When Dee walks in, she looks worried and somewhat annoyed. Her eyes widen a bit as they take in the fact that Lee is also in hack, and narrow when she registers Kara's hand in his. Then she focuses on Admiral Adama, refusing to look over at the cell at all. "What's this about, Sir?"
Before the Admiral can reply, Kara butts in. "I want my dress back," she says, words only slightly slurred. "Whiskey comes out if you treat it with c-rations before you wash it."
The shock on Dee's face is enough to answer everyone's questions. Everyone's but Lee's, at any rate.
"What did she say to you that night?" he asks her, and she's in enough shock that she seems to forget that she's not acknowledging his existence.
"That I was a fool," she says indignantly. "And that my eyeshadow was hideous and clashed with her dress."
He turns to look at Starbuck, and she shrugs as if to say, "Someone had to tell her."
He should probably feel bad for Dee, but he can't spare the energy. Everything he has is focused on Kara right now. He'll worry about Dee later. Maybe.
The interrogation goes on for hours, but not much more is revealed than what Lee already knew.
She'd followed the song to the new fighter on the Science Ship. The voices had told her about the cylon attack, and she'd been in her new viper when she'd woken. It had been equipped with an FTL drive, and jump coordinates had already been keyed in.
"Are you a cylon?" President Roslin asks.
"No. I… I don't think so."
"And what makes you say that?"
"The song… there are cylons on board Galactica. I couldn't get it clear enough to tell who all of them were. I think its strength or weakness depended on how close I am to the person. I definitely heard that Anders was one of them though. And I think there were four more besides him. Two men. The other, I couldn't really be sure."
"I see. And you have no other evidence to prove that you're not a cylon?"
"Madame President, all due respect, but I think I have more evidence than most. I just helped to destroy a cylon fleet. I've got more cylon kills than most of this fleet put together. The cylons… the cylons took my ovary while I was on Caprica, and Doc Cottle's got the blood tests to prove that I'm the same person that I was then. Not to mention that the cylons locked me up for month on New Caprica. Why would they have done that if I were one of them?"
Lee's father is looking at Kara now as if he's been slapped in the face. It's never occurred to Lee that the old man would expect Kara to tell him about something as personal as her experience on Caprica. He knew she was closer to his father than he was, but that didn't exactly take much.
He looks at Kara to make sure she's okay, and is relieved to see that she is. She's not as serene as the first day she came to him, but hours of intensive interrogation coupled with drugs would do that to a person. More important is the fact that there's no flinching or defensiveness when she talks about her abuse at the hands of the cylons.
He takes her hand again anyway.
The last time they'd talked about her experiences with the cylons, she had been shaking, and covering it up by beating the hell out of the gym's only punching bag. She'd actually knocked it down… a life-long ambition of hers… and only then had she sat still and told him about Leoben.
Turns out that Leoben might have been right after all, about destiny and all that crap. Lee's not about to bring that up now though.
Roslin points out that Anders has also killed his fair share of cylons, and Kara has to admit that that's true. "I don't know how it works. Sharon said there was some kind of switch. Maybe it hadn't been turned on yet. I'm pretty sure it is now though."
On cue, a disheveled-looking Doc Cottle bursts through the door to tell them that Sam Anders has indeed tested positive for cylon blood.
Lee's had enough of chaos for one day, and he's grateful when his father and the President follow the doctor out, and he and Kara are left alone again. Well, alone except for a small marine contingent.
"You okay?" he asks.
She smiles at him, tired, but far less bitter than the old Kara would have been.
"Glad you're here," she says.
"You've always had a talent for landing me in hack," he tells her. He can tell by the far-off look in her eyes that she's remembering their Academy days, and it makes him wonder again about his previous telepathy question.
"Can you still hear what I'm thinking?"
She frowns, "No. I mean, I never really could hear your thoughts exactly. But they came through in your song."
That doesn't really make all that much sense, but nothing about this situation does, and besides, she's drugged and exhausted. They can talk about this later.
