Title- Aftermath
Work In Progress
Author- PTBvisiongrrl
Part- 6/?
Date- 11-3-06
Rating – R
Pairings/Characters- Lee/Kara
Word Count-
Category- Short Story
Genre- Angst
Archiving- The Fallout Shelter, Apollo/Starbuck Fan Fic, All others please ask!
Warnings- Not really- just language…
Spoilers- Season 1 through the rumors of Season 3- its completely AU after that…
Disclaimers- Unfortunately, I don't own any of these characters, and make absolutely no profit from taking them out to play…
Summary- How do Kara and Lee reconnect after both losing spouses in the Battle for New Caprica? Can they?
A good friend of mine passed away this week. She was also a writer and, though single, way busier than me. She was the type of person who wanted to do and try everything, just experience the world and then write about it for the rest of us. She was far too young to leave us, and the only way I can make sense of her death is if I take her advice about how to live life. One of her pieces of advice was to keep writing, so here I am.
I know, it's been a terribly long time, but my children/job/husband/house are not leaving a great deal of free time to write these days, and my muse keeps throwing new story ideas at me to write. Sorry it's short, sorry it's taken so long, but here's a new chapter I hope you enjoy.
Chapter Six
Not even the emotional outpouring during her dinner with the Old Man, on top of her earlier break down, had taxed Starbuck enough to want to go directly to sleep. The nervous excitement of getting to fly again tomorrow made her restlessness worse. The weeks of enforced inactivity- even if they were for good reason- were catching up with her all at once, and she could not bring herself to lay down in her bunk and draw the curtain. Not wanting to disturb the other pilots, most of whom were trying to sleep right now and those that weren't having drawn their rack curtains, she decided to work through it as she always had- with physical activity. Pulling on her boots- running shoes long gone in that hell hole of a Cylon occupied planet- she started a light run through the familiar corridors.
As late as it was and far from a shift change, most corridors were empty, even on the now crowded battlestar. She was as grateful for the long, open halls as for the quiet. Running on New Caprica had been a messy proposition, mud and cold and uneven ground making it one of her last choices for exercise- a first in her life. On a battlestar, running was the only exercise outside of the gym aside from flying it self. She has missed it, along with a thousand other smaller details.
Her mind always worked best on her problems if her body was distracted. Pushing herself hard, breath coming in gasps, Starbuck ran flat out through the echoing, vibrating corridors, the ship alive beneath her feet. She ran until she had to stop and bend over, struggling for breath, and resumed at a more leisurely pace as soon as she was able. The edge of her uneasiness was burned away in the exertion, and she settled down into a comfortable gait, relaxed, and let her thoughts wander.
Her thoughts immediately wandered to the huge problem that she needed to think through before the morning briefing. How to get Lee Adama to forgive and, if not forget, quit carrying a grudge.
And how to bury her own long smoldering anger at him.
They had both caused this rift; they would both need to heal it. But in her heart, she was not sure that she could forgive him anymore than he could, apparently, forgive her. At the best of times, she and Lee were never easy; when it was bad, the entire ship knew it and couldn't avoid it. So she understood the Old Man's directive. She really did.
But that didn't mean that she couldn't resent it.
Why was it on her to end this mess? She had screwed up, sure, but how could Lee expect any different from her? She had told him again and again that frakking things up was her special talent. She had excelled at that better, over the years, than even flying. So how could he have been surprised? Angry? It was to be expected, and it was his fault that he didn't see it coming. You should always look out for the other shoe to drop with Kara Thrace.
How exactly has this happened? She let the scene play out in her head as she passed the darkened mess and shuttered laundry, running it like a flight film, studying it and trying to figure out how best to improve her performance for the next mission.
Three years before the Galactica's scheduled de-commissioning
Zak's wide, hopeful smile slowly wavered, shrunk a bit, but still held firmly on his face until she stood up and walked away. "I think you should leave, Zak," was the last thing she coldly said to him as the bathroom door closed behind her. Kara waited until she heard the front door slam behind him several long minutes later before she let the tears fall.
Why did he have to do this? Why did he have to do this now? In another year, she wouldn't be his flight instructor any more, she wouldn't be a superior officer. In another year, if she didn't frak things up in the meantime, she might have allowed herself to entertain the thought of becoming Mrs. Zak Adama. But not now. She could not say yes, give him false hope, that whatever it is they had would make a lasting marriage.
And if she was honest with herself- which she tried to be, though she often failed- she wasn't sure that she could love him enough. Her own life was one devoid of love and loving relationships. She wasn't sure how it was done, but she knew damn well that they couldn't be carried out in secret with the fear of being caught hanging over their heads. Any discussion of their future had to wait, had to, until he graduated flight school.
And why tonight, before he left for two weeks of basic flight maneuvers that she was not in charge of or there for? All these bad feelings, the strain of them, would sit with them both the entire time they were apart. She clamped down on those emotions, tried to force them under lock and key until they could both deal with them, but it wasn't working.
She went through the first week of separation angry and short tempered, even for her. Her Captain remarked upon it, but dropped it when she shrugged it off, blaming it on monthly hormones. Her temper grew even shorter as she listened in on some of the pilot banter during the ops, recorded and relayed to her for evaluation of the training once the nuggets got back. Zak was fine. Zak sounded happy, not at all moody and unhappy like her. He was even flirting with another pilot, she was sure of it, knowing that tone of voice intimately.
That bastard. Asked her to marry him, than ran off and started flirting with another girl, where he knew she would hear about it. It was one thing to be unhappy with her, quite another to rub it in her face. By the time Friday came around, she was more than ready to go to happy hour with some other officers from the training program. She drank too much, too fast, and hit the wall much earlier than she had anticipated. Her fellow pilots poured her into a cab and sent her home, which was where she had found him.
Lee was sitting on her front steps, looking impatient and a touch annoyed. When she arrived, he stood up to greet her- and ended up catching her as she stumbled out of the vehicle. Drunk as she was, she gave him a very enthusiastic welcome, before puking on his shoes.