were working on unbuttoning her pants. Their kiss was rushed, but utterly complete. A tangled mass of desperation, lust and brutal honesty.
She pulled back from his mouth and when he leaned forward again to reclaim hers, she stopped him by tenderly biting his lower lip.
She spoke forcefully, believing every word she said down to the core of her being.
"What you and I have is not of this world, it wasn't ever meant to be. It goes deeper than that, something that those people and their lives on the other side of the door would never understand." She ghosted her lips across his face. "I can't be with you out there—."
"Kara—." He tried to interrupt her, his face falling as she paused to step out of her pants.
She stopped him quickly. "Shhh." She kissed him hard. "It wouldn't be enough. Nowhere near enough. Any life we had together out there would pale in comparison to what we have in here." Demonstrating what she meant, she placed his hand over her heart. "So I'm not gonna frak it up by trying to make it something it's not, something that I could never make it be."
He moaned that he loved her and pushed her against the wall, urging her to wrap her legs around him. She complied and he tried to kiss her into silence, but she grabbed his face and stopped him before he could go further.
"In here, in every place that matters……I'm yours. I always have been, I swear I always will be." She locked eyes with him, her determined gaze willing him to understand as she took him inside her. "But you have no claim to me—not out there. I can't do it, and I won't do it to you. You can have me in every other way, but don't ask for that."
He reluctantly nodded, buried his face in her hair and gave her everything he had. She moaned his name softly. "If you want me, those are the rules, Lee. And they're not negotiable."
Nine months later, she was moaning his name again. Only this time, it was in exhaustion and agony.
"Twenty-seven hours, Lee Adama." She shouted between puffs of air. "Twenty-seven godsdamn hours that I've been doing this. You are gonna be indebted to me for the rest of your frakking life!"
"I already am, Kara." He said, kissing her sweat-drenched forehead.
"I think one more should do it." Cottle told them, standing at the foot of the bed.
And after one more push, one more scream that many claimed could be heard all the way to CIC, Cottle carefully placed their daughter on Kara's chest.
"Oh my gods." Kara whispered in awe as she traced the little girl's red mouth with her pinky. "I was so frakking stupid." She looked up at Lee. "So stupid to think this would never compare, never be enough."
Lee clasped Kara's hand and heard the metal of his wedding band clink with the matching metal of hers. He looked down into his daughter's face. "We've been waiting for you to get here."
Kara laughed, watching the baby yawn. "And we don't just mean for nine months."
Lee kissed Kara's lips and then his daughter's tiny hand. He pulled back, grinning. "Now, tell the truth. Aren't you glad we bent the rules just a little?"
THE END.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, Everyone.