ANOTHER WAY: CHAPTER 5

ANSWERED PRAYERS

"What the frak? Do you have to do that near me?" Her eyes were barely open but the smell was enough to make her want to gag.

Her voice sounded strange and her throat burned. It felt like someone had stuffed a Raptor burner down her mouth and then kicked the engine into overdrive for a few million parsecs.

"My domain, my rules, my cigarettes – so yes – I do need to do this near you because you are in my domain, under my rules." Doc Cottle slid her chart into the cubby hole at the foot her bed. "Gotta love the gratitude you Viper pilots so readily offer."

Seeing her struggle to raise herself off her pillow earned her a two-finger finger wag – the two fingers it took to keep his cigarette from dropping to the floor, and a dead-pan promise. "You move and I will pipe cigarette smoke directly into your oxygen line."

A subtle head movement confirmed that what she thought were strands of hair tickling her nose was in fact tubing reaching into her nostrils. "So that is why my throat feels like someone shoved-"

"No. You can thank that lovely apparatus to you right for making you feel like someone crammed a Pyramid ball into your down your oesophagus." Cigarette smoke traced his hand movements as he pointed out the ventilator that was not five feet from her bed.

In fact, as her vision sharpened, so did the aesthetics of her surroundings. Sickbay. Oh joy. And more machines than she could name.

"How long have I been here?"

"Well – that depends on what you are referring to. Are you talking about being alive or dead?" Cottle did not pull any punches. His bedside manner was as sensitive as always.

"Lucky me, I get the doc that talks about existentialism." It hurt to talk, hell it hurt to think, but spitting out one-liners at least told her she was awake. "What are you talking about?"

"Damn straight you are lucky. And what I am talking about is you – dying at least once an hour for the first forty-one hours then giving me and my staff a break by going into cardiac arrest, convulsing into grand mal seizures or deciding that your blood pressure was not low enough and bleeding out again every five hours up until yesterday." Snubbing out his butt in the near by metal tray, he took out his pack and tapped out another smoke. Making a show of enjoying the first drag off of a freshly lit cigarette, he pointed at her again. "The best one was when you ripped out your IV lines in your sleep as you screamed at someone named Simon that you would see him in hell. That was when you went into shock. I'll tell ya – I did not see that one coming. But then again, someone failed to tell me that they suffered kidney damage recently. Or tell me anything else, for that matter. Why would you? After all, I am only your doctor."

Starbuck decided that silence would be the better side of valour in the wake of his barely camouflaged reprimand.

"Yeah – I thought as much. Were you ever going to tell me?" Doc Cottle looked at her expectantly.

"That I'm allergic to dagget fur?" She knew her come back was weak, but so was she. "A girl's got to keep some mystery about her." Whatever strength she thought she had was quickly waning.

"Remind me to have your cockpit re-upholstered so that I can see your reaction." Her glib remark was not the answer he was looking for and, judging by the way she was looking at him to gauge his response to her attempt to deflect him; she knew she was sorely testing his patience. Standing up, he walked to her bedside and reached for the syringe that was resting next to her next batch of electrolytes.

Taking another pull on his cigarette before balancing it on the rim of the metal pan, he waved the needle in her direction. "I am going to put this into your line. This cocktail is better than anything the Chief can brew in that damn still of his. It is combination of a muscle relaxer – so that you do not pull any of your internal stitches while you rest – and a powerful antibiotic to keep infection at bay and an anti-coagulant to minimize the formation of a blood clot. You have been inert for a while now and the only exercise you have had has been you, fighting me, to keep you alive."

"Why are you telling me this?" Her eyes were getting heavy and he had not even piped his special sauce into her veins.

"I do not want you to have another episode in your sleep. Accusations that I am trying to kill you will frak with my mal-practice insurance premiums."

Cottle looked down at where his patient was lying and gave her a friendly leer.

"And, truth be told Thrace, you are one of the few people on this bucket that actually gives as good as she gets and she keeps this old man amused from time to time patching up what you dish out on a regular basis." Cottle's gruff tone was vaguely affectionate. Inserting the syringe and squeezing the plunger slowly and steadily, he asked, "Is that a good enough reason for you, Lieutenant?"

"Thanks, Doc," was her murmured reply before exhaustion overtook her.

Seeing her cheek rest against the pillow and no further movement to undo what he had spent the past eight days reconnecting, patching, cauterizing and sewing, he walked away from his patient that was almost as much a pain in the ass as he was.

