Chapter 3
She was quiet for a moment, smiling, just enjoying the warmth of his hand wrapped around hers, and the gentle pressure of his body beside hers. That had lain this way dozens of times over the years, side by side on his bed or hers, and whether romantic or platonic it never ceased to amaze her the comfort she gained from the position. Zak had always made her feel safe.
She rolled onto her side to face him, to tell him how special this was. The bed was empty.
Kara awoke with a start, kicking away blankets to escape the nightmare before realizing that it was real. Zak was gone. He had been gone for a long time.
She took a deep breath and held it, then let it out slowly in a quiet, controlled motion that both calmed her and allowed her to listen to see if she had awakened anyone in the quarters. She didn't hear anything aside from the usual soft snores and shifting of blankets that were expected in a room of twenty sleeping men and women. She took another breath, and this time let it out in relief.
The Galactica had been a flagship for the Planet Caprica. Due to this, the environmental controls were set to simulate the twenty-six hour days of that planet. Lights in corridors dimmed, temperatures were lowered, and a simulated night helped to keep its occupants on some semblance of a schedule.
The current time was just after two in the morning. She didn't want to wake those sleeping around her. They got enough of that from the recurrent nightmares that each of them faced as a result of the destruction of their home world. Three or four times a night, someone awoke crying, screaming, or flailing. It was tolerated, and they could all sympathize, but it wasn't something she wanted to be known for.
In any case, Kara had demons that were far older than the beginning of the war. Inner demons beat out external demons any day for the initiation of nightmares. She'd been coping with them for two years. If she felt like her chest was too tight to breathe and the walls were closing in around her, then she would just have to cope.
Quietly, she eased herself from the bed and tugged a sleeveless shirt over her undershirt. She grabbed some shorts as well and slipped them on. She wasn't concerned with anyone watching. Even with the lights on, and no clothes at all, she had learned to be comfortable with co-ed living conditions in warrior's quarters. Just a few showers during initial Flight Training had broken her of the little shyness that had survived growing up with two boys who had never really considered her a girl.
Kara picked up running shoes from the rack above her shared locker, and exited the pilot's quarters as quietly as a shadow, easing the hatch shut behind her. The passageway was dimly lit, another concession to environmental regulation, but it was bright enough to see clearly and the corridor was essentially empty for a change.
Kara did a couple of quick stretches using the wall for support, then eased into a quiet jog. She didn't have the patience for an extended warm up, and she'd learned over the years that night demons were best exorcised by, well, exercise. She was anxious to clear her mind.
She had made three laps of the main passageway, each about half a mile in length. She was just building up a good sweat and beginning to breathe heavily when she nearly collided with Lee.
"Hey!" she said breathily.
"Hi," he answered. "You're up late. Or, is it early?"
"Couldn't sleep," she admitted. "What about you? I thought you must be on patrol." She knew that she didn't have a shift until late tomorrow - make that today - so she hadn't really looked at anything else on the current roster.
"I was actually talking to my dad," he told her sheepishly. "We had some. catching up to do."
She smiled softly, glad that her great confession had been good for something besides reawakening her own guilt and interrupting her sleep. "That's good to hear."
"It explains how I managed to stay out past curfew," he said with a shrug. "But you're going to get yourself locked in the brig again."
She grinned at that. "At least it would be some space. It's gotten damn crowded in quarters."
"Thanks," he said dryly. "Nice to know how welcome I am."
"You are, but I'm not so sure about the other fifteen bunks they put in there. We can barely walk, and I hate sharing a locker."
"They had to go somewhere," Lee reasoned. "And space is limited. We should really be glad that we have so many surviving pilots after our initial run-in with the Cylons."
She sighed. "It's nice not having to pull long shifts. For a change we actually have more pilots than we have spacecraft for."
"Chief Tyrol is working on that. Another week or so and he's likely to have enough of a fleet together to actually provide adequate defense. We may need that sooner than we think."
"You really think they'll find us?"
Lee took a moment to consider that. "Eventually," he admitted. "Or at least, we're better to expect that they will. Complacency is what got us into this in the first place."