"I miss the songs," she mumbles, burrowing into the thin bed linens on her cot. She's clearly about to fall asleep; her words are slowing down. "Yours especially," she whispers. "I liked yours best."
The truth serum is supposed to last for at least six more hours, and he's sure his father and Roslin will be back sometime before then.
In the mean time, he's getting used to curling up with Starbuck at the end of the day. Her cot is small, but that's okay. It's not like he wants to keep his distance anyway.
----------------------------------
He's not sure how long they sleep, but they're woken by his father and President Roslin walking back into the brig.
He can tell the moment that Kara wakes, because she shifts and stretches against him, and it feels glorious.
He can also tell the moment when she realizes where she is, because every muscle tightens.
"Is Sam okay?" she asks.
His father looks askance at her, and she waits a bit before replying. "He was a newly-activated cylon. He could have done a lot of damage. But he was also mine, at one point. Being a cylon doesn't change that."
His father looks like he has a different opinion on that subject, but he has the grace to keep silent.
They resume questioning, but nobody's heart is really in it at this point.
Finally, President Roslin decides to call it a night.
"We'll put you in some more hospitable quarters, as long as you'll agree to have a marine guard stationed outside your door."
"Okay," Kara agrees, "S'long as Lee can stay with me."
"Double the marine guard," his father says, and Lee's not sure whether to be insulted or flattered. He settles for being glad that his father's going to allow him to stay with her.
She's been fading fast over the past hour. The drug has clearly combined with her exhaustion, and she's becoming less and less coherent. Lee's probably going to have to drag her to their new quarters. She doesn't look like she's really up for walking anywhere anytime soon.
"Is there anything else, Captain?" the President asks, sounding like she could use some rack time herself.
"Oh," Kara yawns, "Almost forgot. I know the way to Earth."
Lee's lost count of all the times Kara has shocked people speechless today. Apparently Kara has too, because she lays her head on his shoulder after that little pronouncement, and shows every sign of going back to sleep.
"Wake up Captain!" his father yells, and she scrubs at her face and blinks several times as she tries to focus on him.
"Paper," she tells him. "Paper and pencil. Then sleep. Saving all your asses is hard work."
President Roslin says something under her breath that sounds an awful lot like, "Don't I know it." There's no way they're leaving though, not until they have a map of some sort.
Kara keeps drifting off and then jerking awake again as she draws. Lee is this close to pointing out that the paper is likely to resemble a child's treasure map more than a reliable navigational chart at this point, and demanding that she be allowed to sleep, but he's fought enough battles for today.
She's here, and alive, and unhurt, and she can draw a better map tomorrow if need be. The fact that there will be a tomorrow for them at all is more than he ever could have hoped for a few short weeks ago.
When she finally puts down her pencil, she's covered at least ten sheets of paper. He takes them off her makeshift desk before she can fall asleep on them, and is astonished to discover star charts and celestial landmarks, carefully shaded and drawn with stunning accuracy. She'd mentioned art every now and then, but this… there aren't many artists left in the fleet today, and judging from this, she could be one of the best.
He wonders if the cylons make art. He hopes they do, because something like this, this ability to create and form and make beauty out of the ordinary, shouldn't stop, even if humanity doesn't make it.
And that thought leads him to thoughts of Earth. He wonders if she actually saw it, or saw or heard people there. It's a comforting thought… that there could be other humans out there, even if the entire fleet is destroyed.
He would ask her, but she's fallen asleep already. He hands the pictures to Roslin and the Admiral instead. Roslin looks floored, but his father doesn't seem so surprised, and Lee wonders once again just how much he knows about Kara Thrace.
Two marines step up to escort them to their new quarters, and he scoops Kara up and follows them out the door.
He has to stop once they get to the stairs and poke her awake enough so that she can stumble a bit on her own power. It's nice while it lasts though, the feeling of a sleeping weight in his arms.
When they get to their quarters, she makes a beeline for the bed, shedding clothes as she goes, and burying under the covers with a pleased hum before falling right back to sleep again. He's exhausted, but he spends a few more minutes just watching her before he climbs in beside her and lets sleep take him.