Lee was grateful that Kara had finally gone back to quarters, or possibly to his room although she hadn't given him a definite answer when he'd offered it. Still, she hadn't belittled the idea or made a joke, so maybe she at least had taken it into her consideration. For the sake of feeling better, he chose to think so.
He'd been sleeping – on and off – for hours. How many hours he had no clue, because he hadn't really checked the time when he'd come in. He had been taken to Life Station first, and the mess of his arm had been cleaned up. Cassie had glared at him when she found out how he'd lost the IV, and then she'd put in three stitches to hold together the torn skin and had bandaged it in record time. She'd been silent for a very long time as she searched his other arm for a vein, becoming progressively more annoyed as she did so.
"Problem?"
"For such a decent sized man, you have the tiniest veins," she had mumbled. She had finally gone for a hand, just below his previous IV and its insertion had hurt to hell and back. He thought she'd made it so deliberately. Then she'd taped it ridiculously and had wrapped the entire thing in the same gauze she'd used higher on the arm. She was not a happy person.
"I'm sorry," he said tentatively.
"So am I," she'd answered, her voice just shy of a growl. "But I get enough frakking business in this place without our officers beating on one another. It's childish and useless, and I'm sick of it."
"You get that much?" he had asked, surprised.
Cassie had sighed. "Enough," she had muttered. "It's not as bad here as my last assignment. At least you folks try to work together." Then, glaring once more, "But you don't always manage it, do you."
"He was baiting Kara," Lee had tried to explain.
"Words," she announced unceremoniously. "Captain Apollo, they are just words. You've used actions, and violent ones at that. I see nothing that makes such behavior appropriate. I've told it to Starbuck on a dozen occasions, and I'll tell you the same thing. Yell at one another, beat on your pillows, or scream into a launch tube – but keep your hands off one another. I don't have the time or patience for this!"
"Yes, Sir," he'd answered, far more chastened than he had been as a child when his mother had scolded him following an altercation with Zak.
Cassie had taken a deep breath, held it, and released it slowly. "I'm sorry," she had said softly. "I spent almost twenty years working on Gemon near the Colonial Marine training facility. If I had a cubit for every stitch I'd put in, then I could have retired ten years ago. Useless, every damned one of those fights. We buried more than one man due to brain damage, broken necks, and even a few who bled to death before we could get to them. If I never have to deal with that again, I'll be very pleased.
"As a rule, the Galactica has been far more civilized, and that's why I've stayed for so long. And yes, I know that war changes things, but I will not see my men… my friends," she emphasized with a glare, "Kill one another because of some pilot's sense of humor, or another's lack thereof."
"How long have you been on the Galactica," he'd asked, hoping desperately to divert her from the tirade she was beginning. If she was anything like his mother, and he was willing to bet that she was, once she got going it would be hell to get her to calm down. His mother had not been driven to anger very often, but when she had…
"Nearly ten years," Cassie had answered, breaking into his thoughts.
He had looked at her sharply, stunned. "Twenty years on Gemon, and ten here. You can't be thirty years old!"
"Flattery will get you another piece of tape," she'd told him with a grin. "I'm an Arian. We age slightly differently; more slowly. While Capricans have a life expectancy of eighty to one-hundred years, most Arians live to nearly two-hundred. We've always been told it had something to do with the Arian suns and cellular degeneration, complete lack of radiation and all. For me it's just a fact of life."
"So you are…"
"Fifty-two," she admitted reluctantly. "Although if you tell anyone, I'll deny it staunchly. "There weren't many who survived the war, and those of us who did will likely revert to the same aging that everyone else has when the gene pool is distributed in the absence of our suns. It'll likely be the same with the Virgons, who lived with intensified gravity and are as well built as animals, and the Picons who are almost willowy in build. No one is certain, because there was so much traverse between the Colonies that pure anything is a rarity; the gene pool is already a bit clouded. In any case, I'm in no mood to alienate my shipmates or deal with inappropriate envy from every woman on this ship. Age is highly overrated. Experience is exhausting."
Lee had smiled then, finally realizing how Cassie managed to act like his mother and still smile like a school-girl. Well, he smiled at least until his marine escorts had taken an arm each – carefully avoiding the white bandaged areas according to Cassie's orders – and had marched him to the brig. At the time, he'd been too tired to think. He had lain down and slept. His father had awoken him at some point, and later Kara, and the rest was a fuzz of waking and sleeping on the narrow cot in the bright lighting. He could have asked for them to dim the lights, but just being in there was embarrassing; he didn't want to draw further attention to himself by asking for favors.
