Full Circles Chapter 4

My solution to the dreaded Quadrangle of Doom…


"You and Kara Thrace are connected… I'll marry you… until the Cylons come back or Kara Thrace walks back into your life."

"Tell me you're just as afraid as I am, about needing someone as much as I need you."

"I'm not the one you want to be with, Kara."

"KARA THRACE LOVES LEE ADAMA!"

"Things just got complicated – again."

Unfinished Business, Extended Version


Chapter 4

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Tha-thump-thump.

Harder.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Tha-thump-thump.

It wasn't stopping. It wasn't slowing down.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Tha-thump-thump.

If that frakker wasn't trying to get her killed, then he was trying to get himself killed.

Well frak you, Lee-frakking-Adama. I'm not ready to die just yet.

That was one conversation she didn't want to have – again – with the Admiral. Once was enough. Okay, technically, she's done it twice. The first time was when she confessed that she fudged Zak's test scores. The second time was when she 'fessed that she shot Lee during that hostage crisis on Cloud Nine. There was NO WAY she was going to report to the Admiral's quarters and tell the Old Man that his son, while playing Go-Go Marine, was too busy watching out for her to keep an eye on his blind side.

Lucky Lee; all Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace's blind-sides were emotional. Which was the precise reason why Lee Adama was sitting in the jump-seat five feet away from her and not lying at her feet, encased in a body bag.

And who the frak did he think he was, playing dress up like that? Yeah, Lee was a hell of an officer and proficient enough at hand-to-hand to teach it to nuggets and 'headset heroes', but leading a squad of Marines on foot is a far cry from being the CAG and Head Pilot of a Viper squadron. When you're on foot, there's no DRADIS to alert you to enemy contact, no wingman backing you up and no fancy evasive manoeuvres to save your ass from an on-coming piece of ordinance. When you're on the ground, you've got three choices: duck, cover or don't be there in the first place. And just because he took the course, and passed, in War College didn't translate to field experience. Their little hike through the backcountry of Kobol didn't count. He had been going by the book, as it was written, back then just as much as he 'went by the numbers' a couple of hours ago. Granted three years was a long time, but didn't he learn anything from his little trip to the Astral Queen?

Frak! Even she knew where to draw the line between what she could do and what she was good at. The only reason why she had gotten caught up in the whole affair was because she had been on The Caspian, with Cally, recalibrating that ship's port-side thrusters when the Code Blue had been issued. Meeting the dispatched Raptor, she was glad to see Gunny emerge from the cabin. Seeing Lee step onto the skid boards, dressed in black and strapping on a helmet, she swallowed the 'what-the-frak-do-you-think-you're-doing' phrase she wanted to say and opted to give the Cylon Welcoming Party the most current SitRep. Surprise wasn't part of her game face when she was informed that she was going to be the final member of the team. Cottle might not have reinstated her flight status since The Dance two weeks ago but whether she was in the air or slinking her way down evacuated corridors of a battered freighter didn't change the fact that she was still the best shot in the Fleet.

The deep thrum of the Raptor's engine burning a path back to Galactica did little to stem the verbal tirade building in her mind. Even now, as The Caspian faded into the proverbial rear-view mirror and the body of the airlocked Simon model drifted deeper into space, every time she looked at Lee she added more items to the list of things she wished she could say during her upcoming debriefing.

Like how she always ended up killing Leobens and Simons by cutting their throats. Only this time the weapon she had at hand was a bullet, not a knife or shard of broken glass.

That had her turning over her right hand, looking at her palm and mentally tracing where the sharp edge of that bit of mirror had sliced her as she drove the pointed end into the neck of Bed Side Manner Simon.

Game face, Starbuck; don't lose your game face. New Caprica is light-years away and that frakker is beyond dead. You killed him with your own bare hands, remember? He can't touch you now.

Interesting how Simon became Leoben within the stretch of one thought. Not to mention how the word 'touch' had so many sinister meanings when it came to that particular model of Cylon. Or the number of times she had retreated to her memories of being touched – mentally, physically and emotionally – by Lee while she was being held captive by Leoben.

Not that he'd ever know that. The last thing Lee Adama would ever know was that he had her shield or that she'd been forced to play 'house' with a Cylon.

A cold sweat broke out underneath her Marine garb. Memories continued to strobe in front of her even as her eyes stayed wide open. Flashes of her captivity and battling Cylons interlocked with her current reality. The Raptor hitting the trap and descending into Galactica's hanger bay happened at the same time she relived falling into that crater after tackling a Six in that Delphi museum. The steady drag of the lift taxiing the Raptor forward mimicked her being helplessly towed away by the pair of Centurions sent to find her and bring her to Leoben even as the Cylons were still landing their occupation force on New Caprica. The sounds of an active hanger bay taking place beyond the still-sealed doors of the Raptor's cabin mirrored the way she was trapped in that apartment, able to see out the windows but unable to escape Leoben's prison.

