Title: Ritual
Author: Ysrith
Summary: Each night is a ritual, the prelude to battle.
Genre: Angst Pairing: Lee/Kara
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Unfortunately the characters in this do not belong to me. They belong to Ron Moore, Sci-fi and NBC.
Notes: Thanks to Widget and Hockeyvaughnfan for beta duties. This was originally posted as part of the Bad Cliché Ficathon on LJ. Blame MFC as she suggested the cliché and asked for the pairing.
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He lay beside her. He was beautiful but sometimes she could not bear to look at him. The hardship of the last few months had honed him. His body was hard, all softness gone now. His face was lined as well, hair longer, stubble on his cheeks most nights. He had changed in many other ways as well, but here in the dark, while he was sleeping, you could not tell. The taste of his mouth still lingered on her lips and Kara smiled. These days it was all they had left. A few hours stolen from the chaos. In a short while she would get up and go out to once again patrol and keep the fleet safe and Lee would go back to Colonial One.
Instead of Cylons he fought different battles, but no less fierce. Sometimes she would watch him, dealing with Roslin, Zarek and the others, and wonder at how he did it. He fought his battles well, just in a different way.
The Gods act in strange ways. They are often callous and harsh, brutal. How he landed his Viper that day no-one knew. Maybe Zeus was watching over his errant son's namesake, or maybe it was simple luck. But there is always a price to pay and Lee Adama would never fly a Viper again.
As they had lifted his broken body from the wreckage, Kara had felt fear and the sharp terrible pain of rage and grief, and it was Zac and her father all over again. She ran from the hanger deck, desperate to get away. It was Helo who had found her in the head, vomiting, and said nothing, just had held her as she shook and tears fell.
She never went to see Lee in sick-bay. Tigh called her a coward and she simply stared at him and said nothing. Bill Adama looked at her sadly, but did not press the matter. And Kara buried herself in her new role as CAG, and the Cylons kept attacking, and the politicians argued, and people died, and once on the Geminion Traveller twins were born, while Lee learned to walk again.
And then one night he came to her and everything changed. She was alone in the rec-room. She turned to see him watching her from the doorway. He leaned heavily on the crutches and she was struck suddenly by how fragile he looked, and months of fear and pain came rushing back, but this time her resolve broke and she was crying. He said nothing, just touched her face, long fingers on her cheeks, brushing away her tears and he kissed her.
That first night they simply lay in each others arms, and she woke to find him staring at her, and she suddenly realised that this was all they could hope for. Brief moments captured out of mayhem, and maybe, just maybe, it was enough. So she kissed him and it become more than that. And in the long nights that followed it became a ritual. After battle they would meet, and the touch, the taste and the feel of him would wash away the pain and the grief and the despair for a brief short while and in the morning they would both rise ready to face their enemies again.