But now, despite not being rested, neither was Lee tired. He was… alert. And he was beginning to think about the serious nature of what he'd done. At the time, it had been a matter of defending Kara, regardless of whether or not she had needed it. He wasn't quite sure what his father would be able to do to get him out of the situation, nor was he sure that his father should even attempt it. He had done the wrong thing, and in retrospect he hadn't even done it for the right reasons. He hadn't done it because Kara couldn't defend herself; he'd done it because she wasn't defending herself. She was a good person, an amazing pilot, a terrific friend, and she deserved a hell of a lot more than gossip and innuendo from the pilots who were supposed to be her friends. No one had been sticking up for her. No one. And yes, his father's explanation that she likely wouldn't have welcomed such defense was valid, but it still stuck lee as cold and cruel.
But none of these things were new – not to either of them. On the other hand, the unfairness of it had never bothered him overmuch before. What had shifted? He'd already come to a frightening realization that his feelings for her were no longer simple, but if his current predicament was any indication, he needed to get things back on an even keel and soon.
But Kara hadn't seemed mad at him; not exactly. She'd been a little exasperated, but then he knew that feeling. From the outside, it was almost always easy to look at a fight and see a path that could have led to a better, less violent conclusion. Normally even if one was involved directly in the altercation, hindsight showed more alternatives and less necessity towards violence. At the moment, neither was showing him a way that had been as satisfying as planting his fist into the side of Aames' face. Childish? Hell yes. So much so that he might have to go easier on Kara the next time she got herself into a similar mess.
Which brought his thoughts back around to the woman who had inadvertently started the whole mess without even doing anything. She had just walked into the room, and criticism had hit her with no warning and less cause. Had they always treated her so badly there? Was it just his presence that had made the situation so obvious and intolerable? Had she fought with these same issues since she'd been aboard the Galactica?
He had no way of knowing, because Kara wouldn't give him a straight answer. The woman truly did fight her own battles, and anyone else in quarters would be likely to play down the hassles that she'd dealt with. Anyone except a friend, that was. Lee needed to find one of Kara's friends and get the real scoop. But who was a friend to the hotshot pilot with a sewer-mouth and a killer right-hook? No one came immediately to mind.
He knew Kara had friends. There had been a steady stream of heads which had popped through the doorway while she had slept in Life station, yet none of them had braved either her waking or his presence to say a word. But they'd come to check on her, and that had to mean they cared, didn't it? He wracked his mind to find anyone whom Kara tended to spend time with – outside of himself of course, and his father – on her off hours. The only he could recall was general card games in the ready room and eating at the big table with most of the shift in attendance. He couldn't think of anyone specific who appeared to mean anything to her beyond basic, borderline friendship.
He knew the difference, because other than Kara he really didn't have any friends of his own. You couldn't befriend those you were responsible for, and he supposed as Lead Pilot/Deputy CAG she had those same issues that he and his father did. But she hadn't always been in a leadership position, and she had to have some friends remaining from her two years aboard prior to the war. His father had Tigh as a sounding board and confidant, and Lee himself had Kara. That left Kara with… well, with him. And Lee wasn't one to show up often in squadron quarters, because he didn't want his pilots to feel they were being watched. He wanted them to have his trust, and know they had it. It was one way he could encourage them without words. His father had taught him as much, and all the leadership manuals at the academy had warned against micro-management and destroying morale with an overbearing presence. But wasn't it worse to not know what your men were doing to one another when your back was turned?
"You're awake."
Lee turned his head to see Colonel Tigh walking into the brig. Great, he thought. Just what he really needed. Lee was here for defending the one person that Tigh couldn't stand – although why this was so, Lee couldn't fathom. Kara had saved all their asses more than once, and as a former Viper pilot himself, Lee would have thought that Tigh could at least respect her skill if not enjoy her personality.
"For the moment," Lee admitted. "How are things upstairs?"
"Quiet for a change," Tigh answered, taking the chair that Kara had used and tilting it back on its legs. Lee suppressed a smile at the action. "Your dad just came on duty, and he asked me to look in on you; see if you need anything."
"A pass out of here," Lee quipped. "Or a damned good lawyer."
"There won't be any formal charges," the colonel said softly. "It's your first fight, you were provoked, and Aames spends more time here than your girlfriend does."
