BSG: Going Through Hell 1/2
May. 31st, 2009 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waldos_writingsTitle: Going Through Hell
Chapter: 1/2
Rating: R
Pairing: Lee/Kara
Summary: She's back. But she's far from okay. (Post KLG story, written before the start of season 2)
Authors Notes: First off, thanks to my great beta readers,ancarett and ilanabean42 They may or may not recognize this story as the one they looked at way back when. Because of their great feedback I poked at this story for over a month trying to fix everything they said need fixing. Any remaining (or resulting) errors, are mine alone.
Now for the longish bit:
This story is not going to be everyone's thing. That's fine. If you read it anyway and want to start a discussion on how your views differ from mine, I love a good debate. If you're just going to flame, save your breath. I'm an inner-city school teacher. You can't phase me by being rude.
KLG II leaves us with SO many points to start speculating and writing. I didn't tackle them all.
There are a lot of things this story is not.
• It is not a story of how Kara gets off Caprica
• It is not a story of what happens in the political realm of the fleet with both Baltar and Roslin out of the picture
• It is not the story of what they do with the Arrow or what happens to the fleet while Adama is recovering.
• It is not the story of how Lee gets out of being arrested and thrown in the brig.
• It is not the story of why Kara doesn't get thrown in the brig.
etc, etc...
Suffice it to say that what it is is long enough, and if I try to tie up all the loose ends of KLG II I'd be here for years.
What this story is is an examination of what all the stress of KLG and everything leading up to it, does to the mind of someone who is arguably not the most stable person in the fleet. So much of what happens in KLG II is either directly or indirectly the result of decisions that Kara makes that I can't imagine she wouldn't have some 'issues' when she returns. Not to mention the kind of hell she had to have seen having been on a planet that's been dead for months. This story is and exploration of what that kind of stress can do to a person. It's also, somewhat, a story about how a relationship can be built out of the ashes.
All feedback welcome. Everything from typo's I've still managed to miss to fundamentally different views of the characters.
If you're going through hell, keep going.
~Winston Churchill
To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness "
Erich Fromm (German born American social philosopher and psychoanalyst, 1900-1980)
The worlds ending had been bad. He’d thought it would be the worst thing he’d ever endure. But the fact that he had gone over four months now without finding equilibrium was worse. Things never calmed, became routine, became habit. They’d all started pretending that some semblance of a new definition of ‘normal’ had taken root, but he knew that it hadn’t. The constant flux was wearing him down to nothing.
His father was still on life-support. Boomer was a Cylon, and now apparently there were two of them. Ten souls lost on Raptor Two, three from Raptor One. The president had been put in hack. Tigh was in charge.
And Starbuck had gone A.W.O.L.
She was back now, but he hadn’t seen her. Gaeta and Dualla had come by to sit with him and the Old Man for a while last night. D. had mentioned it, assuming he knew. He didn’t let them see the relief he felt. Or the anger.
The anger was burning off. Had been for a while now. What she did went beyond ‘impulsive’, but as much as he wanted to he couldn’t remain indefinitely pissed at her. He couldn’t afford the emotional capital. He could only feel so much worry, fear, hate, dread and grief at one time. Most of the worry was taken up by his father. The general uncertainty of their circumstance got the fear. Tigh seemed to be getting most of the hate and dread. Starbuck had gotten the grief for a few days. When she’d failed to return three days after she’d jumped, he’d been certain she was dead. Now that she was back, a week after she’d left, he had no more room for hate or anger or grudges. The relief he’d felt at D.’s announcement was the first honest-to-gods good feeling he’d had since the doctor had come out of surgery and announced that things were still a little touch and go, but that his father was almost certain to live. He supposed there was a chance that he was just burying his negative feelings for her and that they’d erupt at a really inconvenient time, but for now… now he just wanted to see her.
He’d thought about going looking for her, but he knew that someone would have brought her up to speed. Once she knew about the Old Man, she’d know where to find him. She hadn’t come looking, so he hadn’t forced anything.
He wondered, briefly if she was in the brig. Nothing D. had said would have precluded it and Tigh seemed inordinately fond of sending people there lately. He supposed he’d have to check around.
Tigh couldn’t afford to keep Lee in the brig now that the commander was down.
Tigh’d won the fight. The president was in jail; the vice-president was in sickbay - the secure section where he spent his days rambling about god and a baby and six somethings. The X.O. was largely in charge of all that was left of humanity. But he couldn’t even run the Galactica on his own.
Lee worked his shifts, flew his patrols, and then returned to do his paperwork at his father’s bedside.
That was where he had found her. She was sitting on his chair, her knees pulled up to her chest and she was crying.
He waited for a second to see if the repressed anger would come surging forward now that he was actually confronted with her, but all he felt was relief and concern. He set his clipboard on one of the monitors near the foot of the bed. The last time he’d tried to talk to her – really talk to her, not yell at her for doing things her own way – she’d gotten rude and stormed off. Then he’d hit her and yelled at her and done everything he could to ensure that she never would want to open up to him.
But he couldn’t just let her sit there on her own and shake and sob. Even with her face buried in her knees, he could tell that she was a mess. Her hands were black and blue and scraped. Her hair needed to be washed; there was blood in it. He wondered if it was hers or someone else’s. And she seemed… small.
Knowing that there was every chance in the world that she’d push him away, he walked quietly to her side. “Hey,” he announced himself before kneeling down and pulling her against his chest.
He hadn’t expected to be disappointed when she went willingly into his embrace. He wasn’t even sure what exactly to do with her when her hands wrapped around his uniform jacket and her sobs became louder and more out of control. He’d braced himself for a fight, for a screaming match. He supposed he wanted it, to see a spark of the Starbuck he knew, because this person scared him. He’d never seen her defeated before, and he was sure that was what he was seeing now.
Their position was awkward, so he carefully moved her from the chair to the floor and then onto his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and whispered “Shhh,” over and over again, not sure what else to say.
