A/N: Thanks to Dani for the beta on this, and all of her support. :)
Chapter 2:
Lee took what was supposed to be his last breath as he watched the raider close in on his position. Then there was a sudden flash of movement and an explosion of light.
It was as if a veil had been obscuring his sight and suddenly it was lifted. All at once he took in what was going on around him. As soon as he saw which viper had flown to intercept the raider, his stomach dropped. "Kara!" he cried out as he watched her ship spiral out of control.
"I'm hit, I'm hit, I'm hit!" she yelled loudly. He could hear her heavy and frantic breathing from the other end of the comm channel.
"Frak!" he swore as he pulled back on the throttle, bringing himself back into the fight. He swerved and dodged, taking out a few of the straggling raiders as he tried to pull in beside Kara, who was slowly drifting away from the fight. He did his best to ignore the cold and clammy sweat that had broken out over his entire body, and the way that his hands were beginning to shake.
"My left thruster's shot," she said, her voice coming out in a rush.
For a few seconds his heart began to pound even harder. This was his fault, it was all his fault. He pushed the guilty thoughts to the back of his head; he'd have long enough to dwell on his mistakes later.
Before he had time to even think about coming up with a plan, the spiral that Kara's viper was in slowed a bit. He watched as she miraculously got her bird back under control. He let out a sigh of relief and had he been listening more carefully he would have heard Kara's as well.
When she straightened out her flight path completely, Lee caught a glimpse of her undercarriage. Something wasn't right. She flipped her bird end for end in a shaky and barely controlled move. He swore when he saw the damage.
"Starbuck, Apollo," he said, trying to gain back some measure of control by reverting to call signs. "Your landing gear is in pieces." He couldn't stop his voice from faltering slightly at the end when his throat tightened.
Her viper was facing his and he was just close enough that he could make out her face. She grimaced and bit her lip, a sure sign that she was worried. Then, all of a sudden, her eyes widened as she looked at something past his ship.
"Behind you!" she yelled.
Kara watched, heart racing and breathing shallow, as Lee turned his viper over and shot. The raider exploded, blood flying in all directions. He had been quick, too quick. There was no way that he had targeted that raider first. He was either flying on pure instinct or following her instructions blindly. She didn't know which was the scarier of the two.
Just then she heard Dee's voice coming in over the comm channel. "All vipers report back to Galactica, I repeat, all vipers report back to Galactica." Her voice was oddly calm in comparison to the blatant chaos of the battle.
All of the other vipers were punching it hard for home, except for Lee. He was hovering next to her viper.
"Eject," he told her. "I'll get Galactica to send out a …"
"No. There isn't enough time!" she yelled, thinking frantically at the same time. "They're jumping as soon as all of the vipers have landed."
"Frak!" he swore animatedly, shooting down a raider that had drifted toward them.
Kara struggled to breath as she realized what she was going to have to do. It was risky, hell it was downright insane, but it was the only option if she didn't want to be left behind.
"Cover me," she said sternly, leaving no room for argument.
"What are you doing Kara!"
"Shut up," she said tensely. "I'm flying back to Galactica and I need you to cover me because I sure as hell can't fly this busted up ship and shoot cylons out of the frakking sky too."
After a moment's hesitation Lee said, "That's great Kara, but how are you going to land?" His voice was sarcastic and she felt a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. If she'd had the time to think about it, she would have realized that it was because for a few seconds she'd gotten a glimpse of the old Lee.
"Not nicely," was her reply.
"Kara…"
"This is the only option," she stated firmly.
Kara said a silent prayer to the gods as she started towards Galactica, Lee followed beside her. It took all of her talent and concentration to keep her viper heading in a straight line. By the time they were within Galactica's defense perimeter her entire body was covered in a sheen of sweat. The muscles in her arms were tense and shaking from the exertion. She knew that it'd be hard to fly with one less thruster, but she didn't realize exactly how much precision and accuracy it would require.
Somewhere in the background Kara could hear someone from Galactica demanding a status report from them, and she heard Lee respond. As she got closer and closer to the landing bay her heart beat increasingly faster and a bad feeling began to grow low in her gut.
She told Lee to land his bird first, but he wouldn't. Instead of arguing with him, she just went for it. It would be pointless anyway; Lee was the most stubborn person that she knew.
As she entered into the flight pod she started shaking as the strain on her muscles started to get unbearable. Just a few more seconds…
She was closing in on the deck fast. She needed to slow down and soon. Without any landing gear she needed the gentlest touch down possible. Kara moved to hit the reverse thrusters but they didn't fire.