Lee's head snapped sideways at that, giving the older man a glare that clearly said "hands off."
"You know what I mean," the officer clarified. "Thrace is disrespectful and a loose canon, but Aames is an idiot. Standing side by side, it's pretty clear who belongs behind bars. She'll smack someone if she's provoked," he added as he ran fingers across his face as though he could still feel the shiner she'd given him months before, "But she doesn't go after the CAG when he's been out of Life Station less than a day. So the question may be whether you want to press charges against him."
Lee's eyebrows lifted in surprise, and it must have looked damned funny if Tigh's laughter was any indication. "I'm not kidding," the man assured him. "He attacked a superior officer in his direct line of command, and he did it in front of witnesses who swear you told him to stay down."
"That was after I'd floored him the first time," Lee mumbled. "I threw the first punch."
"From what I hear it was for a good reason," Tigh said with a shrug. "He was insubordinate in front of half the squad. You couldn't just stand there and take it, and calling the marines in wouldn't have done a thing for your standing with the squad. You handled it like a man, and then you took the consequences as they were given. From what I see, that's making the best of a shitty situation."
Lee hadn't thought of it that way; at all.
"You probably also kept your deputy out of this place," Tigh added as he glanced around the room and placed one foot on the cell bars to balance himself in the tilted chair. "She's notorious for hitting first and asking questions later, and her record wouldn't have been so easy to justify as yours."
"The insults were against her," Lee said softly. "It would have been her right
to hit him more than it was mine."
Tigh shrugged. "Maybe, but it would have gotten her into a hell of a lot of trouble. She has a history of beating on those around her; you don't."
"Why?" Lee wondered aloud.
Tigh gave him a quizzical look "Why what?"
"Why does she beat on those around her? I've never seen her hit anyone without provocation. From the way I hear it, even the day that she hit you a table had already been thrown at her."
"I wasn't at my best," Tight admitted. "And she can do some baiting of her own when she has the opportunity."
Lee grinned. "She has a knack for hitting where it hurts the most, whether she lifts a hand against you or not."
"And you put up with this why?" Tigh asked. "I know your father has a blind spot with her, but I always thought you were the practical one."
Lee's smile softened. "She may make life a living hell on occasion, but she'll also go to the wall for you if you deserve it. She's the best pilot I've ever seen, and she… puts up with me. It's not a small task. After we lost Zak, I was at my absolute worst – so bad that everyone stayed clear. She showed up on my doorstep with home-baked cookies and a deck of cards. Then she lost game after game until I was sick from the cookies and so tired that I could sleep for the first time in a week. Her heart's as strong as her temper; she just doesn't always show it."
"Sounds like a different woman from the bitch who threw a genuine apology in my face and told me I was a weak drunk."
Lee looked at him for a moment. "Were you?"
For just a moment, Tigh looked like he'd take offense at the comment. Lee really didn't care. Kara would defend him to the grave; he could do no less for her.
"Maybe I was," the colonel admitted. "But that doesn't make it a lieutenant's place to point it out."
"I don't care if she's an ensign," Lee offered. "She has a right to be honest. Was it on the record?"
Tigh looked away. "No."
"Then no harm was done," Lee said with another shrug. "Except maybe to your pride, and if what she said was the truth it probably got you thinking. If she'd made the accusation official, you would have been answering charges yourself. And as a subordinate, it would be well within her rights to do so."
"Perspective is a wonderful thing," Tigh returned, settling the chair back down onto all four legs and putting his feet on the floor. "I hope you remember that when you're called to answer the charges. There won't be a court-martial, but it's just possible we'll have to do a board of inquiry. I don't expect you to be found guilty of any more than inappropriate discipline within the ranks. You'll get a slap on the wrist, if that. Your career would be pretty much intact, even if you father wasn't running the fleet."
"That's reassuring," Lee admitted, although if the truth were known he might prefer a couple of weeks in a quiet brig rather than a chaotic office.
Kara showed up shortly after Tigh had left, and Lee was still awake and pondering the discussion. It was amazing what you could learn from someone when you read between the lines. Unlike what he'd previously believed, Lee now didn't think that Tigh hated Kara; he just resented that she spoke her mind. It was inconvenient on occasion, but rarely truly malicious.
"You are sprung!" Kara announced lightly as she rounded the hatchway to his cell. "I've already given the paperwork to the guard." She hadn't sounded this excited in months.