He realized that the anger wasn’t as far away as he’d thought. It just wasn’t very important. He found that he wanted to be furious with her for leaving the fleet in the lurch. For coming up with a plan to eliminate the basestar and then sabotaging it by going A.W.O.L. He wanted to blame his father’s condition on her, on the fact that Boomer’s programming had been activated because she’d been pegged to take Starbuck’s place in the plan.
But he knew she’d be blaming herself; she didn't need him to paint her a picture in order for her to see the repercussions her choices had. It didn’t make his father get well faster. It didn’t even make him feel better.
She’d been back a day and clearly hadn’t been checked out by the doctors. He wondered again why Tigh hadn’t tossed her in the brig, but wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up. She must have been hiding out somewhere, because if anyone in the barracks had seen her they would have marched her straight to sickbay; if she’d put up a fight, they would have called him. No one else knew that they’d been on the outs lately.
He tucked her hair behind her ear and began rubbing her back through her work shirt. She wasn’t showing any signs of calming any time soon, so he shifted them both into a position that would be comfortable for the long haul.
He knew Kara well enough. He knew that the end of twelve colonies hadn’t resulted in a single tear. But the loss of her world – his father, him - she wouldn’t survive that.
He had no idea how to fix this. Fix her. He didn’t know what had happened when she’d gone back to Caprica. He’d heard vague rumors of a second Boomer-Cylon being on the ship now and something about the recovery of an E.C.O. whose name he either hadn’t heard or couldn’t remember.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”
Lee realized she was saying something, apologizing, though he wasn’t sure for what. It wasn’t that she didn’t have anything to feel remorse for – more the opposite – he didn’t know where she was starting.
“Shh.” He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure that once she started talking his anger wouldn’t surface and neither of them needed that now.
She began wiping her face with battered hands. Lee reached back to the cabinet near the bed and pulled out a small towel. He wiped her cheeks and eyes and then reached up to grab some tissues off the top. “Here,” he whispered.
Obligingly, Kara blew her nose. “I’m sorry,” she said again. Lee wondered how long it would be before she’d be able to say anything else.
He tilted her head back gently. “Not now, okay. Right now I’m just glad you’re back and okay.” He looked at the bruises on her face and only then noticed how she had one arm wrapped around her ribs. “Well, ‘okay’ may be stretching it. Why don’t we get the doc to take a look at you?”
Kara shook her head. “I’m okay. I’m fine. Really.” She pulled her arm back from where she’d wrapped it around him and crossed it over her chest. Protecting herself. Hugging herself.
Lee pushed her hair back from where it had fallen, revealing a three inch gash on her forehead that looked like it needed stitches at one point, but had healed over, messily, on its own. “Let’s let the doctor be the judge of that, okay? You can sit here, I’ll go get him.”
Her single protest seemed to be all the fight she had in her. Lee sat her up and got to his feet. He reached down a hand to help her stand. He remembered the last time he’d done that and how she’d deliberately ignored him and grabbed the ladder to haul herself up instead. Now she was just sitting there looking at him her hand half way between them. He thought she was going to pull away from him again, but when he looked again, he could see the bruises on her hand; she was trying to figure out how to do this without it hurting.
Lee reached down, his fingers wrapping lightly around her wrist, where there didn’t seem to be any discoloration, and pulled her up. Once she was standing, albeit unsteadily, he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. He felt her breath hitch as he squeezed too tightly against her abused ribs, but he didn’t let go, only loosened his hold.
After a few seconds, he moved her back to the chair and supported her as she carefully lowered herself into it. “I’ll be right back.” He gently caressed her hair before leaving.
He came back a few seconds later with Doctor Cottle in tow. The doctor made a check of a few of the monitors over the commander’s bed before turning to Starbuck. “Weren’t you supposed to present yourself for a physical some time yesterday?” he asked acerbically. Lee winced at his tone. Kara was calmer now, but he knew she was sitting on the edge. Probably would be for a while.
“I’m fine,” Kara muttered, more because it was expected of her than because she believed it.
“I think I get to decide that, young lady. Come on.” The doctor turned and walked off, the expectation that Starbuck would follow, clear on his face.
Lee gave her a hand, holding her wrist to help her stand again. “Go on. I’ll be right here when you’re done.”
Kara sighed and nodded.
Lee wished she'd told him to ‘frak off’.
+++++++++
Lee’s heart sped up when the doctor came back and asked him to come talk to Kara. She'd seemed beaten, but he’d seen her beaten up before, he hadn’t thought there was anything serious.
She was standing by the exam table pulling on her tank tops when they arrived. Without preamble the doc started talking to Lee in a tone of voice that was clearly meant for her. “She has three cracked ribs, among a large assortment of contusions and abrasions and a couple of lacerations that should really be reopened and stitched. Her knee is torn up again and she has signs of minor radiation sickness.” He clearly wasn’t concerned with breaking doctor/patient confidentiality in order to get Lee on his side. “Nothing is life-threatening, but she is going to be uncomfortable as hell for a while. She needs to spend a few days on a strong analgesic so that her ribs won’t bother her when she breathes and she won’t give herself pneumonia.”
“Pneumonia?” Lee asked.
“With fractured ribs, patients don’t breathe deeply. Hurts like hell, so I don’t blame them. But it’s not good for you, you’ve got to get enough air in and out to prevent infections from taking hold. She needs to take the pills to avoid that.”
“I don’t need any frakking pills,” Kara muttered, struggling to get her work shirt back on.
“And she has a lot of torn and spasmed muscles,” the doctor added, but neither of them complained as Lee helped her get her arm into her sleeve and pulled the shirt up to her shoulders for her.
“She needs rest, and she won’t get it as uncomfortable as she is,” Cottle insisted.
“I don’t need the frakking pills,” she hissed with a little more venom.
Lee leaned against the bed and crossed his arms as he watched her struggle to put her shoes on. “Why not, Kara? You can’t expect us to believe you don’t hurt like hell.”
“It’s fine.” She said quietly.
Lee’s eyebrows drew together. “What’s fine?”
“I’m fine,” Kara clarified, absently. “The pain. It’s not that bad. It’s fine.”
