"Never is a promise," Lee reminded Kara as he settled into his Viper, "and I like to keep my promises."
The look of hurt in Lee's eyes mingled with the look of guilt on her face. Kara sighed and turned to face her locker. Her eyes slid shut as she remembered the conversation she had had with Dee before coming over to the Pegasus.
She had been sitting on the table in the middle of the CIC senior officers' bunkroom for well over an hour before Dee finally showed up.
"Starbuck," she squeaked in surprise but quickly recovered. "Lieutenant Thrace, what can I do for you?"
Kara watched her with narrowed eyes. She and Dee had never been on great terms, but the past few weeks they found it hard to be even amicable to one another. Both of them knew it had everything to do with Lee and his new relationship with the petty officer, but neither one was willing to admit it out loud. Dee saw Kara as some sort of competition for Lee's affections, and Kara saw Dee as a woman who had readily given up her chance at happiness after the world end's in order to have a little fun with the Admiral's son.
"I don't have time to play your games," Dee hissed, rolling her eyes as she passed Kara on her way to her duty locker.
Kara hopped off the table and strode over to Dee's side. "I came to talk about Lee."
Dee's hands faltered in their rattling through the locker, and she turned to stare at Kara. "Really?"
Kara crossed her arms in front of her and steeled her gaze. She reminded herself that she was only going through this bullshit because she loved Lee so much. "Lee's been slipping away ever since the Blackbird blew up. He'd never admit it, but he is."
Dee leaned against her locker. "Agreed."
"He's lost his sense of duty, his faith in both his father and in President Roslin, his ability to fly-"
"Because of you," Dee cut in.
Kara dug her nails into her arms to keep from lashing out. "I'm not pretending I don't have a part in this." Kara sighed. "Listen. I just want to fix this before it's too late."
"I'm not sure anything's really broken," Dee insisted.
"Then you're blind. Because from what I see, Lee's still floating out there in space, waiting for his friends and family to come rescue him, and he's losing his grip more and more each day." Kara shut her eyes for a moment to remember why she was doing this and then forged ahead. "You've got to give him something to live for, Dee. I don't know what that is or how you can do it, but if you feel anything for Lee, you'll figure it out." Kara held her gaze for a second to push her point across and then made her way to the open hatch. She hoped to the gods Dee checked her ego and listened to what she was trying to say. Lee's life depended on it.
Kara's eyes caught in the mirror on the temporary locker she was given on Pegasus, and she pulled herself back into the present. The look of complete defeat was right there on Lee's face. Dee had fraking blown it. Kara sighed. Well, the petty officer was just going to have deal with the consequences.
"You know I really tried to be like you in the beginning, Lee." She watched his face in the mirror as it lit up in confusion and summed up the bravery to face him. "As much as I teased you, you were a good CAG. I have no idea how you managed to watch your pilots slowly dwindle away and still stay strong enough to lead. It was like you turned yourself off, and I fraking admired that. I wish I could feel it a little less."
She watched the confusion fade from his face to be replaced by concern, and she felt her heart tighten. He wasn't quite that lost if she could still stir up worry in his heart. "Something shifted, though. Something pushed you over the edge when you almost died on the resurrection mission. You became cold. Both your father and I were too wrapped up in our own issues to noticed until it was too late."
Kara took a hesitant step toward him and when he didn't warn her to stay back, she kept moving. "Then you almost died on the Prometheus, and although I still don't know a lot about what happened those few weeks, I know that you were different when you came back."
"I don't know how you could notice something like that. If I remember correctly, you were pretty drunk most days."
Kara stopped a few feet away and nodded. She hadn't expected this to be easy. "It would take a lot more alcohol than what's left in the Fleet for me not to see that you were faltering just as much as I was."
"But for different reasons, right?"
"Yes and no," Kara admitted. "We're not talking about me, Lee, at least not at the moment. We're talking about you."
"You're talking about me," Lee corrected.