"How'd you swing that?" Lee asked as he heard the distinctive pop of the cell release.
"Well, Aames isn't pressing charges, to begin with," she said as she pulled the door open and stepped inside rather than waiting for him to walk out. "In fact, someone has been dropping hints that you might be pressing charges against him for verbal assault as well as insubordination. I think that's why he's still malingering in Life Station," she told him with a grin. "He's afraid that if they put him down here you'll beat the stuffing out of him again."
Lee just shook his head, accepting the quick hug Kara offered without considering how out of character it was for her. "So, what happens next? Hearing? Inquiry?"
"For now, you go back to quarters. I am your official escort," she said with a formal bow that was almost comical. "And as your friend I have to say that you're are frakking lucky that this went the way it did. If it had been me, I'd be looking at a court martial."
"Yeah, well you do this on a weekly basis," he told her dryly, but still he reached for her shoulder as she preceded him from the cell.
"Not anymore," she disagreed, but the humor was still in her voice and her expression. She was loving this, although he couldn't fathom why. He would have thought the incarceration would have been more amusing to her than the release and dropping of charges. "I may take a while to learn lessons, but once I do they stick like glue. Now I don't hit anyone in the presence of witnesses," she informed him slyly. "And I do it hard enough that they don't dare say who did it."
"You're a brat," he remarked as he gave her shoulder a squeeze before releasing it to accept the salute from the guard posted at the brig entrance. It seemed ironic, really. After all, he was still in some level of trouble – whatever Kara might tell him otherwise – and yet the guard was initiating the salute. The inconsistencies of military life had never seemed so erratic to Lee as they did at that moment.
But Lee was definitely pleased to see some of the bounce back in Kara's step as she walked before him in the hallway. He also appreciated the view he got of her flight suit as she walked up the stairs to the next level. He shook his head to clear it. This was Kara, for Lord's sake. He needed to get his head back on straight.
"You're moving easier," he remarked as he came up to walk along side her in the corridor. "Some of the stiffness easing up?"
She nodded. "The more I move, the easier it is. I thought about trying to get in a run, but I'm pretty sure that would be overdoing it."
"No doubt," he told her with a grin. "I'd offer to walk with you though, if I wasn't stuck in quarters."
"So long as you're escorted, you're legal," she told him with a wink. "And as the highest ranking pilot who isn't under house arrest, I can definitely say that walking is a possibility. At least for today and tomorrow, anyway. After that, if Salik gives the good word, I'll be back on duty."
"If you aren't on duty, why the flight suit?" he asked.
"Laundry day," she said with a shrug. "So anyway, I should be back in the air within the week."
"Hopefully we'll have this cleared up by then," Lee muttered.
"Hopefully," she agreed.
Lee's office was on command level, just down from his father's and within screaming distance of CIC. It had been designed that way for a reason. If there were to be an emergency requiring his presence, the last thing he would have needed to do was run through the ship from Pilots' quarters. When they arrived at the office, Kara punched in the code and Lee had to grin; she definitely had remembered it.
Choosing the code had not been a whim. It was a number that he'd been fairly sure his father remembered, and one he knew for a fact that Kara did. Privacy was one thing, but in the event that he needed something, he wanted to be able to have someone get it without necessarily finding him to gain access. If that ever occurred, he'd have to change it for security purposes, but so far the "lucky number" had held.
Lee had half-expected Kara to drop him at his door and take off, but instead she followed him into the office, which doubled as a sleeping quarters. The bed was recessed, hidden so that if you weren't looking you couldn't see it, and that gave some illusion of privacy. It was a small thing, but something Lee was grateful for. He hadn't made his bed the morning before their mission, and he hadn't taken time when he'd come back long enough to shower.
"Home sweet home," Lee mumbled as Kara made herself at home on the corner of his desk. He had taken to leaving that one corner free, as it seemed to be a favorite perch of hers, and he hated having his forms scattered. He took a seat behind the desk, gave a sigh of relief, and closed his eyes to take just one moment to feel as though his world was back on its axis. It was an illusion, of course. He was still in trouble, his emotions were still a wreck, and there were still far too many issues unresolved to allow his mind to rest.
As if on cue, Kara began, "Lee, now that we're alone, we really need to talk."