Lee looked over his shoulder at the doctor, his expression asking for a minute alone with her. Cottle shrugged and left.
“You don’t have a problem with pain pills, Kara. What are you doing here?”
“I …” She took a breath and tried again. “It’s okay. I don’t… I can’t…” She squeezed her eyes shut, but didn’t try to finish her sentence.
“You can’t what?” Lee asked quietly.
“Nothing, nevermind.”
“You can’t what, Kara?” he asked more emphatically.
“I didn’t mean that, I was just trying to say –“
“Bullshit,” Lee said quietly. She was breathing fast, her hands back around her ribs. “I can see that you’re hurting,” he told her, pointing to where she was literally trying to hold herself together. “You can’t what?”
She pressed her lips together, her eyes flickering in the direction of the commander’s bed. She squeezed her eyes shut, but one tear escaped anyway. She ducked her head but didn’t try to answer Lee’s question.
Lee pinched the bridge of his nose, his breath coming out in a huff as an idea occurred to him. “You can’t be forgiven?” he asked quietly. “You think you deserve this?”
Another tear made its way down her face but she didn’t answer.
“Kara, I’ll be the first to say this is all a frakking disaster, but you getting pneumonia because you can’t breathe right isn’t going to fix a frakking thing.” He wanted to shake some sense into her.
“The fleet’s low on supplies. I’m not hurt that bad. Save them for someone who –“ she faltered for a second. “-who needs them.”
“Who deserves them?” Lee asked critically. “Kara, you really aren’t in any frame of mind to be making decisions like this right now. You’re exhausted, you’re miserable, and if I had to guess you’re scared to death.” He hated to play dirty but she wasn’t leaving him a choice. “And your mom was full of shit. The gods don’t think we should suffer.”
Kara glared at him, the tears drying instantly, anger taking over her expression. “What the hell do you know about it? Or my mom or –“ Lee watched as her fingers curled into a fist and her arm muscles tensed.
Preemptively, he moved up and held her wrists to her side. “I know that she beat the crap out of you and told you that it was your fault. ‘Your punishment for your sins’. And because you were a kid you believed her. And I think deep down, you still do. You think that everything that happens around you is your fault and that you deserve whatever the hell happens to you because of it.” Lee took a deep a breath and spoke more quietly and calmly when he started again, but he was no less emphatic. “It’s all crap, Kara. The level of insanity we’re currently living through… it takes more than one person to set all this in motion. Might things be different if you hadn’t been put between the president and the commander? Maybe. Probably. But Boomer was a Cylon from the word ‘go’, that’s not your fault. She would have gone off sooner or later. In fact, I talked to the sergeant-at-arms when they captured her – it, whatever. We think she may have gone off once or twice already, but even she didn’t know it.”
He pulled her into a hug. “The whole frakking universe is not your fault,” he told her gently. “My dad’s gonna be okay. He’ll be glad to have you back. But when he asks to see you, I really don’t want to be the one to explain that you’re stuck in a hospital bed with pneumonia because you refused a couple of pain pills.”
Lee sighed. He’d played every card in his hand. He needed her to meet him part way now. “Okay?”
Looking pretty unhappy at having been manipulated she nodded slowly. “’Kay.” She cleared her throat. “Okay. I won’t argue any more. I’m sorry.”
He carefully hugged her. “It’s okay.”
She pulled back, crossing her arms over her chest and turning away from him. “I have to know, Lee. Why don’t you hate me any more?”
Lee’s eyes got wide as he took in her question. “Wh-What?” It was all he could get out.
“When I left, you hated me. You were so pissed at what I’d done with… And now things are so much worse… Why are you even speaking to me, let alone being this… this nice to me? How is it that you don’t hate me even more now?” Her eyes were dry, but her voice was breaking.
Lee came forward and gently rested his hands on top of her shoulders. “I won’t pretend that we don’t have a lot to talk about. We both know that we do. But I just got six days to find out what my life would be like without you in it in any way, and I’m not ashamed to say that it would suck. A lot. But before we try and hash all that out, you need to get cleaned up, you need to take a pill and you need to get some sleep. We’ll talk,” he promised, “I won’t let you run off on me this time. But I don’t think either of us is up for that right now. Can it just be enough for now for me to say that I don’t hate you, and that it wasn’t even fair of me to be angry in the first place?”
Kara nodded, not letting him see how relieved she was that he didn’t hate her and wasn’t going to let her avoid him. She wasn’t sure she’d have enough strength to go to him, but she figured that if he could come to her, the least she could do was stop running away.
+++++++++
Doctor Cottle handed Lee the bottle of pills when he came back and explained clearly that she was to take one every six hours and two at bed time. He gave Starbuck back the cane she’d finally been able to ditch just two days before she’d leapt for Caprica.
She didn’t argue, which worried Lee, just took the damn thing back and headed for the door.
He thanked the doc and ran to catch her, which wasn’t hard as slowly as she was moving. “Hey!”
She stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“Give me a minute,” he said quietly. “I’ll grab my things from my dad’s room and walk back to quarters with you.”
Kara just nodded and leaned up against the wall.
Lee checked on his dad and collected his paperwork before collecting her and getting her back home.
She didn’t talk on the way back. He knew she was steeling herself for what was to come. Neither of them had any idea what the other pilots would think of her return. Would they be glad to see her? Angry for at her for leaving? Would they be able to tell that the best thing they could do for a while would be to leave her alone? Or would he have to risk Kara getting pissed at him by trying to subtly run them off?
She hesitated at the door, swaying slightly on her feet. Lee rested a hand between her shoulder blades. “You okay?”
She squeezed her eyes shut but nodded her head.
He decided to take her at her word and opened the hatch.
Crashdown was the only person in the bunkroom. He was apparently searching for something in his locker. He glanced over his shoulder to see who’d come in and openly stared at Kara for a minute before coming over to hug her. “Lords of Kobol, I thought they were just rumors. You are back!”
Kara hissed as he squeezed, but made an attempt to hug him back.
