Z-minus 4 months
Lee looked up from the reports he was working on at the desk in his and Kara's quarters when the hatch opened and she came inside. He knew better than to ask how her shift had gone – she was never in a good mood after a day in the CIC.
"You been down on deck recently?" Lee asked. Kara shot him a glare as she sat on their bed.
"Why would I be on deck?"
"To check the schedule? You've got a shuttle flight tomorrow."
She raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really? Since when?"
"Since today. Figured it might help keep your sanity in check." He wasn't surprised when he got hit in the back of the head with a pillow. It was a better alternative than getting hit with her fist, so he didn't say a word.
By the next morning, though, he was wondering if the flight was really going to help. "Frak!" he heard Kara exclaim as she was getting dressed. He poked his head out of the bathroom, his toothbrush between his teeth.
"What?" She turned around to display the fact that she couldn't get her flight suit to fasten around the little bump of her stomach. Lee couldn't help but grin.
"Oh, this is funny?" she asked.
"No," he was smart enough to say as he tried to wipe the smirk off his face. "Wear my suit; I think it's a size bigger than yours." With a loud sigh, she went to try it on. Lee finished brushing his teeth and shaving, and then went to check on her. "Well?" he asked as he came out of the bathroom.
"Barely," she replied. The sight of Kara Thrace in front of a mirror, intently studying her reflection, was enough to make him laugh out loud. The only reason they even had a full-length mirror in their quarters was because Lee was in dress uniform more often than not and appearance counted for something up in the CIC. Kara rarely spent more than fifteen seconds combing her hair out, let alone primping in front of a mirror.
"Don't worry about it too much," he told her. "This is going to be your last flight for a few months."
Kara glared. "Thanks, Lee, that's really helpful."
He shrugged. "You know what the Doc said. Nothing after the five month mark."
"Yeah, and five down means there's still four to go."
"Ooh, you did pass basic math, Lieutenant."
"You better sleep with one eye open tonight, Sir." Lee laughed.
"Maybe I'll save myself the trouble and just switch to night shift for today. All right, anyway, I've got to get dressed and get to the CIC, and you've gotta get to the shuttle bay. We'll meet up for dinner?"
"Sure."
Shuttles weren't Vipers – hell, they weren't even comparable to Raptors – but if you went long enough without flying something, as Kara had, you'd take what you could get. Adama needed to take an impromptu trip over to Colonial One, which is how Kara wound up with an unexpected flight on her hands. The commander wasn't actually supposed to be cleared to fly anything (despite a few random incidents where he'd gotten a Raptor off-ship before anyone could stop him), but Kara was more than happy to have him as an unofficial co-pilot.
Once they arrived on Colonial One, Kara had expected a couple hours of boredom while she waited for Adama and President Rawlings to finish, but she was pleasantly surprised to find that one of Galactica's PO-Seconds, Dualla, and one of Colonial One's political aids, Billy, were hanging around.
"We were on our way to lunch, Sir," Dualla told her. "You want to join us?"
"Is the food better than on Galactica?" Kara replied with a smile.
"Marginally," Billy said. They walked through the corridors to Colonial One's mess hall, with Billy and Dualla greeting several random inhabitants of the ship as they passed by.
"You're getting pretty popular over here, Petty Officer," Kara told her with a smile. Even with her dark completion, she could see the younger girl blush.
"Yes, Sir. I guess we're going back and forth pretty regularly."
They got trays of food and found a table to sit at that was off to the side. "How far along are you?" Billy somewhat shyly asked Kara, a finger pointed in the direction of her stomach.
"Wow, you mean there actually are people in the fleet who haven't heard the whole story?" Dualla laughed at that – the whole mess was common knowledge on Galactica, and it was easy to forget that the little bubble they lived in didn't extend to the rest of the fleet. "Five months," Kara answered Billy.
"You know if it's a boy or a girl?"
"No, we don't. I didn't want to know, but Lee does – we're still fighting it out."
"I think the Commander is on the CAG's side," Dualla told her.
"Don't I know it!"
"Do you have any preference?"
Kara shrugged. "I don't know. I'd have no idea what to do with a little girl."
Billy frowned. "You are a girl," he pointed out.
"Who gets thrown in the brig for fistfights, smokes stogies, would kill for a bottle of ambrosia, and hasn't worn a dress since she started primary school."
"Okay, point taken," he said with a laugh.
The flight back to Galactica was slightly longer than the trip out, simply because of the afternoon flight pattern around the fleet. "I thank you for chauffeuring an old man around for a day," Adama told Kara as they entered the landing pattern for Galactica.
"Trust me, I needed the air time," she replied. Adama smiled.
