She's free with a laugh, for the most part, wears her rage and her smile on her sleeve, chews bloody patterns in her lip when the tears threaten to spill over, and Apollo has never seen anything more heartbreaking than the sight of her on a crutch.
Once or twice he has caught her on deck, staring at the Raptors running through their patterns across the starscape outside. Calling her a caged bird is too cliche, too delicate. It implies a weakness, a hollowness of bone. But she stands ramrod, white-knuckled around the center support of that damned crutch and she is merely and spectacularly Kara Thrace.
He knows better than to comment, instead subtly bullies her back onto her bad leg, one ounce of pressure at a time, uses the softer words at the back of his mind to frustrate her into pushing herself just a little further, a little harder.
She takes three steps and stumbles and he nudges her shoulder, lightly, and stares up into space, waiting for the day that she will no longer be flightless.