“Watch her ribs,” Lee said for her, “she’s had a rough time of it.”
Kara glared at him, but didn’t say anything.
Crash pulled back to look at her. “Yeah, I can see that now,” he said as he pushed her hair out of her face to see the gash over her eye. “You’ve definitely looked better,” he said with a smile, “But I am really frakking glad you’re back.”
Kara looked at his own somewhat battered appearance. “Looks like I’m not the only one who had a run-in with someone’s fist,” she teased, the ghost of a sincere smile playing on her lips.
“Actually first it was a Cylon raider and then gravity, but yeah, I’ve had better days.”
Kara nodded and then shifted a little, wincing and tucking her free arm around her ribs. “I want to hear about it, but… maybe later?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Crashdown said looking her over critically. “Actually I need to get a briefing. You look like you need about a month’s worth of sleep.”
Kara nodded and gave a little half-smile. “A week’s worth at least,” she said with forced humor.
Crashdown hugged her one more time before heading out.
As soon as the door shut, Kara swayed noticeably on her feet. Lee caught her carefully, realizing that acting as normal as possible for that short period of time had really taken it out of her. He took the cane from her, giving her his hand instead; wrapping his other arm around her, he led her to her bunk. “There’s no one else here, Kara. Will you let me help you get settled into bed?” Fortunately it was time to switch from day shift to mids, which meant everyone from their unit was either at a pre-shift briefing or a post-shift debriefing. The bunkroom should be quiet for the better part of an hour.
She made a face, and at first Lee thought she didn’t understand what he’d said, but before he could repeat it she began hobbling towards her locker, “I really need to clean up before I do anything. Gods, how can you even stand to be near me?” She opened her locker and braced herself for the pain of bending down to root out the clothes she wanted.
Lee grabbed her shoulders as she started to stoop. She was on the verge of falling over from exhaustion as it was, but he figured she had to be uncomfortable with blood in her hair and clothes that were tattered and torn and had been inhabited for more than a week straight. He figured a few minutes in the shower wouldn’t tax her unduly as long as she let him help. He noticed how she braced her ribs with her hand as she tried to kneel in front of her locker. “Uh-uh. Stand up. Tell me what you need.”
Kara gasped as she changed directions, straightening back up, the slight bend she’d achieved before Lee stopped her already making her a little sore. “Um… underwear, tanks… I think I have a pair of clean sweatpants in there somewhere…”
Lee dug around, careful not to disturb anything and trying not to see anything he wasn’t actively looking for. People on a battlestar got precious little privacy. Digging around in someone’s locker just wasn’t done. He had permission, of course, but that didn’t mean he needed to be unearthing any secrets she wouldn’t want to get into. One thing he did grab, that she hadn’t specifically asked for was a pair of socks. He’d noticed while holding her hand that her fingers were cold, so if she was cold while fully dressed, once she was wet, she’d be freezing. “Anything else?” he asked before standing.
“Shower bag. It’s on the hook in the back.”
Lee grabbed the mesh bag and closed the door. As they made the slow trek to the head, he said quietly, “You have blood in your hair. Can you get your arms up to wash it out or are you going to need help?”
Leaning on her cane, Kara slowly stretched her free hand up over her head to see. “I think I can manage it.”
Lee nodded. When they got to the long line of shower stalls, Lee put her shower bag on the peg in the stall and set her clothes on the shelf in the adjoining changing cubical. He pulled the curtain to the changing room closed with them both inside.
Kara turned to face him. “I’m fine, Lee, really. I can take a shower by myself. Been doing it for more than twenty-five years now.”
“Normally I wouldn’t have any doubts about that. Today you’re off balance, you’re stiff and you’re still discovering places you hurt. I think I’ll stick close.”
Kara glared at him.
“We’ve lived together on and off since we were seventeen years old. You think you got something under those clothes I haven’t seen yet?”
She had no idea why she laughed at that, but she did. And it felt good.
“Come on, sit here,” he indicated the short bench, “I’ll get your shoes.”
Kara stood looking at him for a long minute before sitting down and trying to be gracious about accepting his help.
Lee pulled off her shoes and socks, noticing the ugly bruising and swelling of her right ankle. Between her knee and her ankle he wondered how she could put weight on that leg at all. He then helped her pull off the workshirt he’d just helped her put on in sickbay earlier. She turned her back before undoing her BDU pants and letting them drop, but took the offered hand to keep her balanced as she stepped out of them. Lee winced at the black and blue marks that covered her legs. He didn’t wait for her to try her tank tops. He’d watched her struggle to get them on in sickbay, and he imagined that getting them on, moving down, had to be easier than trying to reach up and pull them off. While her back was still to him, he took the bottom edges of her tanks and flipped them around inside-out as he pulled them up and helped her get her arms through without too much bending or pulling.
She began shivering in her underwear and bra. Leaning on the wall, she reached forward and turned the shower on, letting it warm up before she stepped in. “Turn around,” she told him, as she pulled her bra straps down her arms.
“Kara, come on,” Lee cajoled wondering why it was funny before but she seemed unsettled now.
“Turn. Around,” she said again, enunciating clearly, but not raising her voice.
“Kara –“ he couldn’t understand why she was going all modest on him now. They’d seen each other undressed countless times in the course of living together in various community bunkrooms.
“Lee, please, I’m trying to be as cooperative as I can, but would you just…” Her voice trailed off her head hung, her arms crossed over her chest, her bra straps down, but the back still fastened.
Lee realized that she was fading pretty quickly, there were tears in her voice that she’d been successfully fighting off since she’d calmed down by his father’s bedside. She was exhausted, in pain and, he realized, severely traumatized. He needed to stop expecting her to act like he was used to. “Okay, okay. I’ll step out until you’re in the shower, but I’m not going far.”