Kara nodded her agreement. "So for now we get to enjoy routine patrols and seven-hour shifts. Although I'd just as soon get into some of the exploratory missions, instead of routine scanning. It would last longer."
"We do have way too much free time," he added. "Discipline is going to become a problem if we don't keep our warriors busy."
"I resemble that," she told him with a grin.
"You'd find a way to get into trouble regardless of down time," Lee admitted as he casually elbowed her in the ribs. They'd gradually started a quiet walk around the main corridor to allow Kara time to cool down.
"Life is never dull," she admitted with a wry grin.
"You could be a Captain by now," he told her honestly. "The skill is there, and the leadership capability. If you hadn't been bucked down so many times for getting yourself into fights, you'd be senior ranking by now."
"Better than drunk and disorderly," she argued.
"So you're sober and disorderly. Better to stay out of trouble," he instructed. "We have enough issues out of our control without deliberately locking up our best pilots."
"Thanks," she told him softly. His matter-of-fact statement that she was good meant a lot more than the affluent praise from others. Lee was the standard she measured herself by. He always had been.
He shrugged again. "It's nothing you don't know. Besides, I should be the one thanking you."
"For what? Defying your orders to stay out of trouble?"
"For saving my butt out there," he corrected, coming to a stop so that she had to either face him or leave him behind. "And yeah, it was against my orders."
"Your problem was damage, not skill," she told him, ignoring the implied accusation. "Besides, you would have done the same for me."
He looked at her for a moment, his gaze direct and penetrating to the point that she had to look away. "No, I probably wouldn't have."
Kara was stunned. Shocked. Hurt.
"Not that I wouldn't have done anything to get you back to the ship," he said quickly, probably responding to the look on her face because he reached out a hand to clasp her upper arm. "I just don't think that far outside the box."
"I think you're underestimating yourself," she corrected.
"No. I'm not."
"When have you ever failed on a mission?" she asked him with irritation. How anyone who was so arrogant could give himself so little credit was beyond her.
"When I couldn't talk Zak out of being a pilot," he admitted quietly. "If I had stopped yelling, maybe thought of something else."
"We're not going to start with blaming you," Kara told him firmly. "We have already established who put him in that Viper before he was ready."
"He was my brother," he reminded her. "I knew just as well as you did that he wasn't ready, but protocol stated that he had to solo, and I didn't even take time to be there. He actually held it together until the landing. If I could have kept him calm."
"He panicked because he was someplace he shouldn't have been, Lee. I was there. I tried to talk him through it, but... I knew his judgement on landings, his depth perception wasn't practiced enough. I really had planned to work with him, though. Maybe do some ground landings before we started working flight deck."
"That's procedure for Raptor training," he said. "Not for Viper flight."
"Raptor training is where he should have been."
Lee didn't answer that. She knew he didn't have to. The scuttlebutt in flight school was that only the lowest of the low were relegated to Raptor flight. It was considered demeaning at best, and something a warrior did only under the most extreme circumstances. Warriors flew Vipers. Runts flew Raptors. Raptors were the curse of those who couldn't pass Basic Flight. They were slower, and they had far more safeguards to assist the pilot, some even boasting automatic features.
Quietly Kara turned and began walking again. Lee fell into step beside her. There were no words necessary. They were both feeling their guilt, each for their own reasons, and words wouldn't make it better.
Both Lee and Kara had left the Flight Training program shortly after Zak's death. Lee had done it to spite his father, deliberately turning down an opening on the Galactica to stay clear of his father. Kara had done the opposite, joining the ship's company so that she could stay close to the only family she had ever known. She had often thought that if William Adama hadn't offered her the slot, she might have wound up driving a truck on Caprica. But, he had made her fly. He had saved her life.
She had missed Lee, though. They'd gone through school together on Caprica, graduated the same year, and joined Flight School at the same time. They had even roomed together before Zak had started training, then she'd moved in with him, superior rank be damned. Even so, Lee had been present most days at work, and he'd been there to keep her out of trouble each time that a male of the species decided she was somehow less fit to fly because of her gender. It had happened frequently when she was teaching. Most of the crew here knew she had earned her status, and she had some semblance of respect from them.
