My sincere thanks to Lona for her excellent "nitpicks" — she is the world's most awesome line-editor!
Chapter 4
Lee Adama yawned widely and rubbed his eyes. It didn't seem to matter how many hours of sleep he managed in off hours, something about the night-shift exhausted him. Normally, it didn't present much of an issue, as he made the schedules and tended to exercise his right to stay on days. But for the moment, he didn't want to be there, and it was within his power to manage the opposite shift. It was an easy way out.
Strangely, it wasn't the work on days that was getting to him. It was the sleeping at night — or rather, the lack thereof. For more than a week, every time Kara snuggled in next to him it had brought him wide awake and presented him with either laying there miserably or turning over to his right side to have his back to her. Changing to the opposite side didn't relieve the discomfort completely — especially since it placed weight on his right thigh, a muscle that hadn't completely recovered from the blaster shot he'd taken more than a year before — but it at least prevented Kara from knowing what his problem was.
The temporary solution hadn't been a good one. He'd known that when he'd begun it, and yet he still hadn't counted on Kara's sleeping response of turning over herself and wrapping herself around his backside. It made the discomfort of his body even worse than having her in his lap, and had made sleep an impossibility. The very few times he'd drifted off, the dreams awakening him had been both embarrassing, and in one instance messy. It wasn't something that he planned to go through again, so until he sorted through what was going on with his head and body he was going to have to keep his shift opposite to Kara's. He had done so for the last week, and she hadn't really complained. Much.
So far, she hadn't asked many questions. There had been the requisite quiz on where he was spending his nights, but it had been easy enough to explain that Evans needed some time on days to familiarize himself with the CAG duties on that shift. Even to his own ears, the excuse sounded lame. He couldn't blame Kara for her disbelieving look. But she hadn't asked questions. He hadn't had to make up an answer.
His own questions were making him crazy, though. Why now? Why this way? Why Kara? He'd been sharing a room with her for nearly six months, and had done so on many occasions before then, and never had his body gone into overdrive. Granted, he'd been just this side of numb following the beginning of the war. While some of his pilots had been bunking with anyone warm and willing, he hadn't ever felt the desperate need to nail every woman in sight. In fact, he'd felt just the opposite. One of the primary reasons he'd turned to Kara was that he hadn't had any romantic feelings for her. He hadn't wanted the complications.
Kara had always been someone he could stand to be close to. She wasn't really all that physical most of the time — she never had been — but she was willing to tolerate his presence on most occasions. The one feeling that had overwhelmed him at the beginning of their journey had been pure loneliness. He had lost every friend, most family members, and found himself in the unenviable position of having most of his squadrons hating him just for being there. He had been so desperate for comfort, any comfort, that even a hug from his father had been welcome.
Kara had seemed to be the perfect answer to his problems. She was sweet, soft, warm, and willing. But best of all, she didn't have any more expectation of sex from the relationship than he did. She had seemed to need the brief contacts they provided one another just as much as he did.
Kara had actually been the one to initiate the more physical side of their relationship. She had always seemed to know when the day had pushed him a little too far, and he needed something more than a smile. What began as gentle punches to the arm or coming up from behind to lean against him and peek over his shoulder had quickly progressed to pats on the back and the occasional hug. The transition had been so gradual that he hadn't realized when quick hugs had replaced the more playful actions, and holding on to his arm in a hallway had become the norm.
It hadn't just been him that Kara had touched, though. Maybe it was because she was a woman — however much she seemed to want to ignore that fact — but he often caught her hugging one of the guys after a bad day, or grabbing someone around the waist as a joke.
That she had also thrown her share of punches in those early days was something he had tried to ignore. As CAG, he'd had to call her on a few of them, but for the most part he just let the guy punch back, and when it was over they both wound up with extra duties. There was more than one way to release the frustration of losing everything close to you, and spontaneous violence was definitely one of them. Gradually a pecking order had been established in the squadrons — one that went far beyond rank or experience — and he'd been able to worry less about all of them. The fights had come to an end on their own, and he hadn't had to further alienate himself from his squads by involving his father.
