Chapter Five
Standing at the podium in her dress grays, Kara heard herself say that they were safer with Cain than without. She saw the look Adama gave her and refused to take back her words even as a voice within mocked them. Safe? No one had been safe with Helena Cain in charge, and yet…
Resuming her place among the honor-guard, she watched as the launch bay hatch closed, relief again suffusing her that the Old Man had not followed through with the execution command, after all. She didn't know why he'd changed his mind, she was just grateful he had. Of course, the escape of the Cylon prisoner and subsequent murder of Admiral Cain had removed the onus of two orders.
Kara stood staring sightlessly at the metal hatch after the assembled crew were dismissed. Her head bent as she rested hands on hips and tried to sort the roiling thoughts and emotions. Yellowed guilt, so familiar and easy to recognize, gripped her chest. If she'd been brave enough and defied Lee and just shot the skin-job when she'd had the chance, the Admiral—and two Marines—would still be alive. Once again she'd let her emotions keep her from doing her job…and again people had died.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, she tried to identify the other feelings that held her jaw clamped painfully tight. There were violet-hued streaks of regret within the starburst, too. A dead Cain meant no rescue mission back to Caprica, leaving her foresworn with a bitter undercurrent of anger at Adama and Roslin.
She refused to give the swirl of blue-loss and jade-envy more than a passing thought, knowing that she'd been swayed by a few days of Cain's approval and not inclined to consider into why its absence hurt. It was enough of a reason that the Admiral's propensity to action had found a matching canvas in Starbuck.
And then there was the backdrop to the whole mottled mural: the grey-irony that the Cylon lived and a Colonial Officer floated out the airlock instead.
Kara reached up and unbuttoned the uniform's flap, finding it suddenly difficult to breath in the high-necked tunic as a place within her bled crimson from conflicting imperatives.
As she turned from the silent metal hatch that held no secret to untwisting the moral morass of the past few days, Kara decided to go find Lee. Since his release from sickbay this morning, she'd barely seen him, let alone had time for them to speak in private. And the way he'd avoided her eyes throughout the ceremony had sent a warning jangle along nerves already strung taut.
She needed to talk with him. He'd make sense of this smeared mess
Lee always had the answers.
The End
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