Previously:
"Mission report," he said automatically. The smile began to fade from Kara's face and he wished that he could take his words back.
"You haven't written yours yet?" she asked quietly.
Lee shook his head and sighed. "No." There was no need to elaborate why. "But the Admiral wants them on his desk by the end of the day."
"Umm, Lee," Kara began in an unsure voice. "There's something that you should probably know."
Chapter 5Lee looked at her warily. Shit. When she had been writing up her own mission report she obviously hadn't been thinking. It could have been the fact that she was damn near high on painkillers and that she wanted to get the paperwork out of the way. Or because she thought she'd see Lee that night, and she'd have time to explain her decision to him. But after everything and him not coming to see her, she'd completely forgotten about it, and now like most things did, it was coming back to bite her in the ass.
"What are you talking about Kara?" Lee asked in a demanding voice. He wanted an answer. She just hoped he'd realize that she'd done it for him.
"I…" She couldn't look at him, so she dropped her gaze down to the bed. As her fingers began to play with the frayed edge of the thin wool blanket she continued. "I didn't exactly…" She took a deep breath. "I didn't exactly tell the truth."
"What!" Lee said, getting angry.
She tore her gaze away from the bed and looked at him. She'd started and now she had to finish. She just hoped that it wouldn't tear their shaky friendship apart.
"I didn't lie," she said quickly, hoping that the explanation would make sense to him in the way it did in her head. "I just left some stuff out."
By the hardened, angry look on his face, she could tell that he knew which parts she was referring to. He opened his mouth, probably to reprimand her, but she started talking again quickly. At least that way he'd know the whole truth before he started yelling at her.
"I did it for you Lee. So that your dad wouldn't know exactly what happened. Because I thought that if you wanted him to know, then you'd want to tell him, instead of him reading it in someone else's mission report." Kara's voice dropped off near the end. She held her breath as the look on Lee's face played between anger and relief.
Eventually he leaned back in the chair and let out a disheartened sigh as he ran one hand over his face. Kara let out the breath she had been holding. After a few tense minutes of silence Lee spoke in a quiet voice.
"What did you write in your mission report?" he asked in an almost pleading voice. "I should at least make sure that ours are the same."
Kara found herself nodding. She didn't want him to have to cover up for her mistakes, but it wouldn't be good to have two conflicting reports. Not that she thought the Old Man would chastise her if he found out what she had been doing, but it was still better if he didn't know.
"I'm sorry Lee," she blurted out quickly, looking away from him again. "I wasn't trying to make this harder."
"I know," he said, sounding mostly sincere, if not still a little angry. "What did you write?" His words were half questioning and half demanding.
She inadvertently took another deep breath before she started her explanation. "The only thing that I changed was… you know."
"I know." His voice was flat and without looking at him she couldn't judge his reaction.
It didn't really matter though. She still felt like she was back in her childhood, screwing up for the umpteenth time.
Still not looking up at Lee she began to talk. "I said that you and I were engaged in another dogfight, drifting away from the main fight." Which they had been, in a way. It wasn't a lie. "And that I was shooting down raiders and when I flipped back around all I saw was a raider coming straight for you. I tried to shoot, but I had run out of ammo. So I… I flew in between you and the raider."
She just hadn't mentioned how Lee had frozen up, how she had spent at least three minutes constantly killing cylons and covering his ass while he sat there, completely unmoving. "There. That's it," she said quickly, trying to gain back some composure.
"He probably figured it out Kara." The distinct lack of anger in his voice coaxed her head back up. "My dad is a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them." Before she could respond or get mad about him pointing out the inadequacies of her plan, Lee started talking again.
"But he doesn't know for sure." He sighed again and Kara felt less angry. "That's why he didn't revoke my flight status."
She couldn't tell if he was actually talking to her, or just thinking out loud. Either way she couldn't stop herself from saying, "He doesn't need to revoke your flight status."
Lee let out a sound that was halfway between a snort and an indignant laugh. "You sure about that?"
