Kara wasn't looking for anybody. Quite the opposite.
It's been too many hard weeks penned up in small places with too many people. Breathing the same warm recycled air. Coated in each other's sweat, blood, tears; doesn't matter how many showers, it never seems to scrape off her skin. Kara can party hearty with the best of them, sparkling hard like a paste diamond, but there is the other part of her that craves silence, craves solitude and stillness and peace.
So for as much as every minute away from Galactica itches like insect venom under her skin, a part of her is relieved at this time on Caprica; these moments where she can walk the compound's perimeter—because, let's face it, their security is for shit—and not be bothered by anyone. She rationalizes it by calling it a patrol, but can't kid a kidder.
It's raining again, but all the windows in the long refectory are open, carrying the smell of wet earth and grass and stone. Tracing the flat of one hand over scarred plastic windows and cold metal sills, Kara closes her eyes and inhales soft and slow until she feels like her lungs will burst. An exhale and then she does it again.
Never again. Once they find transport, she will never smell this, never have this again. Caprica will belong to the toasters, and she'll probably die in a ball of flame amid stars she's never heard of. Kara believes in a no regrets kind of lifestyle, but she's coming to understand that some regrets are imposed, rather than caused.
A noise. Small, almost unheard, but enough to make her go still and turn her head, listening. Her hands stray to her gunbelt. This is still enemy territory, after all.
She replays the sound, and in retrospect recognized the soft tap of glass on composite. She's been too focused on the exterior; she squints into the striped quasi-darkness and parses out a broad shouldered shape she knows. Helo hasn't moved, hasn't given any indication he knows she's there. As she watches, his arm and shoulder move, and then his head snaps back. She knows that gesture; done it herself often enough that for a second she feels a sympathetic burn of the shot going down. Helo's breath goes out in a hiss, and then there's again the quiet click of glass-to-table.
"Helo?" Kara abandons the window with one last glance at the rain-wet trees. He doesn't answer. "Karl?"
She circles around him so she can see his face. It's tired, but she's used to that. Sometimes it's hidden behind the glitter of stims, but they're all tired. Frakking exhausted. But beneath that, on Helo's face, there's something else.
Or really, the absence of something, she realizes after a moment. She's always liked the big, easygoing pilot, one of the few who appreciates her razor wit and doesn't hesitate to call her on her bullshit, almost impossible to anger and quick to laugh. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, but not stupid, either. Simple. Wait, that sounded bad. Uncomplicated. Yes. Which is, quite possibly, why she's never frakked him.
Looking down with arms crossed, Kara reflects that Helo is definitely no longer uncomplicated.
She sighs, uncrosses her arms and straddles the bench on the opposite side. "You gonna keep that all to yourself?" she asks, dragging one of the shot glasses to her side and belting it back.
Helo's eyes come up slow. His tracking's shot to shit and she realizes he's been here a while, getting 'faced alone in the dark. This keeps up, he's going to be some serious competition for the Most Frakked-Up Award, and she can't have that. "Kara, hey," he says, and other than it's slowness, she's weirded by how normal he sounds. "What're you doing here?"
"What, I can't have a drink with a friend?" She refills both their cups and shoots hers, grimacing at the burn. Damn. It's been a good long while since she's had anything but the fizzy water they called champagne on Cloud Nine. This is the real stuff, hardcore; she'll have to be careful.
"Nah, drink up." Helo downs his shot. Pours another. His hands are perfectly steady; he doesn't spill a drop. "Plenty more where this came from."
And that's true. The rebels are short on a lot of things, but liquor isn't one of them. Toasters got no use for getting drunk, apparently. Kara considers, trying to recall now if she's ever even seen Sharon—not Sharon, dumbass, stop calling her that!—drink.
Her mind offers up the memory of the hotdog-eating contest. It'd been her, Sharon, Zak, and a pilot that later washed out called Tripwire. She'd won, but she'd puked up for days afterwards. The memory aches like the bruises that Cylon-bitch left on her face, reminds her why she avoids reminiscing in the first place. Kara scowls and takes another belt of booze.
They drink in silence for a while, matching shots. Kara lets her mind drift and concentrates again on the damp sweet smell of the rain.
"Be careful what you wish for."
The sound of Helo's voice startles her; Kara realizes her eyes are closed and opens them. He's looking at her, but not really. Most of him's somewhere else, somewhen else. "Karl?"
"My mom always said, 'be careful what you wish for'," he says again, rolling his empty glass between his palms. His hands almost hide it entirely. "Of course, my dad always added on, 'because the Lords of Kobol have a sense of humor.'"
Kara laughs, but she's the only one, because Helo's shaking his head.
"They were right."
"C'mon, Helo," she reaches over the table to thump him on the shoulder. "What are you even talking about?"
"I would…" he swallows, " never have taken her from the Chief, Kara, you know that. I'm not that guy."
Kara sighs and pours another round. Some of the liquor splashes onto the table, but there's plenty more where that came from, right? Right. "No, Helo, you are definitely not that guy."
"It was… It was different here. The Chief… You don't know what it was like." Helo gulps his shot and gestures for another. "It was like…. It was like…." He trails off and stares blankly off into space. Nervous, Kara turns to scan the room behind her. It wobbles a little—or is that her?—but there's no one there.
"Frak!"
She turns back and grabs Helo's wrist. "C'mon. Forget about it. I bet I could scrounge up a deck of cards…"
"It was like we were the only two people on the planet," he mumbles and sets his shot back on the table untouched. He rests his forehead on his wrist and looks sideways at her.
It's on the tip of her tongue to snap, Except she's not a person, but she's drunk enough now that the edges are smoothed out and she thinks of Leoben, and the other Sharon and shuts the frak up. This is how Tigh got started, she thinks.
"I just… It was so long, and I couldn't… I didn't…" His fingers stutter, and the shot goes over in a sharp clatter. The glass slides across the composite and shatters. "She was there and I just… I never thought I could have her."
"Frak," Kara mutters under her breath. When did this get so complicated? "All right." She grabs the bottle, downs one last swig, then sets it on the floor behind her before coming off the bench. "C'mon, Helo. You're cut off."
"What, by you?" He goggles at her and for a moment he sounds like himself.
"Yeah by me." She bends and gets a shoulder under his. "You wanna act like a Nugget, I'll treat you like a Nugget. Get up, you oaf. You're too heavy for me to lift."
They rock and roll and nearly break both their necks, but she finally gets Helo on his feet, however unsteadily. He still towers over her, but he still looks smaller than he ever did before. Frak you, Sharon, she thinks, a burn in her stomach hotter than all the alcohol on Caprica. Frak you and your toaster friends.
"C'mon," she says yet again. "Let's grab some rack time. Early day tomorrow, you know?"
"I love her, Kara."
Her teeth bite down hard enough she feels it in her neck. But getting pissed at Helo is a lot like kicking a puppy. She claps him on the shoulder. "I know. I'm sorry."
Helo smiles. It's crooked and unhappy, and she feels another part of her rip and bleed, just when she didn't think she had an unwounded part left. She wonders if, like the smell of grass and dirt, Helo's lazy easygoing smile is something that's just lost forever, another tragedy that there's no time to mourn or even really mark. "Can't be any sorrier than me, Thrace."
Thrace. She doesn't think he's ever called her that before. Officially frakked up, she thinks. I wonder if that means we'll end up frakking now?
She laughs, Helo puts an arm around her shoulder, and they stagger off in search of a different kind of oblivion.