Kara had also shown concern for the laidies of the squadrons, and especially to the rooks that were so lost in the beginning. He hadn't known that she had so much patience in her, but she'd guided so many of the young women through crying fits and breakdowns that he'd really been shocked. She seemed to know whether they needed a shoulder to cry on or a good screaming at to get themselves together. He had followed her example regarding when to scream and when to comfort, and it had served him as well as anything in those early days. Diplomacy certainly hadn't worked with them, and rationality hadn't been a strong point either to those who had had their world ripped from beneath them. They had come a long way since then, and he couldn't help but be grateful that he didn't constantly have to think about who he was talking to or what was the right thing to say. Now, he could just do his job, and most days that was more than enough.
Lee tucked his clipboard under his arm and looked over the last Viper in the line. She was a beauty, sporting a fresh coat of paint and a newly rebuilt engine. Tyrol had trained his crews to be masters at taking apart, repairing, and putting back together every part of each spacecraft. It was a necessity for keeping their planes in the air, but the added touches of new paint and restored nameplates continued to surprise him.
"It's about pride, Sir," the older man had told him with a smile after explaining the way pilot nameplates could be removed and added as the men moved from one ship to another. The principle was simple magnetics — the nameplate was the magnet, and the ship was metal — but the difference it had made to morale had been amazing. Lee wouldn't have believed that something so simple as having a name on a bird would make the pilot so much more willing to fly the dirty shifts. But it had.
There were other touches that Lee saw as well as he looked around the hangar bay. Vipers were neatly lined against one wall, and Raptors against another. Shuttles were housed on the starboard side of the ship, along with an emergency squadron of both Vipers and Raptors. Most of the auxiliary shuttles and visiting crafts used that bay, keeping it isolated from their main war squadrons. In the event that the Cylons were to come at them from that side, they needed it accessible, but the Commander didn't want just anyone walking around their only means of defense. So the majority of their crafts were here in the port bay, and it was Tyrol's primary home.
Lee had two patrols out at the moment. Two Vipers and one Raptor were patrolling the area directly in their path in a one-hundred-eighty degree arc. They needed to know what the fleet was coming into. A second Raptor was behind them at his father's request, checking the space they had left for any electronic or wireless signals that could mean they were being followed. It was an absolute minimum of planes in the air, and it was something they maintained every hour of every day of every week. They had to be sure they were alone in space. It was their only hope of survival.
But that meant that over thirty Vipers remained on the Battlestar at any given time, and that most of his pilots were looking for things to do to keep themselves busy. They couldn't waste the fuel to keep more of them in the air when there wasn't a real need, but that didn't make it any easier to rotate the few flying positions in an equitable manner.
In the earlier days of the war, they had flown everything they had, nearly around the clock. It had kept them busy, and yet they had still had more pilots than spacecraft for them to fly. Tyrol had used every scrap they found of debris or dead aircraft to build up their fleet. He had modified parts, built new parts, and had generally reworked things until he had almost twice the initial flight complement. It was still too many pilots for their ships, but one did not indiscriminately turn away a pilot.
Adama had reassigned a few, however. That had hurt. Kara had been very unhappy when she'd been assigned the task of helping him weed out the less qualified pilots and transfer them into security positions through the fleet. Actually, they had been more than merely less qualified. They had been a hazard to themselves and others. Not everyone was equipped for space travel, and some of their new pilots had been positively dangerous. It had actually been more of a safety measure than one of pure numbers, but it had made a convenient excuse.
He knew she understood the necessity, but neither of them had liked it. They were pilots, and they understood that tremendous need to be in open space. Taking it from someone else seemed almost criminal. But they had followed orders. Remembering the day when they had released thirty pilots from flight status also reminded Lee of the first time he'd thought Kara might actually break down. He had been the one to initiate a hug that time, and it still stuck in his mind because of the way she had grabbed hold and held on. After standing together for several minutes, regardless of who might have seen them on the flight deck, she had given a final squeeze and released him to go back to quarters. He hadn't gotten a good look at her face that day. He hadn't wanted to. Now, he was very glad of that. Knowing her as he did, he could only imagine the pain that he would have witnessed. They were pilots to him — kindred spirits, if nothing else — but to her they had been friends.
It was three in the morning, and there wasn't a damn thing left for Lee to do. He was still staring down the line of Vipers, which sat at the ready. There were ten pilots in the ready-room, just in case they got any surprises. Some were sleeping, others were playing cards or reading, and none were likely to bother him if he chose to do some of his paperwork in there. If the fleet was attacked, they would at least have something to start with. He prayed it never came to that.