At first she couldn't say anything. She couldn't believe that Lee doubted his abilities in a viper. "Yes," she responded, looking him straight in the eye.
Lee had to look away as Kara's gaze burned into him. How could she not see it? There was no way that he was fit to fly, not after what had happened.
"Lee," she said quietly and he was tempted to look back at her. "It won't happen again," she said. She sounded so damn sure about it that he snapped.
"How do you know that!" he asked, his voice near yelling. "When I'm out there I'm endangering everyone's lives. Someday I'll freeze up again, and someone is going to die because of it."
She barely even flinched, and he had to admire that. "It's not going to happen again," she stated. "It was your first time in combat since we destroyed the resurrection ship."
He couldn't stop a shiver from running down his spine as she talked. If it weren't for that frakking ship…
"How can you be so sure?" he asked, his voice suddenly evolving from anger into uncertainty.
For a second he thought that he might have asked the wrong thing. Kara was staring at him with a weird look on her face and it took her a few seconds to answer.
"I just know. I know that sounds stupid, but it's true." She took a deep breath before continuing. "I don't know how many times I've seen people freeze up, but it only ever happens once."
Lee had seen people freeze up too, just like she had, and she was right, it never happened more than once. Although that was mostly because after freezing up the first time they didn't get a chance to do it again.
"Have you flown since then?" Kara asked, her voice so quiet that he could barely make it out.
He shook his head. "Not yet, I've been too tied up with paperwork. And with Pegasus here we aren't short on pilots anymore."
He tried to fight back the dread he felt at flying again. How was he supposed to even get back in that cockpit? Being a viper pilot meant flying to save people's lives, not to end them.
She must have been able to read the doubts on his face because she reached over and laid her hand gently on his forearm. "I know you'll be fine." She sounded so certain that he found himself nodding.
He had to get over this right? He felt somewhat better; that had to mean something. Maybe he would be fine. Everything was just so muddled in his head that he couldn't straighten it into something that made sense, into something that was logical.
He supposed that he'd just have to face that challenge when he came to it; there was nothing more that he could do. It wasn't like he could prepare himself for freezing up in combat. In the end he'd either be fine like Kara said, or he'd die. He shuttered at the thought. He didn't want to die.
"You okay?" Kara asked quietly, her hand still lying gently on his arm.
"I don't want to die Kara," he said softly, his voice nearly catching in his throat. He didn't know what made him say it, but once again he just couldn't stop the words from escaping his mouth.
She nodded her head slightly and let out a sigh of relief.
If he had been moving he would have paused at the look on her face. Something suddenly dawned on him. It wasn't just his absence in sickbay that had affected Kara; it was the whole thing, probably starting from the very moment he told her he didn't want to make it back. Hell, maybe even since he ejected from the blackbird, the ship she had helped create. Frak! This was his problem not hers, but he should have never expected it to be that easy. Things never were when it came to them.
"Then why…" she started quietly before pausing. She looked like she wasn't sure whether or not she wanted to continue. "Why did you say that?"
"I was tired of fighting," he admitted softly, not needing her to specify what she was talking about. "I was just so tired of it all." Lee had no idea where all the blatant honesty was coming from, but it wasn't as hard or as awkward as he would have guessed.
"Tired of what?" Kara asked hesitantly.
"Everything," he said before letting out a deep sigh. After a few moments pause he continued. "We're supposed to be doing what's right. But we can't even do that anymore."
Her guess from earlier that morning had been right, or at least partially right.
"Your dad made the right decision Lee."
It was as if her words had flicked a switch, because the next thing she knew he was glaring at her and talking in an icy tone. "That's what you call a right decision? Resolving disputes with your superior officers by attempting to assassinate them?" She pulled her hand away quickly.
"That's what you think it was Lee, a dispute?" she asked angrily, automatically shifting into defensive mode. "She would have destroyed the entire human race. He made the right decision and even then he still backed down from it."
"But he made the decision in the first place Kara, him and the president."
