Thank you again for following this story! We're still with Kara's pov in this one.
Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 9?
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 9
Over the course of the next week, Kara's life changes so rapidly she's not sure what's happening half the time, except that she gets it all and it's amazing to be good at things she has no memory of knowing.
On their walk back from the lake, Lee tells her, "It's time you learned a trade, something you can do to earn your keep here."
"I can't agree more," Kara says. "It's just that there's nothing I've tried that I'm any good at. It's obvious I'm not a farmer, or a blacksmith, or a cobbler, or a cook, and as for the sewing and weaving, ha, you might as well tie my hands behind my back for all the good I do with needles and threads..."
"You're a fair engineer," Lee says.
"What's an 'engineer?'" Kara asks.
Lee smiles and says, "I'll show you as soon as we get back to the cottage." Kara is confused but likes the way he smiles, like not only does he have a secret, but it's a secret he knows she'll like.
They stop off at Kara's neighbors, and Lee introduces himself as a friend of Kara's from her village, and Jonas and Evie are pleased and surprised to hear that Kara has a home (or had, anyway, Kara thinks grimly), but before they can ask Lee questions about where is this village they've never heard of, Lee asks for parchment and ink and takes the writing equipment and goes back to Kara's cottage with an excited step. Kara, hardly comprehending what he needs such rarities as ink and paper for, can do nothing but shrug at her kind neighbors and follow Lee back.
He's sitting at her small table and making some markings that Kara doesn't understand. Then she does, at least vaguely. The picture looks familiar. "What is that?" she asks.
"It's a hydraulic circuit," Lee says, beaming. "Why don't you tell me what the parts are?"
Kara laughs nervously. "How would I know what they are?" It's just a bunch of funny looking shapes, straight edges and curves and arrows.
Lee points to the shape at the top, a long rectangle curved at one end, with what looks like a pole sticking out of the other end. "Let's start here. What's this?"
Kara says nothing, then words escape her mouth before she can even think them. "A hydraulic cylinder?" She closes her mouth abruptly and can't believe what she just said. She asked it like a question, but really she was questioning herself, questioning how could she possibly know?
"Good. Good!" Lee says. Kara feels her pride in her and wants to feel it again, so she concentrates on the picture and wills the names of the parts to come to mind.
"What about this?" asks Lee.
"The control...control valve," Kara says, her voice steadier this time.
"And these here?"
"That's the, um, the pump, and next to it is, ah, the...the filter?"
"Kara, you've got it. Just one more, I know you know it. This thing here?" Lee is smiling so widely Kara can't help but smile back, even though she doesn't know what this is all about.
"That's called the reservoir," she says.
"Exactly," says Lee. "You do remember." Then he frowns. "Do you remember anything else right now?"
Kara thinks, searches her mind for any jostled memories that might be floating through it. Nope. Blank as usual. "No, nothing else."
The worried look leaves Lee's face. "Okay. Then let's focus on this. It's a hydraulic circuit. You know how it works, and you know what it does. And what it can do."
"What can it do?" Kara asks a little breathlessly. This feels like something she shouldn't know. She's never seen one of these...circuit things in this village. She wonders if maybe Lee is a warlock, just as she is a witch. It seems like he's teaching her some powerful magic.
"A lot of things. Mostly, it can power machinery...I mean, it can move...big things, and have them do big jobs," Lee says.
"I don't understand," says Kara. "Do you mean, like what the mules and oxen do?"
"Not exactly," says Lee. "Given this environment," and again that's a word Kara's never heard anyone around here use, "hydraulic power will be more useful for lifting heavy materials and transporting them from one place to another. That sort of thing. Of course, without engines, we'll have to use manpower to operate the pump, but it'll still make work a lot more efficient around here." There are a lot of words in that sentence Kara doesn't understand at all.
"But how can we make one of these?" she asks, not wanting to betray her ignorance, even though Lee clearly knows she doesn't remember a lot. She still doesn't want to give him any unnecessary advantages over her. He's said he loves her, but still, something inside warns her to be strong in front of him, as strong as she can manage, anyway.
"We'll find the right materials. And once you learn how to make them and apply them for different kinds of jobs, you'll never lack for food or comforts, I guarantee you." He sounds so confident that Kara decides he must be right, although everything he's said in the last ten minutes sounds completely crazy.
Over the next seven days, though, what seems crazy turns out to be eminently achievable. Lee keeps calling their work "jerry-rigged" and Kara doesn't know what that means and doesn't ask, again not wanting to emphasize her ignorance anytime she can help it, They're using all kinds of materials, mixing all manner of gummy residues and pastes together to form what Lee calls "plastics," and creating, amazingly enough, what Lee calls a "machine." It's mostly a wooden frame and it's lumbering and slow, and it looks like a large animal that men are supposed to ride, and men do ride it, on a small perch they built inside, doing what Lee calls "driving," and when three men take turns working "the pump" on it, it can actually scoop up large amounts of earth, and turn just slightly to the side, and dump the earth out, creating one increasingly deep hole and one increasingly deep pile.