Zak had thought it was funny, never really understanding why the insinuations had bothered her when she really was good, but Lee had taken it as personally as she did. She couldn't stand being the butt of someone's joke. She'd taken enough of that as a child when her parents had left her.
She had no clue when her mother had left. She didn't remember her at all, but she'd been four or five when she woke up one morning to find the room she and her father had occupied empty and no sign that he had ever been there. She'd looked around for him at first, but with a child's resiliency she'd quickly learned to fend for herself. She didn't really remember him now, although certain smells or sounds would occasionally spark a mottled memory of being cold, or of voices yelling. Lee had once told her that the memories probably weren't good, so she was better off without them. She liked to think the same thing.
Despite her self-reliance, life had been hard at first. Only a few months after finding herself on the streets of Caprica, and despite early lessons learned about charming tourists and scamming cash, she'd gotten caught stealing food from behind a military mess facility. It was amazing the food that soldiers left behind. Thankfully, the officer that had grabbed her by the seat of her torn pants had been William Adama, then a Captain serving an unwanted tour of planetary duty.
She had found herself tossed in a tub, dressed in clean clothes, and seated at a table with more food on it than she had ever seen. William hadn't ever asked any questions that she couldn't answer. He had simply fed her, clothed her, and left her in the loving care of his wife.
Iilya had been a beautiful woman who very much loved to nurture. Zak had reveled in the loving attention, Kara had tolerated the fussing, and Lee had brushed it off. He had been independent and solitary. Kara had always wanted to be like him. She hadn't wanted to need anyone, knowing all too well how easily she could find herself alone.
Kara assumed that the Adamas had looked for her father, but she never asked. She had simply been grateful for friends to play with, a warm bed, and food to eat. She had started school that year with Lee, and essentially had become a part of their family. She was still called "the orphan" at school - still teased and tormented because she had no parents of her own - but at least she'd had a place where she was safe and cared for. She'd never called them Mom or Dad, but the emotion was there even when the words weren't. They took care of her, loved her, and even bandaged the multitude of injuries she acquired as she defended her own honor.
In her final years of school, Lee had kept himself busy and was rarely around. She had stuck with Zak then, and the two had gradually gone from a sibling type relationship to something else entirely. William and Iilya had both encouraged their togetherness, and Lee had mostly ignored it until they had announced their engagement.
She hadn't really been close to Lee again until they'd gone to flight school. They had challenged one another there, each pushing one another to do more, be more, and fly better. They had both passed Basic Flight and moved into Viper Training within the first months, a feat that hadn't been accomplished by more than a handfull of trainees. They had completed that in record time as well, and showed a natural flare for flying that had only been shown by a few students in the history of the center. It was only natural that they had been asked to teach, to share the instinctual knowledge of how to fly. She had actually liked the respect and responsibility at the time. Later, she came to hate it.
Now, Kara and Lee passed a few security monitors on their walk, but no one really questioned the commander's son regarding curfew, and Kara was able to enjoy the peacefulness of silent companionship and undemanding company. She still wasn't entirely comfortable with Lee following her two-year deception, but she was getting there.
"When's your next shift?" he finally asked after nearly half an hour of walking. She guessed that he'd had a lot of thinking to do as well.
"Eighteen-hundred," she replied.
He nodded. "I'm up at twelve," he told her. "I'd better at least try to get some sleep."
"I'm getting a little tired, too. And cold." Lee was in full flight dress, so he was probably comfortable, but Kara's shorts were only appropriate when she was generating significant heat of her own.
They walked back to their quarters, entering quietly. Lee yanked off his flight jacket to leave it in his locker even as Kara pulled her sleeveless shirt off and stripped off her shorts, revealing only a pair of nondescript white underwear and a simple running bra.
"I'm going to grab a shower," she told him simply.
Lee paused in the act of reaching for his soap and looked at her for a long moment. "I'll just head to bed," he told her, not meeting her eyes as he withdrew his hand from the locker. "See you in the morning."
"You too," Kara told him as she moved towards the showers.
Lee stood there for a moment, watching her back, then finished getting ready for bed.
