"What the hell did you just say?" Sam asked Erin in surprise, getting up with a jump.
She sighed. It was already starting. "I said we have a son, Sam. Conceived a child, created life…"
"I know what it means," he shot back, pacing around the room. "I don't need you to turn into a frakking dictionary."
Erin pursed her lips, giving him a break because he was probably shocked. She watched him pace back and forth, mumbling to himself. His mind was still registering the news. Every minute that passed, her heart-rate grew faster with the anticipation. Some part of her still hoped very shyly that he would take the whole situation as a blessing, forgive her in a heartbeat. But she would accept every scream if he didn't. Gods, she had them coming…
"A son," he said. He looked at her accusatorily. "A son, Erin?! Didn't it occur to you that I might want to know? Frak!"
"It did," she said simply. "Look, I could give you a lot of reasons why I did what I did. But you want to know the truth about all them? They're a piece of crap. No matter how mad, how hurt I was at the time, I had no right to hide your child from you. Still, I did it. And there is absolutely no excuse for that."
Sam snorted sarcastically. "Right, it was a mistake. But didn't you just say a few hours ago that there are a lot of mistakes that you don't regret? Is this one of them?"
Now, it was Erin's turn to look furious. "Oh, now you are acting like a jerk! Of course I regret keeping you away from him! What kind of monster do you think I am?!" A tear fell down when she finished and Erin cleaned it with her hand unceremoniously. "If there was any way for me to take that back, I would!"
He saw he had gone too far and immediately regretted his last accusation. His tone lowered slightly. "I shouldn't have accused you of that. I'm sorry. But your regrets don't give me back the time I lost, do they? How long did I lose? Frak, I don't even know the kid's name."
Decker took one deep breath before starting to talk. "His name is Nathan. Everyone calls him Nate for a short. He became three years old a couple of days ago. He has your hair and your eyes," she described. "His nose and his mouth are mine, though… He's allergic to peanuts and absolutely adores viper pilots, so he'll probably worship you from the moment he sees you. There were complications when he was born and the doctors had to make a c-section but he turned out just fine. And there wasn't a single day that I didn't look at him and saw you all over."
The silence returned as Sam seemingly organized in his head all the information she had just given him. Part of him shrugged when he remembered the word 'complications'. Had his son been at risk? Or had she? Finally, he looked at Erin again. "Did you hate me that much? You knew I wanted kids. Did you hate me so much that you thought I didn't deserve to get to know my kid?"
She lowered her head, unable to look him in the eyes. "Part of me did," she responded. "It was a selfish act, I know. I was just so furious… you have no idea. And I ended up being unfair to you."
"Damn right you were!" he told her. "Frak, we're not okay, Erin. We're nowhere near okay. I just… The Erin I knew would never do that!"
"The Erin you knew was human. Humans make mistakes. This was a big one. And all I can say is that I'm sorry," she said, defeated. What else could she say? He was right… "I need to get Nate from daycare. Do you wanna meet him today?"
Sam nodded. "I think I lost enough time, don't you agree?" Then, he remembered something. She had told him she had a date a while ago… "Wait, he doesn't think some other guy is his father, does he? 'Cause you told me you had a boyfriend or something."
She glared at him. "Of course he doesn't," she said. "When he started to ask questions I simply told him that his father couldn't be here because he was fighting the bad guys in the colonies. Every boy should idolize his father," Erin explained. The irony is that Sam was actually fighting the cylons back in the colonies as the leader of the resistance. "And I don't have a boyfriend. I was just trying to annoy you. Nate's the only guy I cared for during the past three years," she confessed
He should have seen that one coming… Fake a boyfriend – really screamed annoyed-Erin.
She started to get up in order to go get her son but turned around before exiting the room. "I think you should let him get to know you before we tell Nate that you're his father," she declared. "Give him a week, so you won't just jump into his life out of the blue."
"You know him better that I do," Sam stated, picking every word carefully – a way to agree with her, but to also let her know that he was still mad.
Decker nodded, accepting every blow. You had them all coming, she thought. "Go to my quarters in an hour. I need to give him a bath first." With that, she opened the hatch and exited the room.
Sam lied on his bunk, thinking. "I'm a dad," he said. A smile covered his face. He was scared, of course he was. But he had always wanted a kid… with Erin, if that was possible. He was just hurt with the fact that she hadn't told him. But he had a son.
---
The room was dark and cold around her. Kara couldn't explain why but, despite that darkness, one of the walls, the one she was painting, was illuminated like the light was coming from the wall itself. The fear mixed with the cold covered her bare arms with goose bumps.
She kept painting the circular form. It was like her brain was on autopilot – she knew exactly how the form would look like; she had been painting it for years…
Her breathing was irregular. Where was she? Why was she painting that stupid thing? Why couldn't she stop? The darkness that surrounded her didn't allow her to know what the room looked like. Nothing except the wall that only illuminated itself.
And then, it was ready. The circular form was gigantic, occupying a considerable share of the frakking wall. From the center it was yellow, then blue, red and then yellow again. Like a whirlpool of colors. A mysterious symbol stuck in her brain.
Suddenly, the room started to get less cold and the light entered through the windows. Kara looked around and immediately recognized the place – her apartment in Caprica. And she was not alone in there…
The sick face of Leoben Conoy, the guy she had tortured in the Gemenon Traveler a few years ago, gave her one twisted smile. She shivered. And when she really looked at the cylon, she saw something in his arms. Someone. A baby. Her baby. Jamie.