"Yes, that's what Lee said as well."
Kara rolled her eyes. "Did he put you up to this?"
Adama gave her a smile. "A meeting with President Rawlings needed to happen. I merely suggested that it take place on Colonial One instead of Galactica."
"I'm going to kill him…"
"He's just looking out for you, Kara. Underhanded or not, his plan did work."
"I don't want him doing any special favors."
"Who says it wasn't a favor for me? A rare afternoon with my daughter-in-law." She smiled.
"You're so full of it, Sir, that your eyes are brown." The sound of his laugher was only icing on the cake of a very nice afternoon.
Lee was also happy to see that his plan had indeed done the trick. He and Kara had a late dinner in the officer's mess, but afterwards, he still had to go finish the schedules for the following week. She wound up joining a few of the other pilots for a few card games.
"I'll see your five and raise you ten," Crashdown told her, and earned a laugh in response.
"You don't learn, do you?" she asked her fellow pilot. She'd been cleaning house the whole night, and while Ghost, Nightsky, and Jammer had learned when to fold, Crashdown kept coming back for more.
"Yeah, I'm out," Nightsky said. "You are glutton for punishment, man." Crashdown shrugged.
"You hear that?" Kara asked as a noise somewhere in the room caught her attention.
"Hear what?" Jammer asked. She held up a hand to silence him, getting up from the table. The room was dark, but once the light was behind her, her eyes adjusted, and she noticed a familiar figure huddled in the corner.
"Boxey, what are you doing here?" she asked the little boy. He sniffled – the sound she'd heard had obviously been him crying. "I'm out," Kara told the other officers as she left the table and went to sit with Boxey. He was quiet for a long minute, his tears slowly abating, and Kara just let him finish. "Tyrol must be worried about you," she finally said.
"I don't care. I'm not going home."
"Why not?" Another long silence.
"The paperwork came today," he finally said.
"What paperwork?"
"About my adoption. It's final. They never heard what happened; I haven't seen my court guardian since right after Sharon found out about the baby." Kara sighed; the civilian system was totally inept.
"Oh, Boxey…"
"We were supposed to be a family! Why do the Cylons keep ruining everything?"
"I don't know."
"I wanted to go tell her about the papers. Galen says that sometimes he can get her to act normal, and I know I could do it, too. But he won't let me see her."
"Did he tell you why?"
"He said she's really mean when she's not acting like herself…I guess I don't really want to see her like that. I just want things to be the way they used to be."
"I think everyone does, but I don't know if it's ever going to happen. You can't run away from Tyrol, though, you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because you're all he's got left. And he's all you've got left. You guys need each other…tell you what: you can stay here with us for a little while longer, and then I'll walk you home."
"Will you teach me how to play?" he asked, indicating the group still playing cards. The conversation Kara had had with Sharon a few months earlier popped into her head.
"How close are you to your thirteenth birthday?" she asked Boxey, even as she wondered why she was attempting to respect the wishes of a Cylon.
"Two weeks."
Kara smiled. "That's close enough. Come on."
Lee wasn't sure what woke him up in the middle of the night, but when his eyes opened, he noticed that the clock said it was about 0200 hours. And Kara wasn't in bed with him anymore.
"Kara?" he called, sitting up. The light on the desk flicked on, and he could see her curled up in a chair in the corner. "What's the matter; what are you doing?" She had her knees tucked to her chest, and he thought she looked a few shades paler than normal, but that might have just been the light.
"I'll be okay; go back to sleep," she said. Now she had his attention.
"What's wrong?" he asked, getting out of bed and going to her. He saw her swallow hard; she couldn't bring her eyes to meet his.
"I'm cramping."
"For how long?"
"Not that long." He saw her body shudder, saw her curl up a little tighter, and wondered how much she was downplaying this.
"Okay, I'm taking you down to the Life Station. Can you stand up?"
"I-I don't know." He knelt next to her, taking one of her arms and wrapping it over his shoulder.
"You've got two options," he told her. "Either put your feet down, or I'm carrying you." Kara winced, but got her feet on the floor, and Lee helped support her weight as she stood. "Okay?"
She nodded. "Yeah, I think so." They left their quarters, and Lee just hoped that it wouldn't be too late.
Kara couldn't think anyone who liked pain, but she put herself at the top of the list of people who didn't like it. She wasn't a fan of needles, either, and that included IVs, but she'd been stuck with both since arriving at the Life Station. And as much as she hated the IV, it had made the pain go away, so she couldn't complain. The drugs they were pumping her full of had left her nauseous, but at least she and the baby were going to be okay.