(to be continued)
She was quiet for a moment, smiling, just enjoying the warmth of his hand wrapped around hers, and the gentle pressure of his body beside hers. That had lain this way dozens of times over the years, side by side on his bed or hers, and whether romantic or platonic it never ceased to amaze her the comfort she gained from the position. Zak had always made her feel safe.
She rolled onto her side to face him, to tell him how special this was. The bed was empty.
Kara awoke with a start, kicking away blankets to escape the nightmare before realizing that it was real. Zak was gone. He had been gone for a long time.
She took a deep breath and held it, then let it out slowly in a quiet, controlled motion that both calmed her and allowed her to listen to see if she had awakened anyone in the quarters. She didn't hear anything aside from the usual soft snores and shifting of blankets that were expected in a room of twenty sleeping men and women. She took another breath, and this time let it out in relief.
The Galactica had been a flagship for the Planet Caprica. Due to this, the environmental controls were set to simulate the twenty-six hour days of that planet. Lights in corridors dimmed, temperatures were lowered, and a simulated night helped to keep its occupants on some semblance of a schedule.
The current time was just after two in the morning. She didn't want to wake those sleeping around her. They got enough of that from the recurrent nightmares that each of them faced as a result of the destruction of their home world. Three or four times a night, someone awoke crying, screaming, or flailing. It was tolerated, and they could all sympathize, but it wasn't something she wanted to be known for.
In any case, Kara had demons that were far older than the beginning of the war. Inner demons beat out external demons any day for the initiation of nightmares. She'd been coping with them for two years. If she felt like her chest was too tight to breathe and the walls were closing in around her, then she would just have to cope.
Quietly, she eased herself from the bed and tugged a sleeveless shirt over her undershirt. She grabbed some shorts as well and slipped them on. She wasn't concerned with anyone watching. Even with the lights on, and no clothes at all, she had learned to be comfortable with co-ed living conditions in warrior's quarters. Just a few showers during initial Flight Training had broken her of the little shyness that had survived growing up with two boys who had never really considered her a girl.
Kara picked up running shoes from the rack above her shared locker, and exited the pilot's quarters as quietly as a shadow, easing the hatch shut behind her. The passageway was dimly lit, another concession to environmental regulation, but it was bright enough to see clearly and the corridor was essentially empty for a change.
Kara did a couple of quick stretches using the wall for support, then eased into a quiet jog. She didn't have the patience for an extended warm up, and she'd learned over the years that night demons were best exorcised by, well, exercise. She was anxious to clear her mind.
She had made three laps of the main passageway, each about half a mile in length. She was just building up a good sweat and beginning to breathe heavily when she nearly collided with Lee.
"Hey!" she said breathily.
"Hi," he answered. "You're up late. Or, is it early?"
"Couldn't sleep," she admitted. "What about you? I thought you must be on patrol." She knew that she didn't have a shift until late tomorrow - make that today - so she hadn't really looked at anything else on the current roster.
"I was actually talking to my dad," he told her sheepishly. "We had some. catching up to do."
She smiled softly, glad that her great confession had been good for something besides reawakening her own guilt and interrupting her sleep. "That's good to hear."
"It explains how I managed to stay out past curfew," he said with a shrug. "But you're going to get yourself locked in the brig again."
She grinned at that. "At least it would be some space. It's gotten damn crowded in quarters."
"Thanks," he said dryly. "Nice to know how welcome I am."
"You are, but I'm not so sure about the other fifteen bunks they put in there. We can barely walk, and I hate sharing a locker."
"They had to go somewhere," Lee reasoned. "And space is limited. We should really be glad that we have so many surviving pilots after our initial run-in with the Cylons."
She sighed. "It's nice not having to pull long shifts. For a change we actually have more pilots than we have spacecraft for."
"Chief Tyrol is working on that. Another week or so and he's likely to have enough of a fleet together to actually provide adequate defense. We may need that sooner than we think."
"You really think they'll find us?"
Lee took a moment to consider that. "Eventually," he admitted. "Or at least, we're better to expect that they will. Complacency is what got us into this in the first place."