She closed her eyes and braced for impact.
Lee was out of his viper faster than he thought possible. He watched in horror as they tracked in the mangled remains of Kara's viper, her still inside. The glass of the canopy was laced with cracks, and they were just able to make out Kara inside. She was moving but her wireless and transponder had cut out when she hit the trap. They had no way of knowing how badly she was hurt. Lee wished there was a possibility that she wasn't hurt, but he knew the truth. There was no way, not with a landing like that… The guilt threatened to take root inside him but he did his best to push it aside for the time being.
Having passed off his helmet and collar to a nearby deckhand, Lee ran a hand through his sweat drenched hair. His eyes were transfixed on the twisted metal and he watched them pull it the final distance. The tip of the right wing scraped against the deck as the viper shifted slightly. The contact was enough to create a spark, just a small one. It landed in a puddle of fuel that was leaking from Kara's viper. The next thing Lee knew the viper was surrounded by flames.
Without thinking Lee ran forward as he yelled at the chief, "Get her out of there right frakking now!"
He could see Kara trying to open the canopy from inside, but it must have jammed. He began to panic. Before the Chief or any of the deckhands could do anything to help her she'd slammed her elbow through the already weakened glass. Somehow she managed to pull herself out through the opening, immediately throwing herself onto the wing and sliding to the ground.
She landed hard on her back in the flames. Lee darted forward through the crowd of deckhands and grabbed her arm, pulling her up bodily. She stumbled through the flames and crashed into him. He automatically brought his arms around her and dragged her away from the viper. He only stopped when they were a safe distance away.
Kara was sagged against him and they stayed like that for a few seconds. Lee couldn't help but tighten his arms around her, reassuring himself that she was there, and she was alive. He was more than a little surprised when her arms tightened around him too, leaving absolutely no space between their bodies.
He moved to pull off her helmet, a certain desperation leading his movements. He tried to be gentle, but she still winced in pain when it accidentally brushed against her forehead. There was a nasty bruise spreading across her pale skin and Lee looked down into her eyes frantically, needing to make sure that she was going to be ok.
Somewhere in his peripheral vision he registered the deckhands extinguishing the fire before it spread any further. He would have sighed with relief because the fuel tank hadn't ignited if he hadn't been otherwise preoccupied. She was looking at him with such intensity that he thought he might be shaking. He needed to look away, he couldn't take it, but his body wouldn't obey his commands. Their eyes were locked together, and it was like nothing else even mattered. Suddenly that isolated world was abolished.
Medics were pulling Kara away from him and lifting her onto a stretcher. He started to panic, and instinctively reached out to pull her back to him. He had to force his hands back to his sides. She would be ok; she was in the hands of professionals, but that didn't mean he could bring himself to leave. They peeled off her flight suit and Lee saw that her skin was covered in bruises and tiny scrapes, but thankfully no burns. He had never been so frakking glad that their suits were fire retardant than he was right then.
Lee's breath caught in his throat as he saw her knee. It was bruised and swollen, very swollen. She bit her lip and squinched her eyes shut as one of the medics touched it lightly. It was bad, Lee didn't have to be an expert to know that. He had to turn away as she let out a gasp of pain when one of the medics prodded her leg again. The guilt hit him like a freight train.
He had done this to her. He fought back the tears as he strode across the hanger bay, fists clenched in anger at himself. He should stay, but he couldn't. He was a coward, but he just couldn't face the damage that he'd done.
Kara remembered very little of her landing and her subsequent evacuation from the viper and rush to sickbay. What she could recall was very blurry, but Cottle assured her that was due to the concussion. Thankfully the throbbing in her head had subsided. Not completely, but enough for her to think without wincing in pain. Her head wasn't the only thing causing her pain though.
It felt like someone was stabbing a knife into her knee repeatedly, and the burning pain had started to spread through the rest of her leg. The painkillers weren't even helping with that. She had to close her eyes tightly to hold back the tears as she shifted her position, trying to ease the horrid feeling. If anything it only made it worse.
Sickbay was relatively quiet given the heavy losses they had endured. Kara didn't know specifics, but she'd caught fragments of other people's conversations in the medical wing. The Greenleaf Freighter and some other three ships had been destroyed. A handful of additional ships had sustained serious damage, including The Rising Star and Colonial One. She didn't even want to think about how many people they'd lost.
Kara closed her eyes and since she wasn't allowed to sleep yet, she just lay there. The heavy white curtains were drawn closed around her bed, but she could still make out sounds. Cottle giving orders, a few cries of pain and the sudden crack from a little to her left as a bone was set. She suppressed a shudder and clasped her hands tightly together.
