Needless to say, the fight wasn't going well.
She collapsed onto her back with the grim realization that she was in the last moments of life settling upon her like G-force. The Cylon walked casually near the mouth of a crater that used to be the second floor lobby and picked up the Arrow. Kara rolled towards a bombed out wall and pulled herself to her feet. The machine turned towards her with a wicked expression as she lazily twirled the Arrow in her left hand.
Kara decided that if she was about to have her ticket punched, it would at least be on her terms. Her body tensed for one last surge and the Cylon tensed for her attack as well.
Just as Kara was about to push off the wall with a roar, the sound of a single shot brought her to a halt. She watched as a shocked and pained expression crossed her opponent's face as a line of blood trickled out of her mouth. The Arrow clattered on the floor and she pitched forward to crash to the floor, dead.
Kara slumped against the rubble with a sigh of relief and looked up at her savior only to find probably the biggest surprise of her life. He was pale and dirty and he had a horribly unkempt beard, but those baby blues were unmistakable, and the way they crinkled when he smiled could never be imitated. She felt a giddy sensation come over her that had nothing to do with blood loss or a concussion and she managed to whisper, "Lee?"
He kneeled in front of her and his hand gently caressed her cheek, "You are the last person I ever thought I'd see here, Kara."
She smiled and laughed, "Yeah well, I'm pretty shocked myself." He laughed and brushed some hair away from her face, her eyes fluttered shut and she felt the cold knot that formed in the pit of her stomach after the Old Man told her about Lee's death over Caprica come loose.
He pulled her to her feet and made a show of brushing dirt and debris off her and she smirked slightly, "I have to ask, Starbuck, what the frak are you doing here?"
She shrugged, "The Old Man thought he left the iron on and I said I'd pop back here and check for him."
He nodded and glanced at the collar of her BDUs, "I guess you would, I mean how else would he promote you to Captain if you weren't running his errands?"
She laughed then reached out and yanked him into a tight embrace and buried her face in his shoulder, "The Old Man is gonna be so happy when we get back…"
She felt Lee chuckle, "So happy I might even get him to crack that stone face of his and smile."
Her barking laugh echoed around them and she pulled away just enough to look up at his face, "Let's not get crazy, Apollo."
She walked over towards the Cylon corpse and after giving it a kick in the head that did her battered ego good, she picked up the Arrow. The adrenalin was starting to filter out of her system and she started to sag against the wall when Lee grabbed her arm, "No, we have to go, we'll have two hours tops before the download completes and she sends a bunch of Toasters here to kill us." He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and urged her towards the exit.
She frowned but didn't shrug off his arm, "Are you sure?"
"I'll explain later, we have to move Captain!"
A part of her smiled, she had forgotten just how well versed Lee was in military psychology, the use of her rank above her name or call sign immediately clamped the situation into an escape scenario. They hit the front door of the museum and checked the street outside before they left.
Kara followed him into an alley before she stopped, "Alright, explanation."
He shrugged, "Which part?"
"Why do you have a time table on the Cylons' download process?"
He frowned, "Leave it to you to ask the question in such a way to make it the most complicated." She gave him an expression he'd seen a thousand times before, she was annoyed and rapidly throttling up her temper. He decided, for the sake of his jaw, that he wouldn't stall one second longer. "We took a Cylon Prisoner."
&&&&&&&&&
Karl had watched her warily from the moment Apollo left for the museum. Sharon had been adamant that he went there and found the Arrow of Apollo for some reason and they finally relented. He'd been gone for over an hour and Karl wondered… "I didn't send him into an ambush!"
He looked up into Sharon's hard expression and felt somewhat sheepish that she'd read him so well. There was no point in lying to her, "Fine." He looked down at his hands with a frown and slight nagging sensation of being chastised by the Cylon. After a moment, he turned back to her and locked eyes with her, at that moment he didn't see a Cylon merely the woman who'd been by his side every step of the way and even now was carrying his child. "Why-" His voice cracked and he coughed to clear his throat slightly then tried again, "Why me?"
She smiled slightly, "You may not believe me, but I care for you Karl, the other Boomer did too. Before the Fleet jumped away from Ragnar, they managed to get a transmission from her and we learned you were still on Caprica. They thought that you might present an opportunity for an experiment." He must have scowled because Sharon chuckled and said. "Not like that, some of the Twos felt that the reason Cylons had been unable to procreate with humans was a lack of love, the divine spark that drives us to care for the life within us. They hoped if you could love me and I could love you that we'd be able to create a child."
The smile came unbidden to his face at her admission, Sharon loved him and despite knowing she was a Cylon, it still felt better than he could hope. "It worked too well, I loved you and our daughter too much to let the Cylons have her."
He lurched to his feet and crossed the room with heavy feet and knelt before her. His hand shook as it reached out towards her stomach, "'Daughter?'" Sharon nodded encouragingly and he placed his hand over her stomach, logically he knew that he wouldn't feel anything in fact unless the Cylon-Human hybrid gestated rapidly, it'd be months before he did but somehow the act of touching where his child was growing made all his doubts vanish. Even Sharon's betrayal evaporated and his love for her felt like it was clawing at his throat to be let out. "Gods Sharon, I love you both so much."
He looked up to see tears in her brown eyes and as he started to speak a voice neither of them had heard in almost two months broke the mood. "Sweet frakking Lords of Kobol! What in the name of hell is going on here?"
The ECO whipped around and stared wide-eyed at the pair before him. Apollo had brought the Arrow with him, but also had found Starbuck. "How… What… Kara?"