Kara nodded. He was right. At this point she had been doing most of the talking, but that was normal. Whenever one of them confronted the other, it was more monologue, less conversation. "I guess now would be the time to apologize for what I did to you when we were hunting Scar."
"Scaring the frak out of me by going completely suicidal?"
Kara's eyes went wide. She hadn't expect that little admission, but she would take it. "Were you really scared?"
"You're my best pilot," Lee rattled off.
Kara nodded. He was back to the same old defenses, but she wasn't going to forget that he had slipped for just a second. She would simply have to save it for later. "I'll apologize for that, too, but I was talking about what I did to you in that bunkroom. I'm sorry for jerking you around until you didn't know which way was up. I knew what I was doing, and looking back I hate that I let myself do it."
The silence filled the air between them as Kara waited for him to respond. "All right. So we've been though the resurrection mission, my work with the black market, the way you fraked me up during the Scar fiasco. I guess that brings us to you shooting me."
Kara felt her face go pale with the memory of that day, but she wasn't going to let it get to her. "I know you won't believe me, but I came to check on you every day you were in sickbay. I didn't stay because I figured I was the last person you wanted to see."
"That was a good assumption."
Kara shook her head. "No, I really don't think it was. We haven't been the same for months, but I swear to the gods I could hear us fracture in two the day you got out of sickbay. In that moment when you looked at me and I saw no emotion at all in your eyes, I knew it was my fault. You weren't mad because I shot you. You didn't resent me for an accident that could have happened to any one of us. You resented me because I wasn't strong enough to face what we had become. I couldn't live up to my mistakes and deal with the one person in my life who I kept hurting over and over again."
"I don't think-"
Kara held up her hand, cutting him off. "No, Lee. Let me finish. The way you've been treating me since the Old Man sent you over here has been killing me. The man I knew, the one who ended up with this Fleet by some miracle of the gods, the man who stepped in to save my ass when I was standing in the middle of the pilots' break room stumbling over the names of all the pilots that have gone on to the next life… he lost himself somewhere along the way, and more than that, I lost you, Lee."
Figuring she had laid everything on the line already, Kara took the last step. She reached out her hand to cup his cheek and smiled. "I can save you if you'd just give me a chance."
"And I need saved?"
The question didn't have the bitter edge Kara had been expecting so it gave her the courage to nod. "We both do."
Lee stayed frozen as she leaned in to brush a kiss softly across his lips. Kara hadn't expected a reaction. She tightened her fingers in his hair and deepened the kiss.
His hand tightened on her forearms, and Kara felt her body being pushed back. "You need to stop this, Kara, before you do something you regret."
"I have already done a million things I regret," she whispered, keeping her hands firmly in place. "This is me deciding that I'm going to do something that I will never regret."
"Why?"
His question was so raw and unguarded Kara felt the confident words she had been spouting this whole time catch in her throat. She had him where she wanted him. She just needed to prove she could go to that same vulnerable place. "Because as much as I want to save you, I need you to save me, too. Since this whole mess with the Cylons started, you have been the only thing that's kept me hanging on. So you see, if you're lost, so am I."
"Are you asking me to save you?"
Kara couldn't help but smile at the teasing tone of his voice. It was so familiar and yet lately it had been so foreign that she almost couldn't believe it. "I'm hoping, Lee." Kara pushed up onto her tiptoes and gave Lee another kiss. This time, he responded just a little bit, and so she plunged forward, running her tongue along the edge of his lip until he opened his mouth to her. His arms tightened around her body for a brief second before he pulled back. Kara felt a secret pleasure at seeing him shake his head slightly as he tried to focus.
"What about Dee?"
Kara shook her head and pulled Lee out of the open hatchway. "I gave Dee her chance. She blew it. Now it's my turn."
Lee shot her a look and got a smile in return that he found extremely familiar. "I thought… well, you implied that you were focused on saving this Anders guy."
"I was. I am." Kara sat down on her temporary bunk and pulled Lee down with her. She shifted her body to straddle his waist and smiled. "Things are different, though. Anders isn't the one who needs me right now."