Kara nodded and waited to hear the curtain rustle as Lee stepped out and rustle again as he closed it behind him. She finished undressing and stepped under the warm spray. She kept one hand on the wall for balance and support. The water was warm and the pressure was high enough to feel good on any unbruised skin it could find, when the spray hit the bruises she winced, but held still until she felt at least a little cleaner. She made a quick pass with the soap, hoping that she was at least getting the worst of the blood and dirt off. She started scrubbing at one particular smudge of dirt that was being stubborn until she realized it was a shadow from the overhead lighting hitting the plumbing. She rolled her eyes and dropped her soap back in her shower bag. She knew she was beyond tired, but that was just dumb.
She was careful of the several bruises under her hair, washing it was going to be difficult and she wondered if there was some way to back out of her earlier assessment and get Lee to help. She sighed and leaned forward with both hands against the wall. She knew intellectually that all she had to do was ask. She could turn the water off, ask Lee to hand her a towel to wrap around herself and then ask Lee to help her get the blood and dirt out of her hair. Then she could step back into the shower, hand Lee the towel and rinse off.
Intellectually she knew it could be that easy. Lee had been incredibly gentle with her since her return. If he found a bruise and she winced, he wouldn’t press there again. It could be that easy. But a primal fear deep inside her was afraid that asking for anything, even something he’d already offered, would be too much. That if she let him know how needy she felt that he’d turn his back on her and walk away. Her head hit the wall between her hands with a thump.
“Kara? You okay?”
It could be as simple as saying, “I’m fine, just having problems getting my hair washed,” she thought.
“Fine. I’m fine. I’m just going to wash my hair.” It was as close as she could get to the truth.
“Let me know if you need any help. Your arms seemed a little stiff when you were getting your tanks off.”
There it was, another opportunity. All she needed to say was, “Yeah, they are. Would you mind…?”
“I’m fine. It just might take me a few minutes.”
She stayed pressed against the wall, the water streaming over her back.
After several long minutes, she stood up straighter, feeling every vertebra in her back protest as she did, and pulled the small bottle of shampoo out of her toiletries kit. She squeezed some into her hand and managed to get her hand up to the top of her head before the spasm hit. Her arm locked up, the muscles in the juncture of her neck and shoulder shrank and froze. She couldn’t help but gasp.
“Kara?” Lee asked again, alarm evident in his voice. He’d heard her. Frak.
“Muscle spasm. It’s no big deal.” She managed to slide her hand down from the top of her head to the painfully tight muscle where her shoulder and neck joined. She tried to put some pressure on it to get it to release, but it wasn’t going.
“Kara, let me see.”
His voice was closer now, like he’d moved from the bench to right next to the curtain.
“Frak.” Kara couldn’t think of a way out of it. She couldn’t get the damn muscle to release and she couldn’t wash her hair if she couldn’t move her arm. She wrenched off the water with her free hand. “Hand me a towel.”
Lee stuck a towel through the curtain without looking, thankfully without arguing. Holding the edge of it under her chin, she managed to get it wrapped around her body with one hand. She couldn’t get the edge tucked in, so she held it closed with her free hand. “All right,” she said reluctantly.
Lee pushed the curtain aside, frowning at the way she was holding her neck. “Still spasmed?” he asked, carefully pulling her arm down to her side and feeling along the top of her shoulder, carefully mapping out the hard muscle with his fingertips. Her head dropped down sideways, trying to keep the muscle from pulling as her arm was lowered.
“Yeah,” she said, hissing on the end of the word when he pressed at the center of the knot.
“This may hurt a bit,” he warned as he began a massage of the offended muscle. After a few minutes he pressed her head the other way, away from the pulled muscle. She didn’t protest too much so he guided her into turning her head back and forth a few times while he pressed down on her shoulder with his other hand. “Better?”
Kara rolled her shoulder, testing it. There was a lingering soreness, but no longer any acute pain. “Mm-hm,” she muttered, staring at the tiles. “Thanks.”
Lee pulled his hands away and found the right one covered in something green and slimy. “I take it you were washing your hair when this happened?”
She had a vague memory of having told him that already, but before she could make a remark to that effect she glanced up and saw her shampoo dripping down his hand. She winced apologetically.
“Ah, hell with it,” Lee laughed. “While I’m here, I might as well see about getting that blood out of your hair, since you can’t see it.”
Kara closed her eyes and turned her back to him, letting him do so, sending up a silent prayer of thanks to whichever God had put that bug in his ear. She’d so desperately wanted his help, but just couldn’t bring herself to ask him for anything.
Lee’s fingers were sure, but gentle. Once he’d gotten her hair all lathered up he used his fingernails to dislodge the dried blood and then used the pads of his fingers to gently scrub out any remaining dirt, deftly avoiding any areas that made her wince or hiss. And then, just because he could, and she was likely to be too sore to hit him, he stood the shorter layers of her hair on end in little spikes, the shampoo acting like styling glue to hold them up.
Kara tried to roll her eyes up far enough to see the top of her own head. “What?” she asked when she saw the silly look on his face.
He didn’t say anything, just stared at the top of her head.
Kara shifted the edge of the towel into her other hand and lifted her good hand carefully to touch the top of her head, feeling the spikes. She flattened them out with her palm and glared at him wondering where he found the energy or disposition to be silly after everything they’d been through. “I need to rinse off,” she said quietly before shutting the curtain again and handing him the towel from her side.
A few minutes later Kara was asking for her towel again, wrapping it around herself and managing to tuck in the corner this time before opening the curtain. Lee was waiting there with another towel. He got her seated on the small bench and carefully patted her skin dry, noting and cataloging the different bruises, cuts and scrapes, any trace of his previously found humor gone in light of them. “How do you feel?” he asked softly.
“Better. At least I don’t feel like my skin is going to crawl right off my bones any more.”
“Good. ‘Cause, you know… you look like hell.” He’d meant the comment to be flip, but couldn’t keep the worry out of his voice.
“Thanks a lot.”
He couldn’t tell if she was really pissed or not. “I-I just mean that… the doctor gave me the list of your injuries, Kara. I’m just worried that maybe you should be spending the night in sickbay where they can keep an eye on you.”
