Chapter Six

"For every lover there's a piece of sky…"

Heather Nova, "Winter Blue"

"You bastard.", she said, trying to stare with malice at him.

Lee, at her bedside just couldn't fully hold back a smirk when he answered: "I'm fairly sure that I'm legitimate." Which earned him just another glare. Somehow he felt relieved. Glaring at least he knew. Glaring resembled more of the Kara Thrace he knew.

For a moment neither of them said anything, then Kara said: "What do you want, Adama?" He cleared his throat, opened his mouth… and tried again. In the end he needed three tries to finally get out: "I… I'm here to say I'm sorry, Kara."

One eyebrow in the pale face on the cushion was raised. "What else?" Lee tried to keep looking in her eyes, but the tired and slightly annoyed look she through him somehow forced him to take off his eyes.

He clasped his hands, looking at the wall opposite him. "I… um… I know… what I did was…"

"Inexcusable."

He closed his eyes at her quiet voice and his fingers were moving nervously. "Right." For what seemed like a painful eternity no one spoke. From her point on the cushion Kara watched Lee lose his composure. At first he just stared at the opposite wall, with his hands clasped tightly and fingers twitching. Then he hung his head. Then he unclasped his hands and put his face in them, rubbing his temples and his eyes by turns. At the end he put his head on his arms.

She closed her eyes. This wasn't how she had imagined it. She had thought she would be seething with rage when she was seeing him again. Or at least feeling angry. Just anything. But not feeling tired and exhausted. Granted, she had just woken up from a coma, and she hadn't been in her best form even before the Cylon attack. Kara opened her eyes and looked at him again. And she remembered something. "What did you say when I was still in coma?"

He looked up, confusion on his face. "What did I…"

"Say when I wasn't fully awake yet. You said something, I want to know what. That's easy, even for you, Adama."

For a moment his usual indignation at her insubordinate behavior was fleeting over his face but then it seemed as if he had himself back in control. "I… um… I… I can't…"

She frowned at him, and unconsciously her hand grabbed the sheet, holding it as tight as possible. "Tell me, Lee. You owe me that."

He looked at the wall again, racking his hair. "Actually I owe you a lot more." Surprisingly she was stunned by the quiet tone in which he uttered the sentence. Could it be that he was actually and really regretting what he had done?

She breathed in deeply. "Yes, you do. And I will remind you at every possible moment. But for now I just want to know what you could say to me when I had my eyes closed and can't say to me now." Was that a look of relief on his face? Was that even a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth? Now she did become agitated, if only a little. What was there to smile about? "Frak it, Lee…"

"Alright, I just… I need to get this right, okay?" She said nothing, just stared at him, willing him to finally look at her again. She wanted to look him into the eye, when he was saying whatever he wanted to say. After he cleared his throat for at least the third time he finally started. "I said that I was… beyond sorry. I know it's no use and it won't make it any better, but I can't tell you how often I went through hell and back when I was in hack. I… I didn't know how I could ever look you – or myself for that matter – into the eye after everything that happened."

Here he did look her in the eye, even if only for a fleeting moment, and she was surprised to see overwhelming remorse and pain in his eyes. But she didn't say anything, letting him talk instead. "I… I am… I am so sorry I couldn't hold on to my famous self-control. I know it's no excuse but I just… something inside me broke when you were not reacting. I was… I don't know… I just… In that moment I just felt it was beyond unfair that you were tired where there had been weeks of jealousy and pain and troubles behind me."

Jealousy? Her head came around in a small, jerking motion. He had felt jealousy? His eyes met her for another time, and as if he had read her thoughts in those mere milliseconds of eye-contact he continued his talk. "That's right, jealousy. When the whole ship was buzzing with the news about you and the Vice President… No, even before that. I know you won't believe me but I had been waiting for you the whole night after the dance at the reception. I had to get out of the room because if I had staid I would have… I…"

He stopped when he saw the disbelief in her eyes. And was somehow relieved when she tried to hit him on his arm, but failed because she was still too weak. "You frakking bastard. If you had just made your move then and there. You are such a coward!"

He ragged his hair. "Well, yes, I am. But you… you just… Look, Kara, you're still Zak's fiancé, and then there was the Vice President, interested in you. How could I be of any interest for you?"

She closed her eyes in frustration. "I'm not Zak's fiancé anymore. He's dead, Lee. I do miss him with every fiber of my heart, for every miserable day of my life, but he could never take your place, not even when he was still alive. You were just too blind to see that." She was arriving on a point where she didn't care anymore if she was ruining anything with what was practically a declaration of undying love in her case. She just didn't care because she felt there wasn't anything left that could be ruined.

To her surprise he said quietly: "Maybe. And maybe you were just too subtle for me to see."

She snorted a little. "Me? Too subtle? Only in your dreams, Adama." For a while all that could be heard was the gentle steady buzz of activity from outside the room until Kara spoke up again. "What do we do now, Lee?"

She opened her eyes again, when he said: "I… don't know. I'll keep on trying to make right what can't be made right ever again, and you'll have to endure all those attempts."