Great, Lee thought, he four most fatal words in the history of language. Whether delivered by his parents, his friends, his boss, or his girlfriend, "we need to talk" was never a good thing. Usually it resulted in his embarrassment, someone in tears, and him feeling guilty as hell.
"About what," he hedged, not opening his eyes to look at Kara.
"You know better," she told him, and her voice was closer than his desk, although he hadn't heard her body shift. In fact, her voice was coming from directly above him, so he could do no less than open his eyes to meet a searching hazel gaze. "You know exactly what I'm talking about," she informed him.
One rule he remembered from basic law was that you never admitted to anything until you were sure what you were being accused of. Innocence, while not likely to keep him out of this indefinitely, was his best course of action at the moment. "No, I really don't," he denied. "What do we need to talk about?" There. That sounded calm enough.
She shook her head, using one foot to reach between his legs and snag a leg of his rolling desk chair. She shifted, moving him and the chair both to the side, and plopped her weight down on his lap. Anyone else he would have shoved off hard and fast, but this was Kara. She put one arm around his neck to keep herself balanced, and he felt more familiar in the position than he thought he had a right to feel. "You can't fight my battles for me," she said softly, almost a whisper. "And don't give me any shit about me being one of your troops and that you'd have done it for any one of us. I know better. You would have reprimanded, or threatened, or maybe called in the marines. But there's no way in hell you would have beat the crap out of someone for giving a hard time unless it had been directed at me. It has to stop."
As dressings-down got, this was a good one. Kara wasn't normally so wordy, and it took him a moment to sort through the explanations to the order beneath. "Yeah, it was because it was you, but not why you think."
"Enlighten me," she said simply.
"Kara…" He hadn't a clue how to go on.
"Lee, this could have gotten you court-martialed," she reminded him. "This isn't a game. You're in a position of authority, and I know how seriously you take that. Hell, you make me insane with how seriously you take it. This wasn't you, and I need to know what the hell happened."
"I let you fight your own battles," he began. "Usually. But this one was below the belt. You were tired and I'd been worried, so when he… I just wanted to shut him up. I know that's a lousy excuse, but it's all I've got."
Kara rested a soft cheek against his forehead. "I'm a big girl," she said, again in that soft voice which he felt more than heard. "If you start taking on the world for me, what will happen when you're not there? They have to know that I can hold my own with them. I've been proving it for two and a half years, Lee, and there's no reason for them to start doubting it now. You need to let me take care of myself."
"I do," he argued. "Usually."
She shook her head, rubbing blond bangs up against his skin. "In one ear and out the other," she muttered. "Usually doesn't cut it. Always. Do you understand that? I have to command these turkeys in the air, and sometimes on the ship as well. I can't do my job if they're looking around for my big, strong defender."
"That isn't how it was," he argued, anger finally beginning to blossom. He hadn't been undermining anything; he'd been dealing with an unacceptable situation of which Kara had been on the receiving end.
"Then how was it?" she asked, and there was anger in her voice as well. Great. Just what he needed; a fight with Kara would definitely earn him a court-martial.
"Kara, you looked like crap. You'd been out for days, and there were times I…" He took a breath before continuing. "There were times I wasn't sure you were going to wake up. And then as soon as you did, everyone started acting like nothing had ever happened, that you weren't even tired, and you were ready to tackle the world. Kara, I stepped in because you were too damned tired to do it for yourself, and it had to be done."
She pulled back from him, facing him directly, eye to eye in this position with her sitting on his lap and less than two inches between their faces. "It had to be done?" she asked.
He nodded, his throat too dry for words. The motion almost knocked their foreheads together because they were so close.
"Why?"
One word. Why? Why couldn't he have left well enough alone. Why couldn't he see her as the little sister she'd always been? Why hadn't he just left her there in quarters to get her stuff taken care of and stayed out of the line of fire? Why was it so damned hard to breathe?
"Because you matter," he finally said, and it was as close to the truth as he was willing to go. He didn't have a clue what he was feeling, only that he needed to protect this one woman, come what may, and keep her safe and with him. Friends in life were too precious and too rare, and one such as Kara didn't come along every day. "I almost lost you," he told he gently. "Yeah, I got a little overprotective. Doesn't a friend have that right?"
"A friend?" she asked, her eyes seeming to change color as he watched them, brown fading from the hazel to leave a near-dazzling green.
"My best friend," he assured her.
And then Lee Adama did the unthinkable. He leaned slightly forward, tightened his hold on Kara, and pressed his lips to hers.