"You're up late, CAG," Chief Tyrol commented as he walked up behind him. "Why are you covering nights, anyway?"
It was a measure of how far they'd come from their initial meeting that the question could be asked so casually. Lee hadn't made a good impression on the Chief when he'd first landed on the Galactica. It had taken a lot of work to live that down. Respect had been a long time in being built, but Lee thought he might have managed it. "I took nights this week," Lee admitted. "I want Evans to get used to full duty on days in case it's ever necessary. Better to do it now than wait and have him thrown into an emergency." Then, turning to Tyrol he asked, "How about you?"
The chief shrugged. "Aaron's teething," he admitted, referring to his and Sharon's year-old son. "I get more sleep in the daytime. I put Cally on first shift to cover for me until things get back to normal."
Lee nodded with a smile. The new babies aboard the Galactica were presenting a challenge to everyone. Family quarters were most often separated by movable partitions, and they weren't known for auditory privacy. When you added a few crying babies to the mix, nobody got any sleep. Quarters that had once been coveted for their visual privacy were now dreaded for the auditory assault. It was a problem they were going to have to address, but that wasn't his problem. His responsibilities ended with the flight crews, just as the Chief's ended with the function of his spacecraft and his deck crew. They all had enough responsibility without taking on more.
"They look good," Lee said softly.
"Yes, they do," Tyrol replied with pride clear in his voice. "Every one has been overhauled and is in prime shape. They're ready to roll if there's a need."
"Are you rotating them?" Lee asked, even though he already knew the answer.
"Yes, Sir. A new bird each shift, just to be sure everything stays in working order and we aren't developing any glitches. We've been through four full rotations with no problems beyond preventative maintenance."
"Excellent."
The Chief just nodded. He did his job, and did it damn well. His crew was probably the best that Lee had ever relied on, and that was saying something. No, they weren't back to where they'd been before the war, but as far as defense went they were as near as it was possible to be given the limited supplies and men. Lords, he only prayed that it was enough.
The next two hours passed in a similar vein. He was an efficient officer, more used to the pace of days than nights, so his work was consistently finished far before he really wanted it to be. Never one to sit idle, Lee kept making up jobs to keep himself busy, grateful all the while that Tyrol didn't call him on it. The next time he looked at his watch, it was approaching five-thirty, and he knew that he had to find something more to occupy him for the next hour. Kara would be running the corridors of the Galactica, and the last thing he wanted was to run into her on the way back to his room. Check that; the last thing he wanted was to walk into the room after her run and find her in the shower.
Which brought his thoughts around full circle to what the hell had caused the sudden wakeup in his libido during the last few weeks. He knew part of it was pure Kara; she was sexy as hell even when she didn't try. But the rest was a mystery because even months earlier when they'd shared a few kisses and maybe speculated about getting closer, he hadn't felt as out-of-control of the situation as he did now. After the assault she'd suffered, it had only seemed natural to withdraw back into their comfortable friendship. Even when she'd moved in with him, they had lived in the same room, shared the same bed, and had even withdrawn from the few stolen kisses of their past. He assumed she wanted it that way, and he wouldn't dare pressure her. Now he didn't know what the frak he wanted.
But he did know that a naked Kara — or even a scantly dressed and sweaty Kara — was more than his carefully controlled body was ready for. Hence, absence was his best chance of keeping his friendship with her intact. He would rather spend time without her then to be near her and either offend her or just plain piss her off.
If she had been just one of the girls he'd been with back in college or the academy, it wouldn't have worried him. After all, once the sex had been done, he hadn't wanted any more to do with them than they had wanted from him. It had been a mutual conclusion to several brief relationships. Eventually he had come to the conclusion that it just wasn't worth the effort. He could take care of the sexual relief himself given a few extra minutes in the shower, and could maintain friendships with woman all the better for it.
But even the thought of being so dreadfully uncomfortable around Kara made him vaguely sick to his stomach. Body aside, he relied on her mind and her emotions to keep him in balance. None of them had had much to cling to since the beginning of the war, but at the very least he'd had her. It wasn't something he was willing to trade for a few hours of relief, regardless of how much he might want to at the moment.
