Living in as close of quarters as the Galactica's crew did, it wasn't easy to get much privacy. Lee considered himself lucky – being CAG, he got his own room/office separated from the rest of the pilots' racks, and even though the sleeping area wasn't much bigger than a shoebox, it was still something that he didn't have to share.
There was a small box he kept under his bed, one of the few personal possessions he had left. On random nights, when his mind was too busy to let him sleep, he would pull it out and go through the contents. A couple pictures: him and his mother, him and Zak, the brothers and their father. It was always 'the boys' and Adama; Lee didn't remember much at all about his father from before Zak was born. He had always been shipboard, leaving Caroline Adama to deal with the house and their toddler son. Maybe, unconsciously, that was why he'd loved Zak so much – his little brother had made them a real family. By the time her second child had arrived, their mother had insisted that her husband stay planet-side for a year straight.
Lee hadn't had much time to think about his mother in the past few weeks. She was dead, just like everyone else on Caprica, and he hoped the nuclear blasts had been a quick surprise. Before the war, it had been far too long since he'd seen her – just like his father, Lee let his career sweep him away. His heart skipped a beat when he realized how difficult it was to pull up a memory of how she'd looked the last time he'd visited, and he took special care in putting his pictures of her aside.
Under the family pictures and other little tokens, like his Academy ring, was a pair of dog tags that had once belonged to Zak Adama. Lee didn't remember how they'd wound up in his possession. Once upon a time, he'd considered giving them to Kara, but hadn't been able to part with the plates of metal. He put his box down and considered the tags in his hand. They'd been scorched by the fire, but were more resilient than their original owner. Lee wasn't sure what he believed in anymore, but if there really were Gods and an afterlife, he hoped his brother was watching over him.
Kara wasn't having much luck getting to sleep, either. She'd been lying on her rack for nearly an hour, her mind racing faster than a Mark VII. She'd seen a lot of people die in the past few weeks, far too many people. Pilots that she played cards with on a regular basis, crewmen that kept her in the air, people that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that was just on Galactica. Usually she did her best to try not to think about what the last day on Caprica must have been like. So many men, women, and oh, Gods, the children…
Like Lee had said, only a miniscule fraction of humanity was left after that one absolutely horrific day, so why was her mind so consumed by the death of one of the things that had made it happen? Cylons were just machines – walking, talking, genocidal machines – but the image of seeing Leoben blown out the airlock was keeping her from getting some much-needed sleep.
"I know you, you're damaged. You were born to a woman who believed that suffering was good for the soul, so you suffered. Life is a testament to pain, injuries, accidents. Some inflicted upon others, some inflicted upon yourself. Surrounds you like a bubble."
Kara got out of bed, grabbing the cane that made walking a little easier and heading out of the bunkroom. She'd buy the fact that Leoben had heard her call sign over the wireless, and it was highly probable that all his talk about destinies had been just that – talk. But this…either she was a lot easier to read than she thought she was, or he somehow knew way more about her past than even the Adamas did.
Everyone knew she was an orphan, they just didn't know how she wound up that way, and she hadn't ever offered to share. She hadn't thought about her mother in years, her father in even longer. They'd begun fading from her memory long ago. Her mother hadn't actually wanted children, but her father had, and so there she was. It was too bad her father died before her third birthday. Kara only had once concrete memory of him: the smell of the stogies he used to like as she climbed on his lap for a story before bed. Her mother had never been the same after his passing, believed that her husband's death was a punishment. Sometimes it was her own fault, and sometimes it was Kara's. She still had a few scars leftover – some visible, some not – to prove it.
"What are you doing up this late, Lieutenant?" she was brought out of her thoughts by a familiar voice, and Lee fell into step beside her.
"Couldn't sleep," she replied. "What are you doing up, Captain?"
"Same." They continued a little further in silence, just comfortable with each other's presence.
"You up for a game of pyramid?" Kara asked, a grin crossing her face. Lee rolled his eyes.
"Why do you get such a thrill out of beating me when you've already said more than once that I'm the worst player you've ever seen?"
She shrugged. "I'm too exhausted for anything more than easy prey."
"Then go to sleep."
"Seems like that's easier said than done for both of us."
Lee sighed. "All right, one game."
They were still sitting together at a table in the mess hall, playing and talking, when the early shift pilots started trickling in to get breakfast.