He needed a smoke and someone to yell at. If anyone had heard him 'fessing to Thrace that he actually liked someone – especially her – then his reputation for being a crotchety, tough old bird was in danger. And that would never do.

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She was not alone. Someone was bending over her, coming at her from her right side. Someone was using the pads of their fingers to trace abstract patterns all over the left side of her chest.

The scent of sandalwood was the only thing that kept that 'someone' from becoming that 'someone minus one arm'.

"Damn, Lee – if you wanted to cop a feel – there are easier ways to go about it and not get caught with your hands in the cookie jar." Starbuck smirked at her friend as he jerked his hand away from the front closure of her hospital gown that had been folded open and laid flat to expose a good portion of her left breast.

Hastily wiping the salve from his fingers, Lee saw her smirk and the urge to smile at her being awake and talking to him or wipe that Starbuck expression off her face with a well placed come-back competed for tongue-space.

"That is rich coming from the lips of Little Miss 'I Am Not as Quiet as I Think I Am When I Am Alone in My Bunk In The Middle Of the Night'."

"Been waiting to say that long?" Starbuck asked.

"Only a couple of months," Lee confessed. Realizing that she remembered what he said to her the day before the worlds ended earned her an Adama-esque nod and wholly-Lee raised eyebrow.

'Not bad, Apollo." Ticking her tongue against the inside of her cheek told him she approved of his use of role reversal. A quirky smile reached her tired eyes. "Sorry to burst your happy-bubble Perve-Boy, but that was not me you were hearing. That was Racetrack thinking about Helo. But don't you dare say anything – to either of them. Because if you do, then I will have no choice but to spread the tale of what you did to the Commandant when you-"

"-Did absolutely nothing that anyone else needs to know about. Or was aided and abetted by a certain Cadet Thrace who had an axe to grind of her own against said Commandant. Now, thanks to you, I am going to have to send out a requisition request for brain bleach in order to purge the image of Racetrack wanking while thinking of Agathon." Lee exaggerated a shudder for her benefit.

"Come on now – be nice. Helo is not that bad." Starbuck teased some more. "All big and buff…"

"Don't tell me you?" Lee's look finished his sentence better than any words he could have said.

"Me? Karl? NO! Thinking about him 'doing the deed' is like asking your little brother about the first time he got laid. No way," Kara pulled a face like something sour had settled on her tongue and slipped into Starbuck mode. "You know it happened, but you don't want to think about it. Your brother, doing the things to someone, that you yourself like having done to you when frakking someone – you know what I mean?"

Camaraderie and relief at seeing one another evaporated the instant Starbuck crossed onto territory of which she had no visitation rights. Saying that she put her foot her foot in her mouth would be an understatement. In one fell swoop she conjured images and memories that she, Lee and the Old Man were still beating themselves and each other up over.

"Sorry, Lee." Kara's voice, not Starbuck's bravado, was nearly a whisper that carried enough guilt for all three of them.

A minute shake of her head and a subtle shift in her posture and Kara was all Starbuck. Who shot Lee a cheeky grin and a saucy wink.

"So, sailor – gonna tell me why I woke up with your hand on my girls?"

Accepting the out she gave him, Lee matched her Starbuck to his Apollo.

"I was just doing my duty, ma'am – doing my bit for the benefit of all man-kind." Apollo was all boyish charm. Brandishing a nearly forgotten tube of salve, he was chivalry incarnate. "Doc says that dabbing this ointment on you a couple of times a day will keep you from scarring."

"What the hell did that butcher do to me?" Starbuck demanded. If Cottle cut her open more than he admitted too… If what he did kept her out of the sky longer than she should be, then she could not be held accountable for her actions as she cooked up and served a whoop-ass sized portion of retribution-a-la-Starbuck.

"Easy, Starbuck. That man saved your life." Apollo reminded his wingman.

"Okay. Fine. He lives." Drowsiness was crowding the edges of her vision. The sudden adrenaline spike cost her energy that she did not have Rescinding her claim on Cottle's life was a way to back down without admitting that she was flagging. Looking at Apollo, who was still leaning forward in his chair, his forearms resting against his thighs, looking up at her, she had to break the heavy silence that was starting to creep in and fill the corners of her curtains.

"'Fess." The word was a challenge, a teasing comment and a command all rolled into one inflection.

Sitting up and scooting his chair closer to her bedside, Apollo lowered his voice. "All over your left side, you have a pair of burns on your chest that matches the number of times you flatlined and were brought back by a defibulator jump-starting your heart, Starbuck."

