Chapter Four

"How does it feel to get kicked when you're down and out?
I said, how does it feel to get pushed off the edge and just fall,
fall to the ground?"

Pain, "Injected Paradise"

The brig

The Colonel had been absent now for quite some time. Time in which Lee had had enough leisure to think. Which he absolutely didn't want to do. Because then he would feel like being burned by the hot waves of shame and remorse and disgust that seethed through his veins.

He squeezed his eyes shut and hugged himself tight as the sheer immensity of what he had done made its final impact on him. What in the name of the gods had driven him to such an insane thing? How could he do this to his second-in-command, his brother's fiancé, his best friend? He shook his head. She wasn't only this, she was… she was… the most important person in his life. Not even his father was more important since the old man had always kept e distance between them, however small it was.

But Kara… Kara had been under his skin right from the first moment he had seen her. She had not been shy but the complete opposite. Granted, the first contact they had had, had been her fist cracking connecting with his nose and they had had quite some rocky months after that but it had never stopped them from being friends in the end.

And it hadn't stopped him from developing deeper feelings than just friendship for her in the course of the years. He still regretted not telling her, first out of shyness and the fear of being rejected, then because of regulations and his frakking need to cling to them, no matter what.

When Zak and Kara had finally announced their engagement, Lee had tried to get over her, forget her, at least get over the feelings of raging jealousy he felt every time he say Kara and Zak exchange public displays of affection. And being Kara and Zak they did that a lot. But Lee had kept it all to himself, wishing them luck, playing the happy big brother.

And then Zak had died, and amidst the raw pain of losing his younger brother, the small and delicate flower of hope had started to bloom. Maybe, he had hoped, maybe, when the worst mourning was over, and Kara would start moving on… maybe she would move on to him.

Lee whimpered almost without sound. He knew it had been wrong, and he still felt deeply ashamed of such a selfish thought. But he kept that to himself, too, trying not to push her or put pressure on her. Which had – ultimately – resulted in Kara jumping into bed with another men. Oh yes, she had done this quite some times since Zak's death, but somehow it had never bothered him as much as this escapade. Maybe because they had all been faceless, far away from him. But most probably because in the end she always came back to him. When those guys were water under the bridge he still had her to play cards with, spar with, talk with. And because he hadn't felt such a tension between them, such a promise of things to come.

For the first time in his time knowing Kara, Lee had felt like he could finally make a move. He had had even a plan, a schedule. Turned out that Kara had other plans, another schedule. One that was a little more fast-paced than his. Could it be… that she was just fed up with waiting for you to make your move?, a little voice in the back of his mind asked, but he tried to ignore it. Listening to it would mean that he had had a real chance to finally get what he had wanted for years now and that he had let it escape again. And this time… this time there would be no other time.

Yes, because you made pretty sure of that, the treacherous voice whispered. He groaned. Even after her jumping to bed with Baltar and leaving for a stupid suicide mission, there would have still been a chance of mending what was broken. Now… how could he look her into the eye ever again? How could she even be on the same ship with him?

Yes, they had had their rows in the past, even with erupting into full blown fist fights, but they had never hurt the other one when he or she was helpless. They had only used physical violence in an amount they somehow knew the other could sustain. They had trusted each other about this. And now he had gone and broken that trust. Why, why, why hadn't he stopped when he had seen that she wouldn't fight back? And why in hell hadn't she fought back? This wasn't Kara, and if he hadn't been blinded by the red haze of bottled up frustration, jealousy and anger, he would have seen it.

Lee buried his face even deeper in his arms. He had always taken pride in being so much in control of himself, so much able to keep to himself what was bothering and functioning even if he absolutely didn't feel like working on the inside. Once Kara had told him in her unique way that he was doing himself and others no favor by keeping everything to himself. One day, she had said, one day all of this would make him explode, and then everyone in his vicinity was at the mercy of the gods. The cruelty of the irony that in the end it was her who needed the mercy of the gods was almost unbearable.

How could she ever forgive him such a failure of self-control? How could he even dare to ask for forgiveness when he clearly didn't deserve it? In that very moment Lee wished it had been him Boomer had shot and not his father. Then he would have never had the strength to assault Kara like that. He would have been bound to bed on Life Station, with enough time and rest on his hand to listen to Kara and come to terms with everything. But…

"Still feeling sorry for ourselves, are we, Captain?", the taunting voice of Colonel Tigh broke into his reverie, and somehow Lee was even grateful for that. He had been only one step away from breaking down into a crying heep.

Life Station

"How is she?", the elder Adama asked the doctor who had been assigned to Starbuck.

The doctor cleared his throat before answering and said: "Well, stable and conscious, Sir."