The blonde pilot smirked at him warmly, it was as close as most people got to a full-out smile from Kara Thrace, and Karl basked in it. Then her eyes took in Sharon, an expression of absolute betrayal marred her features before her hand snapped to her sidearm. He started to move in front of Boomer while Apollo's hand covered hers over her gun and the two turned to each other and seemed to carry on a very intense conversation silently before Lee shook his head and spoke softly in a voice as smooth as Tauron whiskey, "Kara."
She looked at her friend for a long moment before she said just as softly, "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure." Both men recognized the look in her eyes and Lee smirked, "If I'm wrong, I promise before she goes crazy and kills us you can say 'toldya so.'"
Karl had to bite his cheek quite hard not to laugh and he noticed Sharon's shoulders shaking as well. After a moment of silence in which Starbuck tried to look indignant, she simply said. "That's all I ask."
&&&&&&&&&
Kara looked up at the yellow tinted sky as she led Lee, Karl and Boomer… She scowled slightly and amended her thoughts, the Cylon away from the bombed out diner bound for her apartment. She hadn't set foot in the place in well over a year, when she'd visited Marcia before her friend from the Academy left for a fifteen-month deep probe on the Pegasus under then-Commander Cain and even then it was only long enough to pay her rent up for another six months.
Zak's ghost lived there, and Kara had had no real interest in being haunted by it, even now. However, she knew there were supplies there that they could use and hopefully her truck was still there too. Lee had mentioned their raid of the air strip outside of Delphi and his hope that Boomer might be able to get them a transport but they definitely had to get out of the city ASA-Frakkin'-P.
That was probably the only reason she didn't shrug Lee's hand off and riddle the Toaster with holes when she saw it in the first place.
Thankfully, Lee and Karl didn't show themselves brain-dead and kept its restraints tight as they ducked through alleyways that were getting increasingly disgusting as they found themselves entering what had been the bad part of town. "Almost there."
She found a dilapidated chain-link fence and pushed on it then signaled for the others to step through the gap she'd created. After she followed them, she reclaimed point and led them into her run-down apartment complex and down a flight of steps until she'd arrived on the basement floor, she led them down the hall and stopped into front of her beat up door. "Bring your keys with you, Starbuck?"
She turned to find Lee smirking at her and she gave him a cocky grin in response. She noticed the raised eyebrow he gave her and wondered if perhaps it looked different with the blood and dirt on her face and the shiner she felt forming around her left eye, "Of course."
One solid kick had her door hanging precariously on one hinge and the quartet descended the steps into her apartment. Karl made some comment about the slashed canvases in the corner and her rather morbid mural on the wall and she told them they were hers. She also gave Lee a grateful look when he squeezed her forearm in a comforting fashion.
Helo and Boomer slumped onto the couch while she rummaged for batteries and Lee refilled their canteens with the jugs of water she kept in the pantry and dropped in purifying tablets. When she found batteries she popped them into her radio and the sounds of one of her father's mournful songs filled the room. She picked up her father's old jacket and lovingly ran her fingers over the paint-stained fabric then began to search the pockets. Lee took her hand before she could find her lighter and led her over to her bed, which was how she came to feel Lee's gentle fingers gliding over her cheek with a sterilizing pad from her first aid kit.
As he wiped away the dried blood and grime, he just grinned at her and said, "Some of these bruises are pretty bad Starbuck."
She rolled her eyes and replied, "There goes my modeling career."
He chuckled, "Nah, you were ugly to begin with." He yelped when her fist crashed against his thigh. A few moments later she hissed as he found a tender bruise forming on her jaw and he continued down her throat. His eyes caught on her Captain's Insignia again. He ran a finger over one and said, "So, what, you're the CAG?"
She chuckled, "Well, with you and Karl taking a vacation, the Old Man couldn't find a big enough asshole to do the job."
He smirked at her now clean face, "Really? I do believe he found the biggest asshole on the Colonies already."
"Don't you think Tigh's a little too old to be CAG?" They grinned at each other for a moment, the music and Boomer's snores the only sounds to be heard. Her hand came up and clasped his which had lingered on the side of her throat. She looked into his eyes and whispered, "They're yours Lee."
He nodded and his thumb stroked the column of her throat gently, "Stealing from the dead?"
She shook her head, "More like remembering someone very important. I took your duffle off Colonial One and the Old Man and I split what stuff of yours there was. These came off your blues. Dad has your greys still in the garment bag in his closet."
She looked down at her lap with a pained expression and Lee knew his father must have taken his "death" hard but he'd never stopped to wonder how badly Kara might have been hurt by it. That was the strange thing for Lee, a part of him always knew they were still alive and just waiting for him to find them so he never entertained the idea of them being dead.
"'Dad?'" She looked up and he recognized a slight gleam of gratitude in her eyes for steering them away from how she'd been enduring him being dead, even slightly. "You call him dad?"
She shrugged, "Not in CIC, but there was an incident where a nugget and I were lost on some moon, I had just told him about…" She trailed off and her eyes turned glassy, "Lee… I never told you about Zak… Oh Gods…"
She started crying, Lee took a chance and pulled her to him before laying down with her on her dusty bed. He held her tight, "I know Kara, I know you passed him, I put two and two together. I've had a lot of time to figure it out and think about it while I was alone and on the run. You don't have to say it…"
She sobbed into his throat and said, "I killed your brother Lee… I killed my fiancé."
"Shh… You didn't… Shh, Kara. If it hadn't been you, some other Officer would have passed him. They wouldn't have let Zak fail Basic Flight, Adamas don't flunk." He stroked her back gently and let her cry and clutch at him until she finally drifted into an uneasy sleep which he soon followed her into.
End Part