Kara nodded her agreement. "So for now we get to enjoy routine patrols and seven-hour shifts. Although I'd just as soon get into some of the exploratory missions, instead of routine scanning. It would last longer."
"We do have way too much free time," he added. "Discipline is going to become a problem if we don't keep our warriors busy."
"I resemble that," she told him with a grin.
"You'd find a way to get into trouble regardless of down time," Lee admitted as he casually elbowed her in the ribs. They'd gradually started a quiet walk around the main corridor to allow Kara time to cool down.
"Life is never dull," she admitted with a wry grin.
"You could be a Captain by now," he told her honestly. "The skill is there, and the leadership capability. If you hadn't been bucked down so many times for getting yourself into fights, you'd be senior ranking by now."
"Better than drunk and disorderly," she argued.
"So you're sober and disorderly. Better to stay out of trouble," he instructed. "We have enough issues out of our control without deliberately locking up our best pilots."
"Thanks," she told him softly. His matter-of-fact statement that she was good meant a lot more than the affluent praise from others. Lee was the standard she measured herself by. He always had been.
He shrugged again. "It's nothing you don't know. Besides, I should be the one thanking you."
"For what? Defying your orders to stay out of trouble?"
"For saving my butt out there," he corrected, coming to a stop so that she had to either face him or leave him behind. "And yeah, it was against my orders."
"Your problem was damage, not skill," she told him, ignoring the implied accusation. "Besides, you would have done the same for me."
He looked at her for a moment, his gaze direct and penetrating to the point that she had to look away. "No, I probably wouldn't have."
Kara was stunned. Shocked. Hurt.
"Not that I wouldn't have done anything to get you back to the ship," he said quickly, probably responding to the look on her face because he reached out a hand to clasp her upper arm. "I just don't think that far outside the box."
"I think you're underestimating yourself," she corrected.
"No. I'm not."
"When have you ever failed on a mission?" she asked him with irritation. How anyone who was so arrogant could give himself so little credit was beyond her.
"When I couldn't talk Zak out of being a pilot," he admitted quietly. "If I had stopped yelling, maybe thought of something else."
"We're not going to start with blaming you," Kara told him firmly. "We have already established who put him in that Viper before he was ready."
"He was my brother," he reminded her. "I knew just as well as you did that he wasn't ready, but protocol stated that he had to solo, and I didn't even take time to be there. He actually held it together until the landing. If I could have kept him calm."
"He panicked because he was someplace he shouldn't have been, Lee. I was there. I tried to talk him through it, but... I knew his judgement on landings, his depth perception wasn't practiced enough. I really had planned to work with him, though. Maybe do some ground landings before we started working flight deck."
"That's procedure for Raptor training," he said. "Not for Viper flight."
"Raptor training is where he should have been."
Lee didn't answer that. She knew he didn't have to. The scuttlebutt in flight school was that only the lowest of the low were relegated to Raptor flight. It was considered demeaning at best, and something a warrior did only under the most extreme circumstances. Warriors flew Vipers. Runts flew Raptors. Raptors were the curse of those who couldn't pass Basic Flight. They were slower, and they had far more safeguards to assist the pilot, some even boasting automatic features.
Quietly Kara turned and began walking again. Lee fell into step beside her. There were no words necessary. They were both feeling their guilt, each for their own reasons, and words wouldn't make it better.
Both Lee and Kara had left the Flight Training program shortly after Zak's death. Lee had done it to spite his father, deliberately turning down an opening on the Galactica to stay clear of his father. Kara had done the opposite, joining the ship's company so that she could stay close to the only family she had ever known. She had often thought that if William Adama hadn't offered her the slot, she might have wound up driving a truck on Caprica. But, he had made her fly. He had saved her life.
She had missed Lee, though. They'd gone through school together on Caprica, graduated the same year, and joined Flight School at the same time. They had even roomed together before Zak had started training, then she'd moved in with him, superior rank be damned. Even so, Lee had been present most days at work, and he'd been there to keep her out of trouble each time that a male of the species decided she was somehow less fit to fly because of her gender. It had happened frequently when she was teaching. Most of the crew here knew she had earned her status, and she had some semblance of respect from them.