The hours passed by slowly as she remained there. Every once and a while a nurse would check in to see that she hadn't fallen asleep. Kara was waiting for Lee, making the option for sleep non-existent. She thought that he would have followed her to sickbay straight from the hanger deck, like the time when she had crash-landed on the moon. He had gotten to sickbay and stayed by her side, refusing to leave. In the end it was only Cottle's threat of having him escorted out by marines that got him to go. But even then he had come to visit every chance he got.
She knew that he'd have CAG things to do, but it had been at least three hours and he should have made the time to see her by then. Deep down she knew he wasn't coming, but she refused to accept the fact. He was her best friend; he was supposed to be there with her.
She tried to shift positions again, but it just sent another sharp stab of pain through her knee. She winced and when she opened her eyes she saw that the curtain to her 'room' was being pulled open. She felt a surge of hope. It was quickly squashed when Helo stepped through and closed the curtain behind him.
"What?" he asked as he walked over to the side of her bed. "Not happy to see me?"
She put on a smile for his benefit, but quickly dropped it when he gave her a look that said 'nice try'.
"Sorry," she said quietly, settling back against the pillows more comfortably. "I thought you were someone else."
"I know," Helo said sadly as he sat down on the left side of Kara's bed. He placed on hand gently on her shoulder. "Apollo's in his rack."
Kara just nodded, looking past Helo to stare blankly at the expanse of white. He hadn't come, and he wasn't going to.
"Hey," Karl said quietly, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "He'll probably stop in tomorrow."
She just shrugged; she doubted that he would come. Helo leaned in and wrapped his arm around her shoulders in an awkward hug. When he placed a gently kiss on the top of her head she gave in and wrapped her arms around him too. He chuckled lightly and pulled her against him gently, so as not to move her leg.
"So," he said after a few seconds, pulling back to look at her. "What's the verdict?"
She sighed as she leaned back against the tilted bed. "Concussion." He pointed to the bruise on her head and she nodded. "And a frakked up knee."
"How frakked are we talking?" he asked tentatively as he repositioned himself on the bed.
She looked up to meet his gaze. "Frakked."
He grimaced. "That bad?"
She tilted her head from side to side, easing the tension in her neck before she responded. "I guess not," she said degradedly. "A week in here and then two or three more before I can fly again."
Helo looked relieved. "It could be worse," he said, and she knew he was trying to be encouraging. "I didn't see your landing, but I heard about it." He paused for a moment. "Plus I saw what was left of your viper."
She looked at him questioningly and he explained.
"I was on a maintenance shift." She nodded, noticing for the first time that Karl had remnant streaks of grease and oil on his arms. She had known he was helping the knuckle draggers, but somewhere in all the action she'd forgotten. The concussion probably wasn't helping with that either. "I came down here as soon as I could."
He had come straight there, that's what Lee should have done. It wasn't that he didn't care. No, she knew that he did. He'd pulled her out of the frakking flames, probably burning himself in the process. She couldn't remember for sure though. It didn't matter anyway, she clearly remembered the way that he had looked at her as he pulled off her helmet, concern and care written all over his face. It wasn't that he didn't care.
Kara nearly jumped when Karl shook her shoulder lightly.
"What?" she asked automatically, focusing her eyes on his face.
"You ok?" he asked in a worried voice. "Want me to get Cottle?"
"What?" she repeated. "No, I'm fine."
"Uh huh," Helo responded quietly, fixing her with a skeptical look.
"Just thinking," she said quietly. "Anyway, what were you saying?"
He continued to look at her before he answered. "I have to go. I'm part of the raptor scouting party and we leave at 0600."
"What raptor party?"
Helo gave her an odd look. "I'm surprised you don't know."
She shrugged like it didn't matter, but she was actually upset. She knew that things were hectic after all the events of the day, but someone should have at least given her an update on the latest information.
"We're scouting all of the nearby star systems for raw materials, specifically tyllium. One of the fuel tankers got hit hard, lost all of its refined tyllium. It's salvageable, but we need to get more fuel. And to get more fuel, we need…"
"More tyllium," Kara said finishing his sentence. "How much is left?" Kara asked, unsure if she really wanted to know the answer.
Helo sighed and she knew it wasn't good. "Enough for about three, maybe four more jumps. Assuming that all the ships are capable of jumping without falling apart, which at this point they aren't. Nearly half of the fleet is down for repairs of some kind. A few ships, including Colonial One can't jump any more right now. Just using their FTL drives to get here put them under too much strain. Another jump would finish them off." Helo paused for a moment before continuing. "We got hit, and we got hit hard."