Her face went cold. “I’m fine,” she bit out. “I don’t need anyone frakking hovering over me. I just need some sleep.” She reached for the stack of clothes on the end of the bench she was sitting on, but froze up as she tried to stretch out an arm that still wasn’t cooperating.
Lee wondered if the hovering comment was directed at him. Even if it was, he wasn’t sure what to do about it. She’d shown many times that she really wasn’t able to take care of herself. “Kara…”
She dropped her head, the brief moment of pique costing her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I didn’t mean you. In sickbay the damn nurses come in every two hours to wake you up to see if you’re sleeping okay. I really don’t have the patience for that kind of crap right now. I appreciate your help. I’ll take the stupid pills, but I just want to sleep in my own bed. For a long time.”
Lee smiled at her, glad she wasn’t getting pissed at him. He picked up the extra towel and carefully rubbed the extra water out of her hair and then helped her get her feet into her underwear. He tugged them up to her knees before helping her stand and turning his back so she could finish pulling them up under her towel. He carefully pulled her tanks over her head and helped her maneuver her arms through the holes and pulled them over the top of the towel.
Kara pulled the towel out from under the shirts and let it drop to the floor. She needed to get up and put her sweatpants on, and possibly get her sweatshirt out of her locker, she was starting to shake again, but it was suddenly just so much effort.
“Almost there, Kara,” Lee whispered quietly from where he’d knelt down in front of her. “Here, I got you some socks, slide down to this end of the bench so you don’t get them wet when you stand up.” She shifted painfully to the edge of the bench closest to the outer curtain. Her eyes were closing of their own volition and she didn’t even realize she was drifting to the left until Lee caught her arm. “Sit up!” he said urgently. “You don’t want fall off this bench. It’s not long enough to lay on. C’mon, I’ll get your socks on for you, we’ll get you in your sweats and then we can get you tucked into bed.”
Kara nodded listlessly and let Lee do what he’d outlined. She knew she should be insisting that she could take care of herself, but she just didn’t have the strength to both stay upright and talk. Nevermind if he actually believed her and expected her to dress herself.
She was almost asleep sitting up when Lee hauled her into a standing position and pulled her sweats up over her hips. She didn’t remember him putting her feet in them, but apparently he had. She wondered if she had, in fact, drifted off for a minute. She was leaning against his chest and once he had her waistband straightened out, his arms had slipped up to simply hold her against him, one hand remaining around her waist, the other rubbing her back through her tanks. “Ready for bed?” he asked rhetorically. She was damn near literally asleep on her feet. She nodded against him and let him lead her back to her bunk.
Halfway to the door she realized all her crap was still in the shower stall. “My stuff…” she muttered, pulling away to go after it.
Lee pulled her back, “Your clothes are already in the hamper. I’ll come back to get your shower bag once you’re in bed.”
Kara made a face at needing him to do yet one more thing for her, but she just couldn’t find the strength to argue, so she just nodded instead.
Lee held her hand, his arm locked to give her the support her weak knee and ankle needed until they made it back to her bunk. Once there, they both sat on the edge of the rack, while Lee pulled the blankets back. Once they were at the foot of the bed, Kara leaned back and Lee pushed her feet around until her head was on the pillow and her feet were up on the mattress instead of hanging off onto the floor. He pulled her pills out of his pocket. “Don’t fall asleep yet, Kara. I’m going to get you some water so you can take your pills.” He pulled her blankets up around her shoulders and then went into her locker looking for the mug she’d have in there somewhere with her toothbrush. He found it, emptied it of the toothbrush, toothpaste, comb and whatever the hell else she had in there and went to fetch some water.
She was just this side of awake when Lee came back. He helped her sit enough to swallow two of the pills (which she did without even a token complaint) and then laid her back against the pillow.
For a long time he just sat there with her, watching her, marveling in her return and her seeming willingness not to hold it against him that he’d been such an asshole the last few times she’d seen him. Funny how your whole world ending – again – could make a person see what’s truly important.
+++++++++
There were only a few people left. Twelve, she remembered. There had been twelve people left when she’d been sent out to destroy Colonial One. They’d been leaving a trail of ship-particles across the galaxy as the population shrank and shrank, causing them to consolidate and then destroy the ships that were manned only by corpses. She hated the duty. She’d done it more than once and every time, just as her thumb grazed the firing control she had the nagging thought that someone could still be left alive, hiding in a closet or under a blanket. What if someone was left and she destroyed them?
But every time, she sited her target, closed her eyes and fired. She opened her eyes to a fireball that was a thousand times brighter and more vivid than any sun she’d ever seen. And every time, she swore she heard screams.
She shook off the memories and popped the hatch. She removed her helmet and slid down the side of her ship. There was no more flight crew to pull a ladder up when a pilot landed.
She ran through her maintenance check and began refueling her fighter. She was surprised that no one came down to meet her. Even with the few people left, someone usually came to talk to her while she did her post-flight. She’d been the last pilot for over six days, which meant that she ate little, slept less and flew as much as her body could stand. She wasn’t on deck very much and she, like the few other survivors, tried to take comfort in the company of any other human being as often as possible. She and Tigh had even managed a sort of strained truce.
A cool breeze swept through the hangar and she shivered. Something was making her anxious. For the past month people had been dying in droves and she had been adjusting, once again, to being one of so few survivors. So much time in her cockpit, with only D. or Tigh’s occasional order or comment as her only companionship, she was starting to become immune to her own loneliness.
After all it was her fault.
She had no idea that besides nuking the hell out of Caprica, the Cylons had seeded the air with a virus. She had no idea that when she’d returned with Boomer and Helo that the three of them would become walking sources of contamination and that within fifteen hours of contact with one of them, ninety-nine and a half percent of all humans fell ill, and suffered a thirteen-day slow death.
They’d thought at first that the second Boomer was the cause, and had jettisoned her out the airlock. When that didn’t stop the contamination, Doctor Cottle had insisted on testing her and Helo. When word got back that they were the carriers, Helo had killed himself in order to try and stop the disease at the source. But Kara had known it was too late. The plague was spreading and there was no way to stop it.