"And later?" Lee asked. "What if he needs you then?"
"Then I'll help him as much as I can." Kara let her hands roam Lee's chest before slowly unbuttoning his jacket. "I mean, I have a lot of connections in this place. The Old Man loves me, and I happen to be fraking his son."
Lee's eyebrows shot up. "Fraking?"
"Well, I will be if you ever shut up," she teased. She pushed the jacket off his shoulders. She had almost leaned down to start kissing him again when Lee's hands shot up to grip her wrists. His grip was firm, and it made her straighten up in the bunk. "Lee?"
"I want something to be clear here. You're still going to save Anders. From what Helo's told me, you made him a promise, and I'm not going to let you go back on that just because you feel some sort of responsibility to me."
"What I feel for you is so much more than responsibility," Kara whispered. She leaned down to kiss the small scar on his shoulder.
Lee moved his hands up to cup her face and smiled. "Okay."
"Okay?" Her voice was hesitant. She wasn't aware she had asked him a question.
"I'm pretty damn lost right now, Kara, and you're right. I do need help figuring out how to fix that."
Kara didn't try to fight the grin that spread across her face, and she moved down to kiss him with a vengeance.
"Major Adama, please report to Hangar Bay B. Major Adama, Hangar Bay B."
"Frak me," Lee hissed as Kara's kisses traveled down his neck. "Kara…"
"Ignore it. It's just fraking Garner trying to assert his authority."
Kara found that Lee was very easily persuaded in his current lost state, especially when she let her lips and hands do most of the persuading. His fingers were just starting to tease her tanks up over her head when the second page came through.
"I have to answer that, Kara," Lee whispered, slowly pushing her to the side of the bunk. As he got to his feet, he leaned down to pick up his jacket. He could feel Kara's eyes on him as he fixed the last few buttons and did his best to calm himself.
He made his way over to the comm set on the wall and dialed in the number to the hangar bay. It appeared like his father had a pressing matter for him to attend to back on Galactica, so pressing that he was being cleared to fly a Pegasus Viper over so that he didn't have to wait until the next Raptor shuttle. It seemed like his father was going to need his input even more now that he was a Major.
Lee suddenly remembered his father speaking of some breakthrough they were on the edge of. It was something to do with the identity of another Cylon model. That had to be it if the Old Man wanted to speak with him in person and it couldn't wait until his job on the Pegasus was complete.
"You're not going to pretend like this didn't happen when you get back, are you?"
The question was so quiet Lee barely heard her. When the words finally found their way to the heart of him, Lee turned to look at her. She had a familiar look of worry on her face, one that had he had seen too much of over the past few months. Only this time it was different. This time the worry was directed towards him and had nothing to do with how much ambrosia she'd been drinking.
Lee walked back to the bunk and, reaching inside, grabbed her hand. Kara let him yank her to her feet without protest. She knew better than to say anything until Lee answered her question. She allowed him to lead her through the corridors, ignoring the strange looks they received from the crew.
"I have to go back to Galactica for a few hours," he said softly as he pulled to a stop beside a Viper. He wondered if Kara even noticed that it was hers. "The Old Man wants to speak with me about something important."
Lee took the flight suit one of the deckhands was holding out to him and quickly stripped down his dress blues. He tried to ignore the stares he got and fought back a grin. It wasn't everyday that a Major of the Colonial Fleet found cause to get almost completely naked in the most public area in the ship. As soon as he was changed, Lee took the helmet the deckhand was offering him and started to climb the ladder.
"Lee?" Kara couldn't hide the fear in her voice. It trembled even in speaking the lone syllable of his name.
"I'm going to hold you to everything you said," he said softly, staring down at her from the top run of the ladder. "I will never let either one of us fall that far again."
Kara's eyes glistened with tears. She hadn't actually expected this to work, but she would thank the gods for it every day for the rest of her life. "Are you sure?"
"Never is a promise," Lee reminded Kara as he settled into his Viper, "and I like to keep my promises."