No one knows what this beast is that Kara and Lee have built, but they immediately see the benefit of a thing that can dig ditches quickly, and although Lee keeps complaining about its "lack of maneuverability," everyone likes it and, by extension, appreciates Kara more.
"I'll stay until you know how to build more of those, different kinds, and you'll have your livelihood set," Lee says one night, stripping his shirt off and using a piece of cloth and a basin of water to wash down with, since it's too late and too cold to bathe in the stream.
Kara tries to look away from his naked back and finds she cannot. Has she always been this fascinated by his body? Probably. It's a remarkable body.
"You'll stay until then," she repeats. "And then you'll go back? To wherever we come from?"
Lee says nothing, and Kara doesn't press the issue.
Working with Lee is easy. She knows things she doesn't know she knows, about things she doesn't know, and half the time she makes suggestions or criticizes Lee's methods without knowing quite what she is saying but knowing absolutely that she is right, and Lee takes turns being annoyed and pissed (especially when she is right) and in good spirits because "It's familiar," he says. "This is you always are when we work together."
They must have worked together a lot, Kara thinks, because it is so simple and smooth – fluid, a word she's learned/remembered from working on hydraulics – and even when they disagree it only makes the end result better, stronger, and working with Lee is a pleasure even when it's very, very difficult.
But what's hard is the nights.
He still sleeps in her room, though the back room is now empty since Karl vacated it. He sleeps on his cot separated from her mattress by the thinnest of distances, just a few inches of open space that might as well be a yawning gulf, for all the longing looks he throws her way when he thinks she's sleeping. Even with her eyes closed, she can feel him staring at her. Briefly, every now and then, she opens her eyes a slit's width in the dark and sees that he's staring not just with want, but with actual sadness. Desolation.
On the seventh night since after that day at the lake, that day he told her that he loves her, that he's loved her for a long time, she asks him a question related to that supposed fact. She's been too afraid, too uncertain, to probe the territory of his emotions before. She has a feeling that she never did get much practice at that.
In the cover of darkness, with the courage of the half-asleep, she whispers across the inches-wide chasm, "You never try to touch me."
Sure, his hand has brushed hers innumerable times as they've built the machine, as they've handed different things back and forth, and he's reached for her back and given her a couple of quick hugs, and she has found herself initiating almost as much contact as he – and so a case could be made that they can't help but touch each other, seemingly – but what she means is, he has never tried to touch her the way a man who loves a woman tries to touch that woman. And she wonders why that is.
"I was never allowed to touch you," he says. "My brother..."
He doesn't say anything more, and he doesn't have to. Kara doesn't remember, but she can imagine how Lee must have felt, being...attracted to his brother's betrothed, what a terrible position to be in.
"Lee," Kara says, and in the moonlight she can make out how he swallows at her saying his name like that, in her drowsy voice, "did we ever...after Zak died, did you and I ever...?"
"Yes," Lee says, surprising her. She was thinking the answer must be no, because how can he look at her so hopelessly if he's already had her? "Twice," Lee says, and she watches him squeeze his eyes shut as if trying to get rid of the memories even as he remembers. "Both times, we were angry, and...and drunk. They were...over with quickly. Too quickly," he adds, and she wonders if he's commenting on his own performance. "And we couldn't get away from each other fast enough."
That's the story he tells, but Kara can hear another story lurking underneath, unsaid. Despite the bleak and somewhat heartless picture Lee paints, what she sees in her mind's eye are two encounters suffused with unvoiced passion and need and made brief only because of denial, two people's denial forming a double orbit, like twin stars. She can envision the looks he must have given her when she wasn't looking, the way she looked at him when he had his back turned.
His back turned...Was that what she was thinking of when she couldn't turn her gaze away from his back?
Having amnesia is confusing and wretched, she thinks for the millionth time. You don't know what's real and what's invented.
"I'm sure I wanted to touch you more," Kara says. "More than I did," she clarifies, though she doesn't know how else he could interpret her statement.
"Really?" Lee asks with a small huff of laughter. He doesn't believe her. "I wish you remembered wanting that, so you could tell me about it."
Wow. Does this godlike man, he of the perfect form and face, really think she didn't want him, ever? Kara can't vouch for love, although she almost thinks she can...but as for want, that's a very easy deduction to make, Yes, she's positive she wanted to touch him, and so it's easy to admit what she's thinking.
"I want to touch you now," she says in the dark, and she can hear Lee's breath stop.
"Kara...," he says, and she's not sure what he's going to say next but she won't give him that chance.
"Just come over here," she says. She holds up the edge of the blanket, and he climbs in, pressing the length of his warm, firm body against her.