With her Viper maintenance done, she headed for CIC. No one was there. A panic began to set in and she began running through the corridors, searching every room, every crawl space, every single place large enough for a person to fit. No one was there. No one living. Every three or four rooms she’d find a corpse or two. Lifeless eyes staring up from most. A few looked like their faces had melted like some kind of movie special effect.
She began the search again. And again. And again. She refused to believe she was the only human left in the universe. “It can’t be me, it can’t be me, it can’t be me.”
She opened the hatch to her bunkroom and stepped through. As she crossed to her bunk, she felt an ice-cold hand grab her arm. The reality that all of humanity had died sank in quickly and she realized that the only thing that could be grabbing her would have to be a Cylon. Or a corpse. Could the dead be looking for vengeance? Were the Cylons about to achieve total victory? “Get the frak away from me!” She turned, putting all of her weight into her right cross.
“Ow shit! Kara!”
She blinked. She was in her bed, not next to it. And she could hear the random night noises made by a room of twenty people. Her breathing was fast and her right hand hurt.
She hung her head and tried to figure out what had happened.
Her curtain had been pulled part way back and from between her fingers she could see Lee pulling himself off the floor. She squinted at him, trying to figure out what he was doing there and why he was holding his jaw.
Lee frowned at her as he stood up and moved back towards her. “If I sit back down am I going to get hit again?” he asked ruefully.
Kara flexed her right hand, grimacing at the way her knuckles felt like they were starting to swell. That was when she noticed that two of the cuts on her knuckles she’d gotten on Caprica had split back open. She hung her head. “Oh gods…” The general despair and terror of the dream came back to her and she pulled her good knee up to her chest and buried her face. As she squeezed her eyes shut she saw herself running through the Galactica tossing over furniture and screaming, hoping to find at least one other person alive. One other human survivor. She felt her stomach flip-flop unpleasantly.
Lee sat back on the edge of her rack, gently reaching out to stroke her hair. “Must have been one hell of a nightmare,” he said quietly.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she hated how often she seemed to need to say that lately. She reached up to touch his jaw, see what kind of damage she’d done.
Lee deliberately pulled his hand away from his jaw and Kara could see where a red spot threatened to blossom into wicked bruise.
“We’ve given each other worse with a lot less reason,” Lee consoled. Kara pulled her hand back and buried her face again. “Want to tell me about it?”
The images of empty room after empty room, exploding ship after exploding ship lit up behind her eyelids and she found herself with no idea where to start. She felt the emotions of the dream acutely, but had no idea if there were words that would even come close to capturing them.
But Lee deserved something. Some kind of explanation for her unprovoked assault. She opened her mouth, but still couldn’t find the words. She closed it and tried again, but still couldn’t capture the extreme isolation and devastation of the dream in words.
Lee slid up onto the bed with her and pulled the curtain shut. “Don’t worry about it,” he said as she tried to force herself to say something. “When you’re ready, I’ll listen. Until then, let’s just get you settled back in. Come on, lay down.” He offered her a hand to brace herself against as she lay back down. She allowed him to get her settled in and sighed as he pulled the blankets up to her chin, smoothing first the blankets and then her hair.
She cleared her throat, tried to speak again, afraid that if she didn’t give him a reason to stay he’d go. And even through she could still hear Crashdown’s slight snoring from the bunk across from hers, could still hear someone shuffle off to the head, she knew that if he left, she’d be alone in the universe once again. “I was all by myself,” she finally managed to grate out.
Lee nodded. “Can I ask who you were swinging at, then?”
Kara remembered the ice cold of the hand on her bicep, such a complete contrast to the warmth of Lee’s hand on hers. She sighed. “Either a Cylon or…” she stopped herself. He’d think she was nuts if she finished that thought.
“A Cylon or what?” Lee asked gently.
She shook her head.
“It was a bad dream, Kara. It’s all right.”
She wasn’t sure if he was letting her off the hook or telling her that he wouldn’t think she was crazy. She looked up at him, and found him looking back expectantly. Apparently it was an attempt to communicate the latter.
“Or someone who was dead. Everyone was… there were a lot of…” She felt her breath speed up even more and wondered for a second if she was on her way to hyperventilating. “I can’t. Lee, I can’t.”
He must have seen something in her eyes that convinced him that she really wasn’t up to the discussion at that point. “Okay. It’s okay,” he whispered
“I’m okay, now. Thanks,” she said quickly, knowing he was going to go and hoping that if she made it sound like her idea, it would hurt less.
“Okay,” Lee said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “How about if I stay until you’re asleep again?”
Kara tried to drag up a calm enough voice to insist that she was fine so that he’d go. She was still desperately afraid of being alone, but again, couldn’t ask him for what she wanted. What she needed. She told herself that he didn’t really want to stay, but polite convention demanded that he ask. She didn’t want to force him into something he was only offering out of obligation. Lee was one of the good guys; he’d stay if she asked, even if it was the last thing he wanted to do.
“Hm?” Lee asked quietly, when she didn’t respond. “Why don’t you roll over and I’ll rub your back until you drop off.”
It had been years since he’d offered to do that for her. When they’d been at the academy and she’d gotten all worked up about a test or flight evaluation or if someone got under her skin at a card game, she’d end up pacing the floors all hours of the night. She didn’t remember how he’d come upon it, but at some point he’d learned that if he could get her to lie down and let him rub his hand over her back in circles and in random patterns, just a touch to comfort, he could get her to sleep in less than an hour. Every time. No matter how upset she’d been.
She knew that nothing she’d been worked up over at the academy was going to come close to either the dream she’d just had or, worse, her current reality. It might not work this time, but she was so exhausted and feeling so fragmented that she couldn’t say no. She needed it too much. Her walls crumbled and she hoped fervently that he wasn’t humoring her. She hoped with all her heart that he really did care for her as much as he seemed to, because she knew that it would be very easy to become comfortable with, if not dependant on, the kind of kindness and support he’d offered since the moment he’d laid eyes on her in sickbay.