Lee settled himself into the ready room to complete reports on the night's maintenance, repairs, and duty status. He had two Vipers and a Raptor ready to go out on the early-watch at seven o'clock, and the same complement coming in at seven-thirty. The two teams would overlap, but that was fine with him. Better to have two teams in the air than none. At eight o'clock, the rear patrol would launch in the same manner, their predecessors returning at eight-thirty. The two teams would pass one another, and give a brief wireless report as they traded watch. It would start all over again at fifteen-hundred with a mid-watch, then another late-watch at twenty-three hundred.
The schedule left his pilots on a three-day rotation, but it was the best they could manage. They had one shift to fly, one day on routine repairs and cleanup, and then one day off. It was too much free time, but he preferred it to assigning the multiple cleanup shifts that had initially turned everyone against him. In the early days, they'd had so many repairs to accomplish that one day off in ten was a treat. There was no reason to overwork them now. Tired pilots got sloppy, and sloppy pilots got themselves and others killed.
He had rotations set up for the next two weeks by the time he looked down at his watch. Six-forty. If he wanted to miss Kara, he would have to get the hell out of here. She was on early-watch, and she was flying today. He began hastily stacking the papers that he had scattered in his concentration on equitable division of duties. He almost had them into a stack when he heard her voice. Frak!
"two clicks out and then a ninety-degree turn," she was saying, most likely to her wingman. "Then a parallel path around, a one-eighty, and the same at three clicks. Just stay on my right, and I'll call the turns."
"Yes, Sir," Emily replied.
Lee couldn't help smiling. Em was a new transfer from the Altingham, a larger craft that they had been breaking down into scrap metal and parts as they towed it along. It was one of the many ships that had not really been ready for their initial FTL jumps, and had been essentially destroyed by their most recent ones. With engines beyond repair, they were salvaging what they could. The three pilots aboard had been given their choice of assignment, and Emily had gamely chosen the Galactica. Lee was pleased with her choice, as she was both quick and accurate in her skills. She wasn't Kara, but given a few more years she might be that good.
As one of his only experienced flight instructors, Kara had recently been given their rookies to train on Viper and Raptor flight as backups to the pilots they had transferred out. She hadn't complained about the onslaught of baseline rookies, but she wasn't singing their praises either. It had been yet another way he could justify keeping them on separate duties. If it was an easy copout, he couldn't complain.
"Good morning, Captain Apollo," Em said brightly. He didn't think he'd ever been that young.
"Morning, Lieutenant Davis," he returned. He stood and had to face them as they entered the ready room. To do less would be rude, and would be damned hard to explain. "Lieutenant Thrace," he added with a nod and smile.
The smile wasn't returned. In fact, the look on her face was just this side of belligerent. "Lee," she said firmly with her own nod. So much for keeping this professional. Still, he wasn't going to press it when there was a cadet standing nearby with a more than interested look on her face.
"I'll just get out of your way," he said simply as he tucked a stack of papers onto his clipboard. "I'm sure you're still going over the flight plan. Be safe out there."
"Yes, Sir," Em Davis told him with a smile.
"This isn't over," Kara called to his back. He winced, but he didn't turn around. He refused to have this discussion in front of witnesses, but most especially a new cadet. If Kara planned to corner him, she would just have to do it when she was off duty and he was well rested. He'd designed the schedule with that in mind. He kept walking, and it was with more relief than he cared to admit that he exited the flight bay and entered the main corridor of the Galactica. He didn't look back until he was in his room and carefully closing the door behind him.
Lee spent the next three hours staring at his ceiling. Sleep was out of the question, and he was slowly going out of his mind. If he had any sense at all, he'd go to Salik and get something that would put him out, but it seemed like overkill.
To begin with, there was really nothing wrong with him beyond an overactive mind and an irritating libido. Even with Kara out of his bed, her pillow still bore her scent, and despite wearing both duty uniform and three blankets, he just couldn't seem to get warm. He didn't know how much of it was in his imagination and how much was really temperature, but he was cold.
Lee turned over and stared at the door. Kara wouldn't be coming through it in the near future. It wasn't even noon, and she would be out on patrol until fifteen-thirty. That meant that he had about four hours to get some sleep and then find someplace else to be.
Perhaps that was what irritated him the most about the situation. He could barely stand to be around her, even as a friend. Despite his determination not to mess up their friendship with something sexual, his attempts to maintain their friendship were accomplishing essentially the same thing. On top of that, he was probably making Kara as nuts as he was. He had thought that all he needed was a little space to get his mind and body back under control, but absence wasn't helping the situation. It might be preventing her from realizing what was ultimately causing his withdrawal, but it wasn't offering any kind of solution to the situation. Quite bluntly, the problem wasn't going away just because he wasn't around her.