"What else were they supposed to do Lee? They were acting on a gut feeling, one that was right."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Kara took a few breaths to calm herself before answering. "She would have destroyed the entire fleet. Is that what you wanted?" She couldn't help herself from adding in the last scathing comment, even though she knew it would make him mad. She was just so frakking frustrated. Why wasn't Lee getting this?
"Please explain to me how she was going to single-handedly annihilate humanity," he said sarcastically. "I didn't like her either Kara, but deciding to kill her wasn't the answer."
Kara had to fight back the urge to smack Lee upside the back of his head. "She would have jettisoned our civilian fleet," Kara managed to grit out from behind clenched teeth.
Lee was still looking at her harshly. "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked, repeating his question from earlier.
Frak. He honestly didn't know. Kara gulped before answering, her voice losing most of its venom.
"Pegasus had a civilian fleet." She registered the shocked look on Lee's face that only served to confirm her guess, but she just kept talking. "Cain ordered the ships to be stripped for parts, including FTL drives. And she took some of the passengers to work on Pegasus. It wasn't voluntary. Then she left them stranded."
"You knew this and you still thought that we were better off with her leading the fleet?"
Great, she had put him on the defensive and now he was attacking her. She clenched her fists.
"I didn't know that until after the funeral Lee."
Kara watched closely and carefully as Lee alternated between looking pissed off and disgusted. She felt her heart constrict.
"Well I guess I just miss out on all the important things," he said. His voice was so acidic that she flinched as the words left his mouth, then his whole demeanor suddenly softened. "Sorry," he said, his voice barely audible, as he averted his eyes.
She knew there was something else he was thinking about. She wanted to know, but she wasn't sure that asking would be the smartest plan. But she rarely did the smart thing.
"What are you talking about?" she asked, keeping her voice quiet.
"We… they found tyllium. I didn't find out until the middle of the briefing this morning. I was already supposed to know." It was silent for a few moments until he added, "Did you know?"
He turned to face her, and he looked so vulnerable… she couldn't lie to him.
"Yes," she said, nodding her head once to emphasize the point. "I heard one of the nurses talking about it this morning."
Lee let out a long shaky breath and leaned back in his chair. He looked exhausted. She wished that there was some way, any way, that she could make things less hard for him.
"What's wrong with me?" he asked quietly while staring off at the curtain on the other side of the bed from him.
Her heart constricted again. How the hell was she supposed to answer that? "You're going through a lot," she responded, her voice just as quiet as his had been. "You can't be perfect all the time Lee. No one can."
She was surprised when he chuckled. "You think I'm perfect?" he asked speculatively. His gaze remained fixed on the curtain.
Kara nodded, but then remembering that he couldn't see her said, "As close to perfect as anyone can be."
Then he smiled and turned to look at her. Kara found herself smiling too. She'd done something right and it felt damn good.
Kara thought that he was perfect. Her judgment had to be skewed in some way, but it still felt frakking good to hear someone say that. But if he was being completely honest with himself, it felt that good because of who was saying it. She'd seen him at his absolute worst and she still felt that way.
He felt like a frakking yo-yo though. One second he was depressed, the next he was angry, and then suddenly he was happy. Not that he minded the happy part. It felt damn good to be smiling again.
Reluctantly he checked his watch. He had a few hours until he was due on Colonial One for a meeting with the president.
"You have to go?" Kara asked as she shifted a bit in the bed.
He shook his head. "Not really. I have to catch a shuttle in just under three hours."
Kara's face lit up and she reached over to the small table beside her bed. He wondered what the hell she could be doing. When she pulled out a deck of cards from the top drawer he stopped wondering.
"Wanna play a few rounds?" she asked. She was still smiling, but she sounded hesitant. Not that he could really blame her. He knew better than anyone how unpredictable he could be these days.
"You mean do I want to let you steal my money? You should know the answer to that," he said. He smirked as he took the cards from her hand and started to deal.
TBC