She was the only one in the theatre, watching 'Kara's World According to Leoben', all because Major Adama had to go and play soldier. Getting himself into a situation where Simon seized the opportunity to use him as a human shield. The skinjob had Lee's head locked underneath his chin with one hand and the other hand brandishing an automatic weapon at everyone else. Reaching for her rifle rather than her side-arm, she did the only thing she could do: she lifted her arm and took the only shot she had. Her bullet passed within an eighth of an inch of Lee's head and the wider calibre round did what it was supposed to do. It ripped Simon's carotid artery to shreds. The Cylon fell and whatever few bullets he reflexively squeezed off ended up embedded in the overhead panelling.

The childhood habit of counting the number of seconds between a lightening flash and the trailing thunder was exactly what she did as she focused on the exit wound on the Cylon's neck. Only now, instead of her eyes fixed on the sky, her gaze was locked on Simon's mortal wound. She counted the number of pulses, putting the concept of a human heart into a Cylon's body was something she never could fully accept, it took for the dying Cylon to push its life's blood out of its body. Recent memories layered over a deeper memory. She did the same thing on Caprica the first time she killed a Simon; she had to make sure the frakker was good and dead before she left the room. The eerie resemblance of the decking on The Caspian matching the floor in that 'hospital' affected her – sounds of team-members mopping up the scene were distant and muffled to her ears as they competed for attention with her flashback.

Gunny's hand falling on her shoulder, telling her she did good, made her jump. Game face firmly in-place, Lee's orders to fall out had her shouldering her weapon and filing out of the room. Setting her feet in motion and gaining the corridor didn't stop the back-flashes from dogging her every step. She barely remembered following the rest of Gunny's team – Lee's team – to the hanger bay or even boarding the Galactica bound Raptor.

Tracing the up-swinging Raptor hatch with her eyes was a direct re-enactment of her lifting her gaze to the horizon and watching the initial Cylon invasion force scream its way across the New Caprican skyline.

"We'll fight them until we can't."

In her mind, she was talking to the Chief. Why everyone else in the Raptor was clapping her on the shoulder and giving her different variations of, 'hell, yeah!' was something that didn't register until Lee's voice cut through the haze of her mental movie.

"Starbuck – I said, 'are you ready'?" Hands on his hips and clipboard already tucked underneath one arm, his broad shoulders threw a shadow across her face. "I didn't realize you wanted a personal invitation the debriefing."

Well behind him, a blonde-haired Specialist was dropping down the access stairs two at a time – exactly the same way Leoben did when he returned to that apartment after being resurrected.

"You know me – I hate being where I'm not wanted." Talking to the living memory, she didn't see how the deprecating sarcasm in her answer had made Lee's lip twitch.

Releasing her safety harness and standing, a strong arm clamping down her arm kept her from clearing the Raptor's cabin.

"And what's that supposed to mean, Captain?"

The way Lee lifted his chin matched the dare he didn't put into so many words.

Unconsciously squaring her hips with her shoulders upped the charge in the static field that was crackling between their bodies.

"Don't you ever do that to me again, do you understand me?"

"In case you haven't noticed, Thrace, you are a part of the Colonial Fleet, not a casual member of some after-school club."

Throwing the words she used in her 'Welcome to Nugget Training' speech in her face made her step even closer to Lee. Maybe now he'd get what she was saying.

"The same goes for you, Adama." Mimicking the same tone he used to say her last name, she let his surname hang in the air for moment before making it a point to sweep her eyes over pieces of Marine garb he had yet to shed. "Do us all a favour. Save the black for funerals and wedding anniversaries."

The muscles in his jaw clenched and released as she watched one retort after another flit across his face.

It was the grip on her arm that told her he'd finally come up with an appropriate comeback.

"Kara – what's wrong with you? I don't see you for two weeks and when I do, you save my life only to…"

His trailing question and guarded expression wasn't the barbed zinger and scathing look she was expecting.

"You know where I've been."

"Yeah – anywhere but here."

He didn't have to say, 'the truth stings'. It was in the way he read the way her eyes flared and non-guilty look on his face when he didn't take back his words.