Absently, Lee wondered if this was what Zak had felt like. He didn't think of Zak and Kara together very much — at least not in his waking hours — but occasionally he wondered about it. They had always seemed happy when they'd been together, and definitely playful. Zak had always had his hands all over Kara, and at the time it had annoyed Lee. He had chalked it up to immaturity and hormones, but it had still rankled. The annoyance hadn't stemmed from anything really personal — he hadn't had any interest in Kara for himself — but it had never seemed really appropriate to watch public displays of affection, and especially not from his kid brother. He would have felt the same way if Zak's hands had been all over anyone.
Kara had never really seemed to mind it though. She hadn't been as groping as Zak was, but she'd given her fair share of kisses and hugs along the way. Oddly, she'd never seemed to stay in his embrace any longer than she had to, but he had really thought that it was the same PDA issues that had bothered him at the time. At the Academy, they'd had military regulation drilled into them at every turn. One of those regs was regarding Public Displays of Affection, and he had just assumed that Kara was finally taking a rule seriously. He probably should have known better.
But now that he thought of it, Kara had never really been physically demonstrative, even to Zak. Most of the physical contact they'd had as kids stemmed from knock-down drag-out games where they tackled one another as a matter of course. She had huddled in bed with them during the occasional thunderstorm, but most times she kept to her own space. In retrospect, he realized that the vast majority of the couple's physical contact had been initiated by Zak, not Kara. He wondered what that might have meant.
The two of them had been a cute couple. Zak had always looked older than his age, and Kara had always looked younger, so they had blended into a fairly nice pair. When their engagement had been announced, Lee had been less stunned than the rest of the family — having caught them in more than one compromising position over the years — but even his parents had seemed to like the match. The two of them had just gone together. If Lee had sometimes felt very much like an outsider, he hadn't dwelt on it. He had just stayed a little later at school, or spent a little more time in the books once he was home.
And when he was around them, they seemed pretty happy. They didn't argue much, but that was likely because Zak could charm his way out of anything with just about anyone — including Kara. He flashed those big brown eyes and everyone seemed to fall all over themselves to accommodate whatever he needed or wanted. It had grated on Lee's nerves only because he couldn't get away with the same things. He was the oldest — the responsible one — and the one expected to follow in his father's footsteps.
Lee flipped onto his back, staring at the ceiling once more. This wasn't getting him anywhere. The only thing he had really accomplished was making sure that he really couldn't sleep. The last thing he wanted to do was drift off with Zak on his mind and risk another of the disturbing nightmares that had so shaken him before. His overactive imagination would have a field day with the memories he was pondering now.
Another half-hour of silence was all Lee could stand. He got himself out of bed, stripped down to undershirts and put on running shorts, then got on his running shoes. He had deliberately been skipping the morning runs with Kara, although most nights the work was complete well before her alarm would go off at five-thirty. He could have easily skipped a meal period and taken the time to meet her for her run, and he had done it enough in the past. But he hadn't been able to face the thought of her running clothes clinging in all the right places. Still, just because he couldn't handle having her running with him, it didn't mean that a good run wouldn't clear his head and possibly make him tired enough to settle down and sleep. He sure as hell couldn't feel any worse.
He spent a few minutes stretching, using his bunk for support, and then slipped out of his room and into an easy stride. It was slower than the pace that Kara would set, but it was comfortable.
And there she was again, dammit! He was back to associating everything in his life with that one woman. How in hell had he let his life get so tangled up with hers? Before the war, they had gone two years — two years — without even speaking. There had been a couple of letters to let one another know they were living and well, but beyond that they hadn't even managed a phone call. Lee hadn't wanted to hear her staunch defense of his father, and she hadn't been ready to accept that his father was responsible for Zak's death. Okay, so he'd been very wrong about that, but he'd been working with the information he'd had available at the time. Knowing what he did now, it seemed an incredible waste of time and energy. All the anger in the world hadn't brought Zak back, and it had damn near destroyed his relationship with his father. It had also driven a moderate wedge between him and his mother, who had forgiven the eldest Adama whether he was responsible or not, and couldn't understand why her son could not do the same.
