Chapter Five

"Sometimes I wonder
Why we're always coming down
And why we need to touch the ground
And why I didn't keep on heading
right on up to heaven
I miss my sky."

Heather Nova, "I miss my Sky (Amelia Earhardt's Last Days)"

Life Station

Kara had been lying here for three days now, and she had not moved an inch. She just lied there, staring at the white wall opposite to her bed, waiting for the time to go by and the pain to go away and the feeling of emotional numbness to subside. Sometimes she closed her eyes and managed to dose off or even sleep, but in the end nothing could end the overwhelming exhaustion she had been feeling for three days now.

Suddenly she heard a rapping sound. She blinked. There, another time. Where... Oh right, someone was knocking on her door. She had been given one of the sparse single room on Life Station because the doctors believed she needed to be alone to recover. To tell the truth, she wouldn't have cared if she had been in a room with a hundred people. There would have been nothing that could have waken her from her shell-shocked state.

Another knock. Go away., a thought bubbled up lazily onto the surface of her consciousness. But to her dismay, the door seemed to open, and from the sound of it someone was coming into the room. It couldn't be one of the med-techs bringing her food or taking a look if she was still in the same state because they never knocked before they came in, she thought slightly annoyed at the med-techs.

The foot-steps were shuffling a bit, as if the one they belonged to was weakened or old, and they were coming nearer. Then they stopped. Then she heard a soft sound indicating that something was wheeled over to her bedside. And then came a short sigh indicating that someone was having difficulties with sitting down. She thought she recognized the voice, but she choose not to follow that train of thought.

For a while the room was silent, apart from the two breathing rhythms sounding unnatural loud in the clean and sterile environment. Suddenly she heard her visitor clear his throat to start a conversation. Three times, actually.

"Kara… do you… want to talk?" Ah. Commander Adama. So she had known the voice. Do I look like it?, she thought a little annoyed, but didn't say anything. But Adama obviously wasn't prone on giving up easily. "If it means anything to you, Lee has been in the brig for three days now. And he isn't talking, either." To that Kara just shrugged mentally, trying to hold the confusing and much to intense emotions that were connected to the name "Lee" in her mind at bay.

For a while, the room was silent again. Then Adama spoke up again: "Look, Kara… You will both not get your flight status back if you're not talking to us. Lee, because he won't get out of the brig by throwing everyone dark looks and brooding and you, because you won't get out of Life Station as long as you're shutting everyone out. Is this really what you want? Lying around on Life Station? You can have that, but then you can forget about flying forever. Did that get through your thick skull?" For a moment she tried to be indifferent to that. She even went as far as thinking What's it to me if Lee's sulking in the brig?, and You can try the lecturing father routine as much as you want, I won't fall for that., but in the end just one sentence stuck: "You can have that, but then you can forget about flying forever."

Forgetting about flying. Forever. Flying. Never again. Never ever. Something inside her stirred. It stirred and it lifted its head a little disoriented and suddenly it was out in the open and seething hot. Kara had been grounded for three days now, and suddenly she felt like she would suffocate in the narrow room without windows. Suddenly all the feelings that had been silent under the sheet of ice that had been created by humiliation, self-loathing and shock seemed to be heating up and rapidly producing cracks in the cool surface.

The only outward sign of the storm that had broken lose inside her was her breath hitching in her throat. But in her head everything tumbled down in a messy heap. She was furiously mad at him. She felt like she deserved being beaten up. She wanted to give the little brat a thorough thrashing up herself. She wanted to give herself a good thrashing up for behaving like a little scared girl. She wished she could forget about the whole incident. She wished she was already starting to make excuses for Lee. She wished nothing of this had ever happened. She… she missed her sky.

