Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 7?

Author: abelard

Rating: T

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 7

Lee spends most of the night just watching Kara as she dreams, but the exhaustion catches up with him – he hasn't gotten any real sleep for weeks now – and he loses his battle to keep his eyes open, on Kara, at last. When he wakes up, dawn is just breaking and she is still asleep, and he watches as the barest pink glow enters the room and drapes her face and blanket-covered body in a very slight blush.

Lee has not felt this content in years. Since before Zak introduced him to her. He hasn't been truly at peace since he's known Kara Thrace, and it's almost fitting that they had to go through not just the end of the worlds, but death, too, in order to finally get things right, find somewhere, some way, to settle.

Lee knows he is staying. Whatever Kara is, he is staying with her. If he'd been asked three months before, when she was still alive on Galactica, if he'd break off contact with the Fleet, his father, and everyone he knew in order to make a life with Starbuck on some remote planet, he's not sure he would have said yes. But even then, he would have been tempted. He would have seriously considered it. He loved her then, most of the time at a level just beneath consciousness. But now, now that he's lived all of these weeks believing her dead, now he can be certain. Where she is, he'll stay, if she'll let him.

Helo creeps into the room, trying to be quiet, and Lee sees he's already dressed. Helo motions to him to follow, and Lee does. They stand outside Kara's little hut as the sun's rays become visible over the eastern mountains.

Helo is frowning and not looking at Apollo; Lee has learned enough about him in the past couple of weeks to know when Helo's disturbed.

"I've been thinking," Helo begins. "I'll have to tell him – the Admiral, I mean – I'll have to tell him you're dead."

Apollo has an image of his father, grieving, believing he's lost not just Zak and Kara, but now Lee, too. He knows it won't kill the Old Man, but it'll be a close thing. "No," Apollo says. He can't put his father through that. "No, there has to be another story you can give them."

"Look, I don't want to put your father through this, but if you're determined to stay here permanently, then you have to make sure he won't come down here looking for you. If he thinks there's a chance in Hades you're alive..."

"...he won't leave me behind," Lee finishes. Frak. For a long time, when he was a boy, Lee wondered if his father really loved him. Now he knows how much his father loves him, and though he's ashamed to think it, he wishes his father loved him a little bit less. Wishes his father were the kind of man who'd let a lost cause go.

But that's not what Adamas do. They don't let lost causes go.

Lee says, "I can't do that to him."

Helo says, "Then I can't leave you behind."

"Somebody's leaving?" Kara asks from the doorway, her blanket wrapped around her like a shawl and her hair a mess. Lee feels something in the region of his heart unclench at the sight of her. Kara looks from Lee to Helo and says, "I'm glad I heard you guys out here. When I first got up, I thought I just imagined you two. Is one of you leaving already? Can I go with you?" she asks with wide, eager eyes.

Lee remembers he told Kara that they had to get supplies, re-stock for the trip home, to their "home village" in the mountains. She was so anxious to get back, to whatever her life was. But Lee knows she can never make that trip.

"Helo – I mean, Karl's going back home today. But you and I aren't going with him," Lee says.

"What?" Helo asks sharply. "I thought you just said..."

"You can leave me here for a little while," says Lee. "Just tell my father I...I need to be here right now. Tell him I'm recuperating here. Tell him you'll come back for me in a..." Lee looks at Kara and wonders how much time with her will be...enough. A month? Two? A year? There really isn't any length of time that will be enough, when he'll be happy to leave her behind. But he can't subject her to what the Sharon model's been through on Galactica, either. "Tell him you'll come back for me eventually."

"He'll never go for that," Helo scoffs. "Plus, we need you. Who'll do your job?"

"Please," says Lee, shaking his head. "I've been useless for months." A sudden inspiration strikes, and Lee places his hand on Helo's shoulder. "And you can do my job."

"Me?" Helo's voice escalates an octave, almost to a squeak.

"Haven't you been mostly doing it anyway? Look, we're finally in a good place with personnel. You've got the people you need, and they're trained. You can do this."

"I don't want to be any trouble," says Kara, still looking on. "If you need to get back, then you should go. Although, why can't we all go together?"

Again, there's that wanting to return home, and Lee sees this could be a long-running battle between them. Lee has to put a stop to that line of questioning now, and he knows a little bit of the truth will do it. He goes up to Kara and puts his hands on her shoulders. Her face registers doubt and surprise, she takes a step back, shaking off his hold. Lee reminds himself that she doesn't know him, that as far as her memories go, she just met him yesterday.

"I'm sorry," Lee says. "But I need to explain to you why we all can't go back home together. Can we talk inside?" He doesn't want the neighbors hearing anything he's about to say.

Kara frowns slightly at Lee. "You're bossy," she remarks, not teasingly, and Lee is chagrined to realize he's been using his CAG tone with her. She never did respond well to that tone.

Helo steps forward. "He's right, Kara," he says gently. "Let's take this inside."

Helo enters the dwelling and Kara, with a last suspicious look at Lee, follows him to the table inside. Once again, for the thousandth time in his life, Lee is jealous at Helo and Starbuck's easy friendship. Even now, when Kara doesn't know either of them, she trusts Helo more than him, on instinct. Or programming, Lee thinks for a split second before squashing that thought down.