There was nothing that Kara would have liked more than to make Lee's job of filling out the flight roster easier by adding herself back to the active duty list. The ship's doctor, however, didn't seem to share her eagerness. It was remarkable, according to him, what she'd been able to pull off in only a couple weeks, but she still wasn't up to 100, and he didn't want to risk anything happening if they were to put her in a fighter. More than once, she'd reminded him that she'd been able to fly her Raider home with her knee held together by tape, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. And as the days started to go by, she quickly went from anxious to annoyed.
"What the hell did the leg press do to you?" Lee asked as he found her in the training room, working the machine hard enough that the weights could be heard clanging in the corridor.
"Frak off," she shot back.
Normally, Lee would have chosen that moment as the time to find a more private location for their conversation. He didn't mind being the one she let steam off at, as long as she didn't hit him and there weren't any witnesses to cry insubordination. The two of them were already alone in the room, though; Kara had scared everyone else off. In fact, one of those guys she'd run out had been the one to tell Lee where he could find his lead pilot. And so now the fun began.
"Kara, you've got to give yourself time. Nobody said this was going to come easily or instantaneously."
"Easy for you to say – you've got a Viper patrol this afternoon."
"I'd give it to you if I could." That only earned him a glare.
"Do you realize that I have not gone this long without flying since I got my wings?"
"I can appreciate your cabin fever – "
"Cabin fever?" She got up, livid. "I went past cabin fever three days ago. At this point, I'm sorely tempted to take a Viper on a jaunt around the fleet, and it really doesn't matter whether or not they throw me in the brig as soon as I get back. It would be worth it."
"Do me a favor and don't give in to that urge." He noticed her fists clenching. "Hey, I'm just trying to watch out for you."
"Oh, gee, my very own prince."
"Look, Kara, it's not like my days are so great either, okay? Apparently two members of Deck Crew Four entered into a suicide pact together, and it was only by a stroke of luck that one of their other bunk mates found them in time. We've still got sixteen more fighters than healthy pilots, and are trying to figure out how to finish training the rest of your students in between all the shifts that everyone's already pulling. So you getting back in the cockpit would be just as good for my sanity as it would be for yours, but it doesn't look like that's going to be happening for another week or more."
"Frak that!" she told him. "I'm not waiting that long."
"You're waiting however long the doc says you're waiting. That should be common sense; do I need to make it an order as well, Lieutenant?" They were right in each other's faces; Lee was one of the last guys left on Galactica that wasn't afraid to go toe-to-toe with the infamous Starbuck.
"You're trying to get me to hit you, aren't you?" she asked through clenched teeth.
"You're not going to hit me."
"Keep talking, flyboy." Lee saw her arm start to move, and instantly grabbed her wrist to stop her. A jolt like an electric shock ran through both of them as their skin touched, and it was hard to tell which one was more surprised when their lips made contact a moment later. Underneath the shock, there was something about that kiss that was just so comforting, so…
Familiar, Kara realized. That was the word that was trying to evade her mind's grasp: familiar. And then it registered why. Oh, frak…
They both pulled back at the same moment, a couple quick steps putting even more distance between them. Their eyes were looking anywhere but each other, and the only thing Lee could think about was the fact that he'd just kissed his brother's fiancée. Yes, Zak was dead, but he was pretty sure that there was still some implicit rule somewhere against kissing your brother's girl.
Kara swallowed hard, reminding herself that it would be helpful to try and get her breathing under control before trying to speak. "That – " she finally managed to choke out. "T-that was…"
"Nothing," Lee answered for her. "I-it was a stupid, crazy – "
"Heat-of-the-moment thing?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Just a really…really stupid reaction. It doesn't mean anything, r-right?"
"Right," she automatically agreed.
"Right…I should get back to the deck; there was a lot of stuff going on…Do me a favor?"
"Mmm?"
"Stay out of trouble. You'll be on the roster as soon as the doc clears you, okay?"
"Fine." And so Lee beat a hasty retreat. Kara sat down on the machine that was behind her; her legs felt shaky, and it wasn't just from the exercise she'd done.
"I just kissed Lee Adama," she couldn't help but whisper aloud. There was a whole list of reasons why this was a very bad situation, and every single one of them was flying around in her head at FTL speeds. She knew that Lee had come up to the training room in order to help her get her head back on straight, but if anything, he'd just made it all worse.
TBC...
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