Adama's face lit up briefly. "Can I see her?"

Clearing his throat again, the doctor said in a kind of cautious voice: "Uh… no, Sir. She said she doesn't want to see anyone, and considering the… circumstances that led to her current predicament I would strongly advice to keep to that." Adama wanted to answer something, but thought better of it in the last moment. From what Agathon and Tigh had related to him, obviously Lee had lost it and had beaten Kara nearly unconscious.

Absentmindedly Adama told the doctor his thanks and leant back into his pillow. This wasn't what I meant with "Stop sulking.", Lee., he thought, feeling incredibly old and tired. He blamed it all on not yet being fully recovered, although he knew full well that to some extent his tiredness had nothing to do with it. How could this have happened? How could no one have seen that Lee was a lose canon? And how could Lee do something like this to Kara Thrace?

Although Caroline and Lee both had accused him each in their own way of being uninterested in their lives on Caprica, he had very well known that Lee treasured no one else as much as Kara, even more than his mother or brother. And certainly more than his father. But Adama knew that this wasn't about him, but about Kara, and that was what he had to worry about. From what Tigh had told him about from his first visit to the brig, Lee still seemed to care about her deeply, making him wonder all the more what had driven his son to assault her with so much force that they needed to go into surgery.

Suddenly something Kara once had said about Lee came to his mind. "He's like a crate full of explosives. One spark at wrong time and boom, everything goes up in flames. Really, I don't want to be around when that happens.", and then she had laughed her usual full laughter, dismissing the thought immediately. Who would have thought that in the end it was her who had to take the full brunt of an exploding Lee?

Granted, the possibility actually was pretty high, since after the Holocaust and Lee being made CAG of the Galactica, Lee and Kara had spent a tremendous amount of time together, and at the same time the strain on Lee had risen exponentially. They all should have seen that Lee needed a break, most of all after the events on Colonial Day.

Adama shook his head and closed his eyes. He knew that something had happened between Baltar and Kara, but he didn't know the extend of it. Judging by Lee's reaction earlier that day it must have been more than just talking. And it must have made quite an impact on Lee. Well… who would have thought that Lee would be prone to let himself be controlled by something as mundane as jealousy? A sigh escaped Adama's throat. There was still so much he didn't know about his son and Kara, and he wished he had known before because maybe he would have been able to see through it all…

No, he decided. What Lee didn't want people to know he didn't tell them. And in some way, Kara was the same. Where Lee just was silent about it, Kara would brush it off gruffly or laugh it off, but they both kept a lot of things from others. And obviously from each other, too.

He sighed again. So much broken, so much needing to be mended. And so little time for it. The tiredness from earlier now came back with a vengeance, and the last thing he thought before drifting of again was that he hoped, Kara and Lee would be able to sort through all their issues before their time was cut short by another Cylon attack.

A/N: WHEEEE, I'm on a roll, people! Two chapters in two days is almost a new record! And of course thank you for all the great reviews in just one day (this is a new record).

Aleja21 - Thanks for staying with the story, even if you were shocked by the last chapter (well, I was certainly shocked by it :S).

Renni - Surprise, surprise, a new chapter. But don't get used to regular daily up-dates ;)

Kou Shun'u - Yes, since Tigh didn't seem to be a great fan of Lee's actions in the last two or three episodes of the first season (please remember that this is kinda like flying blindsided for me since BSG 2003 still hasn't found its way over the Atlantic to us Germans), I figured he'd be delighted with Lee spending a little more time in hack. And of course there's the need to find out why Lee lost it like this, and obviously Tigh is the "bad cop"-part, if you get my meaning.

Kathea - Errr, right, the typos... I'm really sorry about them (yes, I do have perfectionist tendencies...), but it seemes that I'm always writing my chapters in the dead of the night, after particularly long and exhausting days... anyway, thanks for confirming Tigh's "in-characterness" :)

Pronger44 - I see you fully got what I was aiming at. Good to know because it means that I'm obviously able to get my point around to my readers. I hope that this chapter cleared it up even a bit better. And I hope I get away from the contemplative writing and start getting back to the actual plot as soon as possible :p

daphne-peneia - Oi, a fellow left-wing Middle-European :D "Völker, hört die Signale! Die Internationale erkämpft das Menschenrecht..." All right, I'm being really silly at the moment, and I'll just blame it on the hours at which I'm writing this...

adafrog - Well, I'm interested, too, in which directions my plot-bunnies will take my creation ;)

And last but not least: Mighty thanks to the amazing Persephone who looked through her CD collection in the middle of the night to provide me with a dearly needed song quote for the start of the chapter. I think, she found just the right one, and I'd really like to thank her for that. Without her, the chapter wouldn't have been brought online today.