So he'd lived without Kara in his life before. Granted, not in such close quarters, but still he could manage it. He might have to check with his dad about moving back into crew quarters, but he hated to take Kara's bathroom away from her. If there was one thing he really loved about his own office and bed, it was that they provided Kara with some much-needed privacy. He didn't keep it for himself — hadn't even requested it for himself — but had asked because he had thought it could help her.
And so he was back to her. Again.
"Good morning."
Lee glanced at his watch before slowing to a walk and greeting his father. He was breathing deeply, but not yet out of breath. A conversation might make a nice diversion. "For a few more minutes, anyway," he agreed. "How's it going?"
"I was about to ask you the same thing," Adama said with a raised eyebrow. "Aren't you supposed to be sleeping?"
"Still getting used to odd shifts," Lee explained. It was part of the truth. The rest wasn't something that he planned to discuss with a parent.
"Why are you on them?"
Leave it to his father to be blunt. "Needed to train someone else to take days," he hedged. "Who knows, I may get sick someday, or actually get time for a long patrol."
"Kara doesn't know your job?" he asked with a wink. He knew that she did. She was his deputy CAG, and had been since his assignment in the position. Technically, the position probably should have gone to her in the first place.
"Better than I do," he agreed with a grumble. He wasn't going to explain that Kara was the problem. "But it doesn't hurt to have a couple other people trained to the routine."
"And you aren't training him personally because"
"Because I won't be here to hold his hand if I'm not able to act as CAG. He'd need to muddle through it just like he's doing it now. It's actually easier to learn the job if you make your own mistakes along the way, and come up with your own schedule and system for doing things. He has a list of responsibilities, and if he has any problems he knows where to find me."
"Logical," his father finally admitted. Lee was almost ready to release the breath he'd been holding when his father added, "and convenient."
Okay. He'd bite. "What do you mean by that?" he asked blandly. He had stopped walking, forcing his father to do the same, and was now facing the older man eye-to-eye.
Adama looked at him with due consideration for a long moment. Those penetrating eyes seemed to search out everything, both as commander and father. Finally the older man looked away and began to walk again. Lee followed. "For the last several months, you've had a shadow," Adama said quietly. "She ran with you, ate with you, and from what I understand she was sleeping in your room too. Correct?"
Lee didn't like the way this was going, but he couldn't see arguing with the obvious. More than one friend had asked where she was in the last few days. She was likely getting the same quizzes about his whereabouts. "Yeah."
"For the last week, you've been pulling awkward shifts, eating alone, and judging from the circles under your eyes you've not been sleeping at all. Am I pretty close?"
Once more, Lee saw no point in arguing. His father always had seen more than anyone had a right to. "How do you know all this stuff?" Lee muttered. The question was redundant.
He got his answer with a wink. "I have spies everywhere."
Lee met his father's gaze and was at least relieved to see a spark of humor there, rather than the censure he had feared. His father had always liked Kara, to the point of causing occasional friction in the household as Zak and Lee had felt replaced. It was childish then, and there was no point in going back to it now. He couldn't help wondering if he were in for it because he hadn't given Kara due attention. "Okay, go ahead. Proceed with lecture."
"No lecture," the Commander assured him. "Just a recommendation."
Lee gave a soft laugh. A recommendation from his Commander, father or not, might just be considered an order. "Which is?"
"I've learned something in the last few years," his father told him gently. "What we have today, we will not necessarily have tomorrow. My recommendation is that you look at what you have, and decide what you want to keep. If you take for granted that someone will always be there, you may be sadly disappointed." Adama turned and faced him, gently taking his arm so that he would stop and meet his father's eyes. "When she's around," he said simply, "You smile more. You laugh some. And" His voice trailed off.
"And what?"
His father's smile wasn't humorous this time, but rather sad. "And you can sleep."
Lee didn't know what to say to that. Thankfully, his father didn't seem to require an answer, but simply continued walking down the corridor, apparently to whatever his destination had been before he'd stopped to talk.
Lee thought about continuing his run, but decided to head for the shower instead. He wasn't going to get any sleep before Kara was back in quarters, so at the very least he could take care of cleaning up and then maybe catch a nap when she was off duty. Hell, she might not even come back to the room given the way he'd been acting of late. He couldn't say that he would blame her. His father was right about one thing: if he didn't figure out what the hell he wanted, there was no way he could make Kara understand what it was. And Kara wasn't known for waiting around.