With a sigh she turned around, saying: "Well…"

The brig

Three days they had tried to break through Lee's "Don't talk to me, don't try to make me talk, don't even look at me."-routine, but not even Tigh's taunting had brought a satisfying reaction. Strangely enough Tigh had refrained from any further insults on Kara's expenses but had concentrated more on pointing out Lee's inadequacy at fulfilling his duties as the CAG or at flying or at commanding. Or even at playing cards. Nothing of this could coax anything out of Lee because he just felt it was true.

He had been neglecting his CAG duties now for an awful lot of time. He was not as good as Kara at flying. He was having troubles with upholding discipline among his people. And he was often enough having terribly bad luck at cards. But what was more important: He was a terrible friend. Lee just felt relieved that Tigh didn't have that much inside in his personal life that he fully comprehended what a loser at interpersonal relationships Lee felt he was. He had managed to drive away the one person that mattered more than anything else to him so far away from him that could be in another universe for all he knew. It was really just luck that Tigh had no clue that Lee felt like the universe biggest dumbass in the universe.

"Good morning, Captain. I take it you still have no intention as to stop staring at me and actually start talking?" Lee just gave him a cold look. "I thought so. Well, I guess then it won't bother you if we take you completely off the roster for an infinite amount of time. Because, if it still hasn't got through to you, you won't get out of here if you don't tell me why in hell you did such a frakking stupid thing as to nearly beat your 2IC to pulp. No telling, no flying. You got that?"

He was about to just stare at the Colonel or at least just nod when the significance of the words sank in fully. No. Flying. For an infinite time. Well, not quite infinite. He just had to talk about the whole damn, stupid affair, and maybe he would be released from the brig and able to resume his CAG duties. He leant back his head and closed his eyes, trying to ignore Tigh's unnerving impatient tapping fingers on the wall beside him. If he talked it meant that he had to tell someone – most probably Tigh – about how he felt after Kara had slept with Baltar, how he felt after she had taken the Raider to Caprica, how he felt when his father had been shot. And those were things he definitely didn't want to discuss with Tigh. But if he kept on closing himself off he would be sitting here until the end of all times. Lee had the distinct feeling that not even another Cylon attack would get him released.

Which meant exactly what the Colonel had told him: He wouldn't be flying for maybe a long time. And truth to be told, Lee missed flying. He missed being out in the open, having his Viper as his only companion. Well, his Viper and Kara, actually. Flying with Kara was like… flying with his other half. At the Academy, it had been rumored that Kara and Lee had had some kind of telepathic connection because when they had flown together, they had been in complete synch. They didn't even need to talk much during flying, they just knew what the other would do and knew exactly how to react to it. Gods, he missed it all so much. He missed his sky.

"Well, I take that as a yes, so we have a deal. You keep playing the mute, I keep you off the roster. If you would excuse me now…"

"No… wait, sir. I just… Could I talk to Commander Adama?"

To his surprise, the Colonel hesitated only a few before he finally gave in grudgingly. "All right. I'll call him."

A/N: Look, sir, a plot! Well, kind of, at least. About time Lee and Kara wake up from their respective stupors :p Anyway, I do seem the quote Heather Nova quite a lot, I noticed. But I can't help myself, her songs are just such a good source for quotes. Anyway, on to my reviewers:

crookedpen - Yeah, I still can't quite believe that myself :S But I guess all the self-reproaches and the self-loathing is a punishment harsh enough...

Kou Shun'u - Well, I think he's gonna get to know some of them in the near future. Wonder how he's gonna take them...

adafrog - Oi, thanks for the hug blushes I hope, you liked this chapter since I'm not quite satisfied with way it went but there's a lot more to come for them...

And another special thanks, this time to the wonderful novalee who's been sharing my addiction to fanfiction for an eternity now (all right, actually it's been like two or three years, but it sure feels like an eternity!) and has been helping me out with my terrible grammar and some spelling difficulties, not only with this fic, but in general, and I think for that she deserve some huge thanks (although she herself was sasking me if I wanted to threaten her when I said I would put her into my A/N for helping me...). Here, nova, big chocolate chip cookie, just for you! throws cookie in nova's direction