It was far too easy for her to imagine how differently things could have gone that night. Despite her aversion to pain, Major Cottle seemed to think she had a pretty high tolerance for it. She hadn't even known how bad off she really was until the doctor got a look at her. Or maybe she had known, and just wouldn't let herself admit it. In either case, she'd come dangerously close to delivering her baby that night, and it would have been far too early for it to survive.
"How are you feeling?" Cottle asked as he stopped by to check on her. It was nearing morning, and Kara was pretty sure that Lee had early shift, but he hadn't made a move to leave her yet.
"Better," she truthfully told the doctor.
"That's what we like to hear."
"What's the plan now?" Lee asked the Major.
"We'll keep you on the dyllium sulfide drip for probably another twenty-four hours."
"That means keeping me here for another day," Kara deduced. Cottle smiled.
"You do catch on quick, Lieutenant. We need to continually monitor you, make sure the contractions stay stopped and that you don't get dehydrated. I'll consider releasing you tomorrow morning but no earlier, understood?" She nodded. "You'll need to rest for several days, but you can do that in your quarters. Then we'll see how you're doing at that point, and talk about the long term plan. Is that workable?"
"Yeah."
"Good. I wanted to do a view-scan of the baby, and then I'll let you get some rest." One of the nurses brought over the machine. Cottle checked the baby's heartbeat first, as had been done several times throughout the night, and it only relieved them further to hear it was still at a normal rate. The truly reassuring thing, though, was to see the tiny life on the view-scan's monitor, little limbs flailing. "Everything looks fine," Cottle told them.
"Still don't want to know if it's a boy or a girl, huh?" Lee quietly asked Kara. She gave him a tired smile.
"I don't care anymore. I've had enough surprises for a while."
The doctor smiled. "Well in that case, he just did a back-flip."
"It's a boy?" Lee asked in surprise. Cottle smiled as he got everything put back away for the view-scanner.
"Mmm-hmm. Try to get some rest, Lieutenant."
Kara rolled her eyes at the sight of the grin on Lee's face. "You're going to be insufferable, aren't you?" she asked once the doctor and nurses had left.
"Dad'll be worse."
"Mmm. Go tell him then. And go to work, and let me get some sleep."
Lee laughed, leaning over to kiss her forehead. "All right, fine. You stay out of trouble."
"I'll do my best."
After heading back to their quarters to grab a shower and change into his uniform, Lee headed up to his office. He couldn't help stopping by his father's first, though.
"Got a minute?" he asked. Adama nodded.
"You look like hell. What's going on?"
"It's been a long night. Kara started to go into labor."
Adama looked up, alarmed. "She all right?"
"Yeah, the doctors got it stopped. They'll be fine, both her and our son."
Adama smiled. "A boy?"
"Uh-huh."
"Congratulations."
"We thought you'd be happy. Now all we've got to do is make it through the next four months."
"I'll stop in and visit Kara later."
"I'm sure she'd appreciate it. She's probably going to be sleeping a lot, but other than that, she's gonna get bored out of her mind."
"You couldn't get anyone to cover your shift?"
"I didn't try. I've been with her all night, and you know how much she loves people hovering around her." That got a smile.
"True."
"I ought to go; I just wanted to let you know what was going on."
"Thank you, Lee," Adama told him. He nodded, and shut the hatch behind him.
The Commander knew he wouldn't be able to have a very productive day until he saw his daughter-in-law. The first time there was a lull in the CIC, he headed down to the Life Station. It was hard for him to believe that the previous day he and Kara been flying together, and now she was confined to the ship's sickbay. More proof that life could change in the blink of an eye, and there seemed to be two steps back for every one forward.
"What do you hear, Starbuck?" Adama asked Kara as he moved to stand beside her bed. She smiled.
"Nothing but the rain, Sir. Lee saw you already?"
"Mmm. I hear there will be blue ribbons around the celebratory stogies?"
"So they tell me. Just what I need, another Adama male to keep in line."
He laughed. "Indeed." Kara's smile dimmed.
"Actually, Sir…I had something I wanted to ask you. I haven't talked to Lee, yet, but I've been going over and over the idea in my head…"
"What?" There was a long pause.
"I want to name the baby Zak." Adama didn't respond. "There were a lot of things that were lost on the Colonies, but…I don't want him to be one of them. Knowing him – loving him – changed my life, and I don't think Lee and I would be where we are without him."
"Are you asking my permission, Kara?"
"Y-yeah, I guess I am. Do you think it's a good idea?"
Adama slowly nodded. "Zakary Adama…There'll be quite a story to be told when this little boy asks where his name came from."
"I know…And I'll tell him."
TBC…