Kara closed her eyes again and said: "Yeah, maybe. Don't cherish the illusion that I'll eventually forgive you just one microsecond of what you've been doing to me in the barracks. But maybe I could at least try to. If I knew what in all heavens drove you to that, that is."

He could take a clue when he saw one. And that one had it labeled it all over itself in letters bigger than the Galactica. Lee coughed. "Right. You know… I… don't even know myself. I just… I was telling the truth when I felt angry at you for not reacting and fighting back. And I was scared. I was scared of you, and I was scared of the rage inside me. In that moment everything was just boiling up again. The jealousy and the pain and the tension and the pressure form everyone and just… everything."

Before she could say something he held up his hand, determined to get this over with once and for all. "I know that it sounds like "It's the others' fault, not mine!", but it's not meant like this. I'm just trying to explain to you that I reached my breaking point and I… You once said something like everyone had their breaking point and that you wouldn't want to be around me when I hit mine but it turned out you were the only one around at that time. I just… I know that I should have staid in control, but I didn't and that's absolutely and only my fault and I…"

Suddenly his ramblings were stopped by a tentative hand placed over his. "You're babbling, Lee.", she just said and squeezed his hands so lightly that it was almost impalpable.

He looked down on their hands and said: "Right. I am. I'm sorry…"

His hand was squeezed again with a little more force. "Stop apologizing, Lee. Just for today. Or I might start to suspect that this is some clever and cunning scheme to get me to make you stop apologizing once and for all."

He looked up and she hoped that he saw the smirk lingering at the edge of her mouth. Then he looked down to see their hands still be entwined. He took his away from under hers and then took it again with great care and very gently and squeezed it, never taking away his eyes from hers. "You'll never get me to stop apologizing for this ever. And you'll never get rid of me ever again, because it will take a lifetime to repay this. And I will repay you."

And then he cleared his throat and prayed to the gods that Kara wouldn't think of his words being as cliché as he feared them to be when he continued: "You know, the exchange rate would be a hundred nice words for one bad, a hundred caresses for one cold gaze, and…"

She smirked. "Stop trying to be a poet and make a fool of you, Adama. I get your meaning clear enough. I mean, that does mean that I can blackmail you into using your hot shower as often as I want to, right? And drink your booze every time I want it, right? And…"

"Everything you want, Kara.", he barged in quickly. And before his self-control could get the better of him, he added "I would have given you everything you wanted already long ago. If you had just asked me."

For a moment he feared that he had overstepped a boundary, but then she took his hand in hers and squeezed. "From now on, I'll mark your words, Adama. Even if you wish you'd never uttered them." But she smiled, and she squeezed his hand, and she even let him kiss her palm, and everything was right for him.

It came a little surprising for her as he put her hand to his mouth and tenderly kissed her palm but after a first moment of bewilderment she let it happen, and she was also surprised at her heart rate accelerating a few beats and the pleasant warm feeling flying up in the pit of her stomach. Granted, she knew that they still had a long way to go before them here, but right now, with her hand in Lee's, and his mouth on her skin and his words in her ears she truly believed that they could make it. She allowed herself a little smile. This felt like coming home and taking off again at the same time. She liked the feeling.

A/N: Phew, finally done (PlanetKiller, my beta-reader for "Minor Characters" will have a field day now because I don't have any excuses left for not continuing that story ;)). I know I took my time but we were in the final stage of the elction campaign, and after that I had to go flat-hunting and start to organize moving (which I still have to do butI have a tendency to procrastinate...), but well, it's over now. I'm not quite satisfied with this chapter as well because I'm not quite sure if it manages to keep on the thin line between good writing and trash, especially at the end. Tell me what you think of it, please. Now to my reviewers:

Dark Aislin - Thank you for your hint, but I'd really have apprecitated if you'd uttered your critiscm in a... well... more constructive way.

SG1SamFan - Thank you very much for your long review. I know what you mean with saying that it sounds a lot like I'm kind of placing the blame on anyone else, and I tried to let this critiscm influence this chapter. I hope I made that clear enough because you were absolutely right and I really wanted to change the whole fault-thing a little.

Kou Shun'u - Well, originally I planned to give the Old Man a little more space in this chapter but it turned out that it just wouldn't fit in with everything. But I could write an epilogue from Commander Adama's point of view if there's any demand for it.

crookedpen - Sorry I couldn't update any sooner but sometimes real life just gets in the way ;) But when I'm done with moving on thursday I'll have a month's time to just dedicate to writing if I wanted to. Let's just wait and see what will worm itself into my head ;)

Oh, and just one last thing: The exchange from the beginning of the chapter ("You bastard." - "I'm fairly sure that I'm legitimate.") is taken from shishi's "Protector"-series on lingdata. net, unfortunately without asking because I didn't know how to approach her. I hope she can forgive me, should she ever stumble across this story. In case she really does: I absolutely adore the "Protector"-series! A great piece of Hoshi/Malcom-fiction!