Lee sees Helo and Kara sitting next to each other and senses the lack of stress between them. The absence of friction. Lee thinks maybe part of the reason he disliked their friendship was that it was exactly the relationship he should have had with Kara, if only they'd really been friends. Or brother and sister. They should have been able to talk, spar, argue, joke, wrestle, interact with simplicity and familiarity. But instead, they'd never been simple. Sometimes, they'd fought being too comfortable with each other, as if they feared that if they let their guard down for a second, they'd fall into each other's arms, each other's bed. And sometimes they just pushed and pulled at each other because they couldn't stand the fact that they were so close and yet could never be together. Even the two times they'd frakked before Starbuck's final flight had started out as arguments, and the sex hadn't brought them closer together. There was too much of the past between them, and too much war. Guilt, duty, sadness – even when their bodies met each other's in perfect harmony, or when their Vipers sailed through space together like they were really two wings of one bird – there had always been too much between them to allow them to be simple with one another.

That has to change now, Lee vows. And without Kara's memories to fill her with rage and guilt and loss and fear, they can have their chance. Lee only has to...well, he only has to accept the fact that she isn't really human. And accept that he has to give up his life on Galactica, his father, and his responsibilities for her.

Ah Kara...Lee lets out a frustrated breath and runs his hand through his hair. The things you make me do...

And yet, doesn't he always do them?

"I don't want to be the reason," Kara says, seriously, looking straight at Lee, and he wonders momentarily if she has some kind of Cylon telepathy that allows her to read his mind. "I don't want to be the only reason you're staying," she says. "If you want to go, then go. And if you think I'm not strong enough to come with you, let me prove you wrong. I know I must have taken a fall, to have amnesia this bad, but I feel good. I'm tough, I can make it..."

"I know how tough you are, Kara," Lee says, and thinking of all the times Starbuck has proven herself to be the bravest, luckiest goddamn soldier in existence, he almost cries, and almost laughs, simultaneously. "You don't have to prove that to me or Karl. But there's something you should know. Why we can't take you back with us."

Kara swallows. "Okay," she says. "Why?"

Lee says, "If we take you back, everyone on...everyone at home will think you're...bad. They'll, um, they'll chain you up, and they won't ever let you be free again."

"They think I'm a criminal?" Kara asks, horrified.

"They don't think that yet," says Lee. "Right now, everyone believes you died a couple of months ago. But if you come back home, and they see you're not dead..." Lee has no words to explain. He beseeches Helo with his eyes.

Helo comes up with the words. "If you come back alive, when everyone thinks you should be dead, they'll think you're a witch, Kara."

Kara gasps. She pulls her blanket tighter around her. "Here, people have told me that they burn witches."

Helo nods slowly. "They'll think they have a right to. It's not fair. But that's what they'll think. Because they'll think you have some kind of power that they don't. And they'll fear you, even if you tell them they're on their side."

"But can't we convince them?" Kara pleads. "I mean, look at me, I don't have any magic, I can barely bake my own bread..."

"Karl's...wife," Lee starts, not able to think of another word to describe what Sharon is to Helo, "stands accused of being a witch. And she's still locked up, even though she's just had Karl's baby."

Kara looks to Helo for verification. The tears in his eyes are testimony enough. "I'm only allowed to hold my daughter once a day, if I'm lucky."

"Gods..." Kara whispers, laying a hand on Helo's forearm.

"There's no convincing them, Kara. Once they suspect. I've tried for months," Helo says, his voice breaking on his last words.

They sit silently for a few moments. Then Kara says, "So...I can never go back?"

Karl says, "Believe me, I wish you could. We've missed you." He wipes his tears and smiles at her, and Kara smiles back, and Lee sees again how uncomplicated it is between them, between two people who are just friends.

That's not Lee, though. "I won't leave you here alone," he says. "I'm staying."

Kara frowns again at him. Helo has gotten all of her smiles today, and Lee has earned all of her frowns. "Why?" she asks. "I mean, I appreciate the offer, but I've been taking care of myself since I got here. I think I can manage on my own."

Ah, Lee knows this Kara. Defiant Kara. Don't-need-anyone-especially-not-you-Apollo Kara.

"I've been waiting for people who know me to show up," Kara goes on, "but now that you're here, you're telling me I have nothing to go back to. So why should you have to give up your home, too?"

"He can't give it up forever," Helo says, and Lee knows it's for his benefit. Helo is trying to remind him this is all just temporary. "He'll have to come back eventually."

"But not for a while," Lee says, looking at Helo pointedly. "Not for months."

"Weeks, maybe," Helo counters, returning Lee's stare.

"But why would you have to give it up at all?" Kara asks. "Like I said, I appreciate it, but I don't need you. And I don't want to be responsible for taking you away from your...your wife, or whoever you have back there..."

Lee feels the crease between his eyebrows that only comes out when he is arguing with Starbuck. "I'm staying," he says. "That's final."

"But why?" Kara asks again. "What would be the point?"

"You. You're the point. I need to be with you, all right? Gods, you've never gotten that, and when I tell you, you never believe me!" Lee stops short. He realizes he was just yelling. The things you make me do...he thinks.

Kara is so still, and it makes Lee nervous whenever she is that still. Lee thinks this is so typical. Here they are, after she's died and come back a Cylon and he's ready to give up everything for her except he can't, not permanently, and she doesn't even want him to in the first place, and so they're fighting. Again. So typical.

Lee hates this as much as he always has, but more than that, he's missed it.

Kara says, "You're bossy." But this time she says it like a tease, and sticks her tongue out at him for good measure, and then smiles.