Zak had thought it was funny, never really understanding why the insinuations had bothered her when she really was good, but Lee had taken it as personally as she did. She couldn't stand being the butt of someone's joke. She'd taken enough of that as a child when her parents had left her.
She had no clue when her mother had left. She didn't remember her at all, but she'd been four or five when she woke up one morning to find the room she and her father had occupied empty and no sign that he had ever been there. She'd looked around for him at first, but with a child's resiliency she'd quickly learned to fend for herself. She didn't really remember him now, although certain smells or sounds would occasionally spark a mottled memory of being cold, or of voices yelling. Lee had once told her that the memories probably weren't good, so she was better off without them. She liked to think the same thing.
Despite her self-reliance, life had been hard at first. Only a few months after finding herself on the streets of Caprica, and despite early lessons learned about charming tourists and scamming cash, she'd gotten caught stealing food from behind a military mess facility. It was amazing the food that soldiers left behind. Thankfully, the officer that had grabbed her by the seat of her torn pants had been William Adama, then a Captain serving an unwanted tour of planetary duty.
She had found herself tossed in a tub, dressed in clean clothes, and seated at a table with more food on it than she had ever seen. William hadn't ever asked any questions that she couldn't answer. He had simply fed her, clothed her, and left her in the loving care of his wife.
Iilya had been a beautiful woman who very much loved to nurture. Zak had reveled in the loving attention, Kara had tolerated the fussing, and Lee had brushed it off. He had been independent and solitary. Kara had always wanted to be like him. She hadn't wanted to need anyone, knowing all too well how easily she could find herself alone.
Kara assumed that the Adamas had looked for her father, but she never asked. She had simply been grateful for friends to play with, a warm bed, and food to eat. She had started school that year with Lee, and essentially had become a part of their family. She was still called "the orphan" at school - still teased and tormented because she had no parents of her own - but at least she'd had a place where she was safe and cared for. She'd never called them Mom or Dad, but the emotion was there even when the words weren't. They took care of her, loved her, and even bandaged the multitude of injuries she acquired as she defended her own honor.
In her final years of school, Lee had kept himself busy and was rarely around. She had stuck with Zak then, and the two had gradually gone from a sibling type relationship to something else entirely. William and Iilya had both encouraged their togetherness, and Lee had mostly ignored it until they had announced their engagement.
She hadn't really been close to Lee again until they'd gone to flight school. They had challenged one another there, each pushing one another to do more, be more, and fly better. They had both passed Basic Flight and moved into Viper Training within the first months, a feat that hadn't been accomplished by more than a handfull of trainees. They had completed that in record time as well, and showed a natural flare for flying that had only been shown by a few students in the history of the center. It was only natural that they had been asked to teach, to share the instinctual knowledge of how to fly. She had actually liked the respect and responsibility at the time. Later, she came to hate it.
Now, Kara and Lee passed a few security monitors on their walk, but no one really questioned the commander's son regarding curfew, and Kara was able to enjoy the peacefulness of silent companionship and undemanding company. She still wasn't entirely comfortable with Lee following her two-year deception, but she was getting there.
"When's your next shift?" he finally asked after nearly half an hour of walking. She guessed that he'd had a lot of thinking to do as well.
"Eighteen-hundred," she replied.
He nodded. "I'm up at twelve," he told her. "I'd better at least try to get some sleep."
"I'm getting a little tired, too. And cold." Lee was in full flight dress, so he was probably comfortable, but Kara's shorts were only appropriate when she was generating significant heat of her own.
They walked back to their quarters, entering quietly. Lee yanked off his flight jacket to leave it in his locker even as Kara pulled her sleeveless shirt off and stripped off her shorts, revealing only a pair of nondescript white underwear and a simple running bra.
"I'm going to grab a shower," she told him simply.
Lee paused in the act of reaching for his soap and looked at her for a long moment. "I'll just head to bed," he told her, not meeting her eyes as he withdrew his hand from the locker. "See you in the morning."
"You too," Kara told him as she moved towards the showers.
Lee stood there for a moment, watching her back, then finished getting ready for bed.
(to be continued)