Thirty-six hours after their Dance had ended, Cottle, in all his bedside glory, made it clear he wasn't going to reinstate her flight status until her ribs fully knit. The crotchety old man mumbled something about not wanting his carefully hoarded supply of pain meds to be tapped by some Viper pilot who didn't have enough sense to keep her broken ass out of a cockpit. Correcting him that it was her nose that had been broken and not her ass earned her a one-way ticket out of Sickbay and her well-documented ass still grounded. Hence the reason why Tigh had signed off on it and Helo had given her his blessing – for whatever that was worth – to go off-ship. A series of work orders for ships on the outer edges of the Fleet had come through – a detail that would take at least two weeks to complete – and she had jumped at the chance to get off the Battlestar. Her busted face was going to turn more colours than an Aquarian sunset and she didn't want to stick around and be Galactica's Side Show of the Month. There were too many pilots and not enough Vipers as it was; Lee would have no problem filling her slot when her name came up in the rotation. She might as well be in a space suit crawling along the outside of a hull of some ship out in East Frakutu. At least she was doing something useful. Her body might not be able to take the g-forces necessary for launch, but she could wield a hammer and plasma torch as well as the Chief. The reason why she'd been paired up with Cally, doing the repairs to The Caspian instead of Tyrol, was due to the fact that Mr. Cally had drawn Dad-Duty. Not to mention that the same morning she and Cally put out was when Galen was blessed with the distinct honour of separating landing gear of Hot Dog's Viper from the ass-end of Showboat's Raptor. Still had no idea how that happened, but seeing as how Hot Dog still hadn't figured out that no one wanted to hear about the rash he had on his teabags, anything was possible.

"Why did you leave?"

His soft tone, the need to understand something he should already know, made her give him the tender, hesitant, honesty he sought.

"Because I couldn't stay, Lee." It was the truth. For so many reasons, but for the most part, "Because I can't – I'm not ready to do," she waved her hands in the meagre space between their bodies, "this with you."

Didn't he understand???

"Do what, Kara – be a friend?"

The insinuation that everything they had gone through at The Dance was one of her frakking head-trips, the hint of whine in his voice, was enough to change her soft look of 'please, try to get what I'm saying' to a hard, sour, 'why am I even bothering' scowl.

"You know Lee, you accuse me of running away, of protecting myself at all costs and not letting anyone 'in' is a load of bullshit. News flash, Flyboy; you've been in my head from day one – DAY ONE." Stepping into his very personal space, she mentally projected moments from their lives: when she confessed to him about Zak, when she quoted Kataris from memory, when she told him she was nothing but a frak up, when they sat side-by-side next to that campfire on Kobol chatting while they cleaned their weapons, when she agreed to be his CAG on Pegasus even though they both knew she hated being on that ship, when she asked him why she was what he really wanted on New Caprica, when she pushed him into that boxing ring two weeks ago.

Now, it was her turn to grip his arm. Speaking slowly, he was going to understand every word she was about to say.

"I've answered your question, Lee – time and time again; you've just never allowed yourself to hear it." One more image flashed between them. "Don't blame me for you not knowing what you were looking at."

Brushing past Lee, the fact that he didn't cringe at her touch was a subconscious test unto itself. One she didn't know she gave until she realized how relieved she was that he didn't hate her anymore.

The hanger bay was a mine field of back-flash triggers. Somehow, she made it through the hatch and into the connecting corridor. She needed to get debriefed and then she'd escape. Somewhere private, where she could be alone and no one would bother her. There was going to be some serious drinking going on, the kind that would make her introspective and morose – not the boisterous Queen of the Triad Table holding court for all and sundry.

He had told her that he'd missed her, as they were holding each other up in that boxing ring. But then again, he'd also told her that he needed her so badly that it scared him.

Lee Adama might be better at putting his thoughts into words and romantic overtures, but there wasn't a single time he didn't do something that she hadn't matched with a non-verbal or verbally-veiled declaration of her own.

She knew exactly how frakking terrifying it was to need someone – to love someone – as badly as she knew she needed – loved – Lee Adama. The Gods knew that she threw everything she had against that need and she lost every time. The Gods also knew that need, that love, was a motivating factor behind almost everything she did. She single-handedly pushed for the Caprica rescue mission because she had heard how happy Dee was to be with Lee. And when Simon had Lee in his grasp, she did what she had to do, knowing that the small gains she had made since escaping New Caprica were going to be crushed under the onslaught of released memories and vivid back-flashes.

Tipping the spout of the tall rectangular bottle back to her lips, the Chief's Special Brew was little more than water filling the spaces between her teeth.

That was the real reason why she was so pissed at him for playing 'soldier' today. That's why she all but threatened him. She had no other way to tell him that if he died, she'd die.

The reason why she had tears in her eyes, tears she refused to let fall, was the hard truth of the matter.

If she had to explain to Lee why she did the things she did, if he couldn't see it for himself, then he never truly saw her.

That's when one tear did slide down the slope of her cheek.

Because it didn't change the fact that she shared her soul with Lee Adama and he obviously didn't even know it.