Her heart jumped in her chest in agony. She tried to run in his direction to take her daughter from his arms. She would kill him for touching her baby. But she couldn't. Her body didn't respond. She wanted to move, to rescue Jamie but her body wouldn't move an inch. She wanted to yell but her voice wouldn't come out. And the bastard just smiled.
"It's close, Kara," he said, the twisted smile playing on his lips. "It's so close…"
Then everything disappeared…
Kara woke up with the feeling of someone shaking her.
"Wake up, Kara. You're having a nightmare," the person said.
Opening her eyes, Kara saw Lee looking down at her with a worried face. He was sitting on the edge of the bed by her side.
"You okay," he asked her, caressing her face.
"No," she whispered. Her skin was covered in sweat and her heart was beating so fast she was afraid it would jump out of her chest. Kara sat up on the bed and let her husband envelop her with a hug. She swallowed. A nightmare… And then she remembered everything. Jamie.
"Where's Jamie?" she asked nervously, breaking the hug and looking around, searching for her daughter.
"She's in her room, sleeping like a rock," Lee assured her, cupping her face so she would look at him. "I just checked on her."
"I need to…" Starbuck didn't finish the sentence, instead she removed Lee's hands from her face, got up and almost ran to the baby's small room.
It was only when she saw Jamie's sleeping form in the crib that she sighed in relief. It was just a dream. A frakking twisted dream… But did it mean something? She had only planned on lying down for a few minutes after she had returned from Helo's wedding reception – she wished she hadn't.
"Was the nightmare about Jamie?" he asked, entering the room after her. He didn't need to be a genius to understand that. "Do you wanna talk about it? They say sharing your nightmares makes them go away."
Kara bit her lower lip as she leaned against the doorway of Jamie's room. Frak, why not telling him? It was just a frakking dream – or that was what she wanted to believe. She ended up deciding to tell him just part of it; Lee didn't need to know all of it… "I was in my apartment in Caprica and one of the skin-jobs, Leoben, showed up holding Jamie. Then I would try to move to take her away from him but my body didn't respond. It was like I was frozen. I just couldn't move a muscle."
Lee pursed his lips. Frak, that had probably been terrifying for her. Just thinking of it was horrible. But seeing the whole scene… He pulled her back to his embrace. "It was just a dream," he assured his wife. "If he wants to get to Jamie, he'll have to do it over my dead body."
The same applied to her. If Leoben wanted to touch a single hair of her daughter, he'd have to kill her first. But that figure she had been painting. That was what didn't make sense. What did that crap mean? "Talk to me about something else," she asked her husband, letting go of him. "This stupid nightmare is driving me crazy."
He brought her to the living room, closing Jamie's door so they wouldn't disturb her. Then, the couple sat on the sofa, Kara leaning her head to his shoulder. "Well, we just found a habitable planet."
Kara furrowed her brows. "Earth?" Was that what Leoben had meant by 'It's so close'?
Lee laughed. "We wished. Earth is still somewhere unknown," he said. "From what I saw, this planet's temperatures are like the peak of summer in Gemenon. I'm sure you remember that time…"
"Ouch," Kara said. In the summer before Zak's death, she had gone there in vacations with Zak, Lee and his girlfriend at the time, Shannon. "I recall you getting one hell of a sunburn."
"Don't remind me," Lee said, groaning. Falling asleep on the beach hadn't been a good idea, especially since everyone else was taking a walk.
"Zak called you 'lobster' for a whole week and your girlfriend was freaking out, thinking of the number of complications a sunburn could cause," Kara said. Shannon's presence had been the thing she hated the most in that week. And most of all she had hated herself for being jealous of her boyfriend's brother's girlfriend. "You were such a whiny ass…"
"She was a derm nurse, of course she was freaking out. Though, it itched like a motherfrakker in the end," Lee stated.
She snorted at the memory – he had made sure everyone knew how uncomfortable the sunburn was by shouting it to the sky. "Good times…" Kara let herself concentrate on the news again and removed her head from Lee's shoulder, looking up at him. "So, what's the plan with this new planet?"
"Dad's sending a recon team down there," Lee explained. "After they check if it is toaster-free, we'll see what to do."
"This is not gonna be another New Caprica, is it?" Kara inquired. The last thing they needed right now was another crew shortage and settling fiasco. "Roslin would never allow it, right?"
Lee shruggeed his shoulders. "I doubt she will, but if the people apply the right pressure on her…"
"They can't be that stupid. I mean, this time we don't even have a nebula surrounding the frakking planet, do we?" she stated.
Lee shook his head. "At the very least, if the place is minimally safe Dad will have us settle here for a month or so in order to collect food," he said. "The food levels in the fleet are reaching an insufficient level and the planet seemed to be full of algae from what we've seen in the photos."
Kara made a face. "Great, algae. The food will get even better…" she said sarcastically
"Hey, at least we won't die of starvation…" Lee pointed out.
She sighed. Deep down she had a feeling that the new planet had something to do with her dream. It might be no coincidence that it happened in the very same day they found it.
A/N: First of all, let me apologise for the delay. Chaotic week, believe me. I have three huge assignments that I still need to finish and everything seems to be going wrong. I hope the first 10 days of the year were nice to you. Remember, 10 reviews will get you a preview in my livejournal. Last week, we didnt reach the 10, unfortunately...