Kara just nodded. She knew that, she'd been out there and had seen it first hand.
"So what's the plan?" she asked, bringing her mind back to the present. But before Helo could answer she continued. "No, let me guess. We stay here and repair the ships, only jumping if the cylons find us. And in the mean time we use the fuel we have to search for more tyllium."
The look on Helo's face told her she was exactly right. "Simple enough," he said.
"As long as we can find some tyllium," Kara replied quietly. "Let's just hope it works."
Helo moved to stand up. "It should." He levered himself up off the infirmary bed and stood for a few seconds just looking down at Kara. "Get better," he said quietly as he squeezed her shoulder lightly.
"Kay," she said, giving him a small smile. She watched as he slipped out of her little alcove, leaving her alone to think. Her mind of course drifted back to the thing, or the person rather, who was always haunting her thoughts these days.
By the time Cottle came in to check on her during his nightly rounds, Kara was still thinking about Lee. She was torn between being sad and being furious. Why did Lee always have to make her head spin?
Cottle stood by her bedside and glared at her, looking as if he hated her being there, which he probably did. He passed her two small pills and a glass of water. "This'll reduce the swelling, if you take them. If not, then we'll be spending a lot more quality time with each other, and I'll start billing you by the hour."
Kara glared at him angrily, she wasn't happy about being stuck with him for the next week either. Looking down at her knee she saw that it was still swollen, along with being mottled with blue bruising splotches. The brace hid most of the rest of her leg, but she knew it'd look the same if she could see the skin.
Kara made a face, but otherwise didn't complain as she forced the medication down her throat, nearly choking in the process.
Cottle fixed her with an odd look, but didn't comment verbally. On his way out he turned and looked over his shoulder. "You can sleep now," he said as if it was just an afterthought.
She muttered something, acknowledging that she had heard him. Then he was moving on to the next patient. She was by herself again, not that Cottle even counted as company to begin with.
Kara sighed and closed her eyes, not even bothering to try and get comfortable, it would never happen. Sickbay beds were bad enough to begin with, but adding a busted and throbbing knee into the equation made comfort truly impossible to attain. But sleep seemed like the best option at that point since her mind was simply wandering in circles. Plus her head was starting to hurt again and it felt a little better when her eyes were shut.
After what seemed like an eternity, Kara drifted off into a restless sleep. Dreams came to her, fragmented and brisk, just clips of scenes playing themselves out in her head. Some were actual memories, but others were just things conjured up by her mind.
She was falling through a cold and dense, cloudy atmosphere in her viper. Suddenly she was yanked up and out of the cockpit as she ejected.
The next thing she knew, she was on the barren ground, being dragged along roughly as the high speed winds caught in her chute. She was sliding across the terrain quickly and her knee connected with something hard. It was a rock. Her vision exploded into tiny white lights as the pain flared up.
She was flying through the black of space, looking for Lee. She was his wingman and it was her job to keep him safe. There. He was over to her left. A raider was heading straight for his unmoving bird and Kara moved in to intercept. She was a fraction of a second too late and she watched in horror as her best friend was blown into pieces in front of her eyes.
This time she did make it in time. The raider fired and it was her viper that took the hit. The shot didn't graze the undercarriage. Instead it hit the cockpit. She was dead.
She stood in the ready room, staring at Lee as he stood directly in front of her. He was yelling at the top of his lungs. He was screaming at her so hard that his face was contorted. "This is your fault! You screwed up. I wanted to die, but YOU wouldn't let me!" His voice turned cold and quiet at the last second. "I hate you."
Kara's eyes flew open so fast; it was as if someone had flicked a switch. She sat upright, but then grasped the sheets tightly as her stomach lurched, the movement too quick for her injuries. She was breathing hard and beads of sweat were gathering at her temples.
Blindly she reached for a glass of water from the bedside table. She drank it quickly, ignoring the luke warm temperature of it. It took her a few minutes, but eventually she got herself back under control.
She lay back down hesitantly and ran a hand across her face. When she closed her eyes images from the last scene ran through her mind and she had to open them again. She used the heel of her hand to roughly wipe away the tears that were building in her eyes.
Sleep wouldn't come easily, not now. It was the same with most of her other nightmares. Once she had one, she wouldn't be able to sleep for the rest of the night. Every time she tried she'd be assaulted with images.
Most of the images she could have dealt with though. Crash landing on the moon, frakking up her knee, hell… even dying. It was seeing Lee yelling at her, telling her that he wanted to die, that was what she couldn't handle.
TBC