Starbuck was not prepared for serious tone Apollo used. "The doc said…-"

Apollo was gone in a blink of eye. In his place was, on good days, her best friend. Other days, he was still her best friend but it sometimes hard to tell as she was usually pissed at him for one reason or another. Today was a bad day, but she was not pissed. It was not every day her mortality was flung in her face with a flick of a blue-eyed gaze.

"Kara. I am not going to sugar coat this. It was bad. You died so many times." He looked at the ceiling to keep her from seeing what was replaying in his mind but he could not control the way his voice drew out his last three words.

Giving up on keeping his vulnerability in check, he let his words carry the same emphasis he heard in his head come out of his mouth.

"Cottle's staffs were physically and emotionally maxed out. Cottle was exhausted. And that was just by taking care of you and answering one emergency after another. Other cases came in and still, you toned. You could not be left alone. If we were on Caprica, you would have been in I.C.U .with a nurse assigned to you and a doctor on call." The days of her dubious survival played out in his eyes and the way his hands waved about in the space between them. "So Cottle taught me, Dad, Helo and Cally how to defibulate you, in case you flatlined when the nurses were otherwise engaged. Good thing he did because you crashed, Thrace: left, right and centre. Gods, Kara, at one point I walked in, three different alarms were going off all at the same time, and there was Cally, bent over you, trying to find a spot on your chest that had not been previously marked, before applying those frakking paddles."

What he left out was the rotation schedules that had been worked out so that C.A.P, refuelling runs, scouting missions and a bedside vigil for Kara could all exist at the same time. What he left out was the first time he put the paddles to her skin and coached himself – out loud – through the step-by-step procedure of re-starting her system as he watched half her body buck against his outstretched arms as bolts of life saving electricity were force-channelled into her heart. What he left out was how he never saw her breasts each time her gown was yanked wide by hurried hands intent on bringing her back one more time. What he left out was that all he saw were burn marks, in various stages of healing, standing out starkly against previously unmarred skin. What he left out was how, with each application of salve he, Cally, and Helo applied to her skin, they were each asking for her forgiveness for ricocheting her against the front end of the landing pod. According to Cottle's report, that was when the majority of the damage to her body was done. When she was slammed into her seat, her body had no where to go and nothing to absorb the shock of the impact so it transferred to her stomach lining, a not nearly healed kidney and her ribcage, fracturing four ribs. One of those jagged edges of broken bone punctured and deflated one of her lungs. This explained why her lips turned blue when she was first extracted from the cockpit and why she stopped breathing when she was set down on the deck. Ironically, because the fractures to her ribs occurred underneath her shoulder blades, where her back was jolted against the unforgiving shell of her Viper, the CPR he and Helo performed actually played a crucial role to her lying awake in front of him.

Lee was telling her what she wanted to hear, as macabre as that sounded. She was a warrior and a warrior deserves to know where, how and to what extent they are wounded. But as a woman, fellow ship-mate and friend to Lee, Cally, Helo and the Old Man, he was laying debts at her feet she could not immediately repay, if ever. Sure, she could protect them with her life. She did that every time she climbed those seven steps up that ladder and settled into the cockpit of her Viper. Those debts were blood-rights that a warrior paid to her tribe. What those four did for her: Kara, the woman, bunk-mate, fellow-human-being was … unsettling. Knowing that they did it without a second thought and without being asked made her even more uncomfortable. It was one thing for her to do things for them. But, feeling the burden of responsibility of living up to their expectations of friendship was disturbing. It meant that more would be at stake when she eventually frakked everything up and set them all off kilter – like she had done with Lee since the moment he came to see her in hack.

Dragging herself out of her thoughts, she considered the man in front of her. Who was currently standing and facing the curtains so that she could not see his face. So that she would not play on his vulnerability of seeing his friend die more than once. Inhaling deeply, drawing in traces of sandalwood, she steeled herself. Today was a new day in which she had only hurt him, albeit unintentionally, once. She did not know how long it would last given her temper and 'sunny disposition', but she planned on keeping her daily tallies to a minimum from here on out and she was starting with right here, right now.

"Lee?" Kara – not Starbuck – called out to the man whose shoulders carried a load almost as great as hers.

Turning around, Lee expected some dismissive comeback or mock flirtation. Instead, he was looking at Kara. The real Kara Thrace, the girl her brother fell in love with and the woman who challenged him to be a better pilot, a sharper leader and keep his humanity from diminishing, every day.

