Lee held the diamond ring out to Kara and gave her his bravest smile, "One thousand Cylon-free days was what you told me it would take for you to say yes, so here I am."
Lee was pretty sure he had never run this fast in his life, not even the time when he was nine and broke his mother's favorite vase. Then again, it wasn't everyday that your best pilot stole the parameters for a mission you had to be ready for in under an hour and you hadn't even started reviewing them until a few minutes earlier. "Fraking come back, Kara," he yelled.
His swears echoed off the corridor walls, earning him a few strange looks from the passing crewmen. Lee didn't have time to notice. Kara was already barreling her way into their bunkroom, and if she got more than a second alone, those parameters would be hidden somewhere he would never find them.
Luckily, he had sprinted the last few yards and cut the distance between them by half. When he entered the bunkroom, the papers were still in her hands. "Kara."
"Lee."
"Kara." He said inching towards her.
She took a few steps away and smiled. "You really shouldn't have put off doing your homework."
"I would be doing it right now if you hadn't stolen it," Lee pointed out.
"Smart people did this last night."
"Well if smart people did this last night, maybe you and I should go over it together. I wouldn't want both of us to have no idea what's going on."
Kara stuck her tongue out at him, and it was the opening he had been waiting for. He launched himself across the table in the middle of the bunkroom and tackled her into her bunk. His hands naturally drifted to her waist and started tickling. The result was instantaneous and quite painful. Kara's foot connected first with his shin, then his stomach, and finally his groin. Lee ignored the pain. He needed those papers back.
She panted for him to stop but still held the papers tightly to her chest. Lee paused a moment to shift his body so that he had both her legs pinned to the mattress and then doubled up the tickling intensity. He thought Kara was going to choke as the laughter took over every inch of her body. When her fists stopped hitting him and started slapping in vain, he knew he had won.
Smirking, he pulled the papers away from her chest and threw them on the floor. He was too tired to review them now. He collapsed next to her on the mattress and sighed. "You never change Kara. Always moving, always fighting."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her body tense and wondered what he had said wrong this time.
Kara gave his arm a smack like she knew he expected her to and then let her body relax against the soft blankets on her bunk. Her eyes slid shut as she thought over his little comment. She was always constantly in motion, fighting whomever or whatever got in her path. It was what had kept her alive for so many years. That didn't mean it was what she wanted. Truth be told, she was tired of fighting.
And she wasn't the only one.
Lee had been the one to break the news to her earlier that day. Karl and Meg were leaving the military. They were resigning their posts and settling down together on one of the civilian ships now that the necessity for Raptor pilots was starting to bottom out. The Fleet needed Viper pilots, not Raptors, which in Kara's mind was just the gods' way of being cruel to her yet again.
Kara hadn't understood what Lee was trying to tell her at first. When she did figure it out, she tore the ship up trying to find Helo. His explanation was simple. He was tired. After Sharon's death in the fight for New Caprica, he didn't have much to live for. Then Meg came into his life and he didn't want to look back. He didn't want to be at the center of this fight anymore. He just wanted to get married, start a family, and be left alone.
Kara couldn't argue. It was exactly what she wanted. Only she didn't know how she could go about getting it. Things like that had never been easy for her like they had been for Karl.
She ran Lee's words through her head again, trying to figure out what he meant. "Are you asking me when I'm going to settle down?"
Lee paused before whispering, "I think so."
Kara twisted her head to look at him. "Give me one thousand Cylon-free days."
She had said it half-jokingly, but she knew she was dead serious. If the Cylons went away, she would have no excuse to keep fighting. She could let herself be happy and settled and content.
It became a running joke between the two of them.
They would be doing paperwork together and he would suddenly look up and ask her to marry him.
She would come into the bunkroom after showering, and his response was to exclaim that he was seeing a goddess in human form. He would get down on his knees and beg this goddess to spend the rest of her mortal life with him.
She would wake up from a nightmare to find he had drawn her curtain back and was just watching her. They would stare at each other for a few moments before he whispered, "Marry me." That was the only time where it actually felt real.
The crew seemed to get as much of a kick out of his constant proposals as Kara did. They started the nasty habit of groaning every time she shook her head and reminded him, "One thousand days." No one really knew what that meant. They only knew it meant no.
Kara hadn't realized how accustomed she had gotten to their little game until it stopped. First, she thought that Lee had just gotten too busy, what with their finding the thirteenth colony and everything. Then days went by and he still hadn't proposed.
It didn't take long for Kara to understand that she had been foolish. Sometime in the past year, she let herself believe Lee was serious when he asked her to marry him. Sometime in the past year, she had actually let herself believe she would say yes.
Now that she was ready to say yes, Lee wasn't asking. They had found the thirteenth colony, and he had stopped asking.
It wasn't until this morning, three years after they found the thirteenth colony, that she figured out the real reason why.
Lee wasn't asking. He was counting.
Lee held the diamond ring out to Kara and gave her his bravest smile, "One thousand Cylon-free days was what you told me it would take for you to say yes, so here I am."
Kara opened her mouth and tried to say something, but she couldn't. She looked around the hangar. Most of the pilots and crew were here for the official decommissioning ceremony. The Old Man was at the podium about to give his speech. Everyone was staring at them. "What are you doing?" she hissed.
Lee stood up from his seat. "I'm asking you to marry me, Kara. For real this time."
Kara's eyes went wide as Lee kneeled down in front of her. Everything suddenly clicked into place. The words she had half-jokingly said that day, the words that she had seriously meant somewhere deep inside, he had listened. He had understood.
"Marry me, Kara."
His words snapped her eyes back to meet his. Grinning wider than ever before, she nodded. She waited until Lee had slipped the ring on her finger before flinging herself into his arms. The kiss they shared was so loud and full of passion that Kara barely heard the cat calls from all around her.
When she finally broke away from him, she find her smile was echoing his own. "We're really going to do this?"
"We're really going to do this," Lee said, squeezing her tight against him before letting her go. They sat back down in their seats, and Kara tried to ignore the fact that most people were still staring.
William Adama's voice echoed through the hangar. "I was going to start off this speech by saying today was as close to a perfect day as we could get, but I was wrong. Today is the perfect day…"