"Yeah, Kara?" His voice was soft. It did not carry the shield he usually hefted to keep Starbuck's barbs at bay or her eyes from seeing more than they should.

"Will… you…"

Why was this so hard? Starbuck gave her an answer that was the truth: she did not ask for help – she did not ask for anything. If she wanted something, she earned it. If it was something that could not be earned and needed to be seized - she took it. Stamping Starbuck down, Kara admitted that she did not know how to do this well, but she did remember, as a young girl, asking her father if he liked what she drew and knowing that what he thought was as important as drawing the picture in the first place. She did not need Lee's approval. She was her own woman and on that level she knew she had his respect as an officer, tactician and fellow pilot. As a friend, that was a completely differently arena in which they were both on unstable ground riddled with fault lines.

"Will you sit with me until I fall asleep?" Glancing up at the nearly depleted bag of fluids suspended from a standee set between the heart monitor and the deactivated ventilator, it would not be long before she got another dose of Doc Cottle's special sauce.

It was a struggle to keep his face even. Kara – not Starbuck – was lying in front of him and asking him for something. And not in a clingy, demeaning way. She was still the fiercest warrior, pilot, woman, Triad player, officer in the fleet. And she was not asking him for something he could not give or would compromise him in any way by saying 'yes' to her request. Kara needed Lee to be her friend and stay with her until she fell asleep. That was something he was glad to do. Despite being an 'enlightened man', there was still that primal part of him that needed to be needed. That providing the kind of companionship she needed the most validated places inside of him he had to guard carefully from Starbuck. It also started to fill in the myriad of cracks that ran the length and breadth of their friendship.

"Yes."

Thoughts of quantifying his time with her, telling her not to be surprised if she woke up and found Cally sitting next to her, a blithe comment about paperwork that could wait until later to be done – all these crossed his mind but never made it past his teeth. Because he realized that he was over thinking again. She asked him to stay until she fell asleep – nothing more. She knew he had things to do. That was why she did not ask him for more than what he could do.

Enjoying the sleepy smile that reached her eyes, Lee unlaced his boots and toed them off. With that done, he slouched down until the back of his head touched the backing of his chair. Folding his hands around his arms and across his chest, he balanced himself by propping his feet up and onto her bed just inches from her leg. Cocking his head to one side so that she could see his face more clearly, he did not break eye contact with her nor did she let go of his eyes until her lids dropped of their own volition.

Watching her sleep, it was a few minutes more until he realized that he had yet to re-close her gown. Carefully, as not to wake her, he lifted his feet off her bed and stood up. For the second time in an hour, he was bent over her. But, instead of him helping her to heal, they were helping each other apply balms to wounds that could only be seen behind words, actions and pride. Letting go of everything – for the moment – Lee resettled in his chair, put his feet back up on her bed and took up a different kind of vigil than the one he had been sharing with four other people. This was a watch that was entirely his own.

The regular beeping of her heart monitor became a slower, steadier rhythm that he found his own body quickly matching before dreamless sleep passed from her to him.

When the nurse came in to hang a fresh bag of electrolytes and administer Lt. Thrace's medication, she did so as quietly and as unobtrusively as possible. Stopping by the duty desk, she left word that unless one of the alarms went off in Thrace's 'room' then she could wait until the next shift to have her sutures redressed and her vitals recorded. Lt. Thrace was in the company of the best non-medical specialist for her case who went by the name of Captain Adama.

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Sharon was praying. She was thanking God for his many blessings and asking for His guidance for what was to come.

Her brother – their brother – was home and ready to do what he was born to do before necessity had driven him to abort carefully laid plans and, have all his likenesses destroyed so that there was no chance of their hand being tipped before Liberation Day, and seek refuge on their adoptive home world.

He had been biding his time well, she thought as the quiet of the Baystar allowed her to commune more closely with God.

The past eight days had been fraught with uncertainty. Every since news of Starbuck's accident was relayed by their spy network, Number Two had been more focused on the task at hand. Working and re-working the plan He gave them until every contingency had a counter-move and that there were as many exit strategies as there were infiltration points.

Now, all they needed to do was to wait for God to tell them when to move.

Uneasiness settled behind her clasped hands and a frown creased her forehead. A sense of guilt trembled her lashes before He set His soothing palm against her soul and chased away her doubt.

Humans should really be more difficult to trick, trap and enslave than this…

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