She shifted until she was on her belly, hugging her pillow to her chest. She felt Lee stretch out next to her and before he even touched her, she found herself starting to unknot.
“Just close your eyes,” he whispered.
She prayed quietly to the gods that this time she’d sleep dreamlessly. And that Lee wouldn’t remember that he should hate her in the morning.
Chapter: 1/2
Rating: R
Pairing: Lee/Kara
Summary: She's back. But she's far from okay. (Post KLG story, written before the start of season 2)
Authors Notes: First off, thanks to my great beta readers,
ancarett and ilanabean42 They may or may not recognize this story as the one they looked at way back when. Because of their great feedback I poked at this story for over a month trying to fix everything they said need fixing. Any remaining (or resulting) errors, are mine alone.Now for the longish bit:
This story is not going to be everyone's thing. That's fine. If you read it anyway and want to start a discussion on how your views differ from mine, I love a good debate. If you're just going to flame, save your breath. I'm an inner-city school teacher. You can't phase me by being rude.
KLG II leaves us with SO many points to start speculating and writing. I didn't tackle them all.
There are a lot of things this story is not.
• It is not a story of how Kara gets off Caprica
• It is not a story of what happens in the political realm of the fleet with both Baltar and Roslin out of the picture
• It is not the story of what they do with the Arrow or what happens to the fleet while Adama is recovering.
• It is not the story of how Lee gets out of being arrested and thrown in the brig.
• It is not the story of why Kara doesn't get thrown in the brig.
etc, etc...
Suffice it to say that what it is is long enough, and if I try to tie up all the loose ends of KLG II I'd be here for years.
What this story is is an examination of what all the stress of KLG and everything leading up to it, does to the mind of someone who is arguably not the most stable person in the fleet. So much of what happens in KLG II is either directly or indirectly the result of decisions that Kara makes that I can't imagine she wouldn't have some 'issues' when she returns. Not to mention the kind of hell she had to have seen having been on a planet that's been dead for months. This story is and exploration of what that kind of stress can do to a person. It's also, somewhat, a story about how a relationship can be built out of the ashes.
All feedback welcome. Everything from typo's I've still managed to miss to fundamentally different views of the characters.
If you're going through hell, keep going.
~Winston Churchill
To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness "
Erich Fromm (German born American social philosopher and psychoanalyst, 1900-1980)
The worlds ending had been bad. He’d thought it would be the worst thing he’d ever endure. But the fact that he had gone over four months now without finding equilibrium was worse. Things never calmed, became routine, became habit. They’d all started pretending that some semblance of a new definition of ‘normal’ had taken root, but he knew that it hadn’t. The constant flux was wearing him down to nothing.
His father was still on life-support. Boomer was a Cylon, and now apparently there were two of them. Ten souls lost on Raptor Two, three from Raptor One. The president had been put in hack. Tigh was in charge.
And Starbuck had gone A.W.O.L.
She was back now, but he hadn’t seen her. Gaeta and Dualla had come by to sit with him and the Old Man for a while last night. D. had mentioned it, assuming he knew. He didn’t let them see the relief he felt. Or the anger.
The anger was burning off. Had been for a while now. What she did went beyond ‘impulsive’, but as much as he wanted to he couldn’t remain indefinitely pissed at her. He couldn’t afford the emotional capital. He could only feel so much worry, fear, hate, dread and grief at one time. Most of the worry was taken up by his father. The general uncertainty of their circumstance got the fear. Tigh seemed to be getting most of the hate and dread. Starbuck had gotten the grief for a few days. When she’d failed to return three days after she’d jumped, he’d been certain she was dead. Now that she was back, a week after she’d left, he had no more room for hate or anger or grudges. The relief he’d felt at D.’s announcement was the first honest-to-gods good feeling he’d had since the doctor had come out of surgery and announced that things were still a little touch and go, but that his father was almost certain to live. He supposed there was a chance that he was just burying his negative feelings for her and that they’d erupt at a really inconvenient time, but for now… now he just wanted to see her.
He’d thought about going looking for her, but he knew that someone would have brought her up to speed. Once she knew about the Old Man, she’d know where to find him. She hadn’t come looking, so he hadn’t forced anything.
He wondered, briefly if she was in the brig. Nothing D. had said would have precluded it and Tigh seemed inordinately fond of sending people there lately. He supposed he’d have to check around.
Tigh couldn’t afford to keep Lee in the brig now that the commander was down.
Tigh’d won the fight. The president was in jail; the vice-president was in sickbay - the secure section where he spent his days rambling about god and a baby and six somethings. The X.O. was largely in charge of all that was left of humanity. But he couldn’t even run the Galactica on his own.
Lee worked his shifts, flew his patrols, and then returned to do his paperwork at his father’s bedside.
That was where he had found her. She was sitting on his chair, her knees pulled up to her chest and she was crying.
He waited for a second to see if the repressed anger would come surging forward now that he was actually confronted with her, but all he felt was relief and concern. He set his clipboard on one of the monitors near the foot of the bed. The last time he’d tried to talk to her – really talk to her, not yell at her for doing things her own way – she’d gotten rude and stormed off. Then he’d hit her and yelled at her and done everything he could to ensure that she never would want to open up to him.
But he couldn’t just let her sit there on her own and shake and sob. Even with her face buried in her knees, he could tell that she was a mess. Her hands were black and blue and scraped. Her hair needed to be washed; there was blood in it. He wondered if it was hers or someone else’s. And she seemed… small.
Knowing that there was every chance in the world that she’d push him away, he walked quietly to her side. “Hey,” he announced himself before kneeling down and pulling her against his chest.
He hadn’t expected to be disappointed when she went willingly into his embrace. He wasn’t even sure what exactly to do with her when her hands wrapped around his uniform jacket and her sobs became louder and more out of control. He’d braced himself for a fight, for a screaming match. He supposed he wanted it, to see a spark of the Starbuck he knew, because this person scared him. He’d never seen her defeated before, and he was sure that was what he was seeing now.
Their position was awkward, so he carefully moved her from the chair to the floor and then onto his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and whispered “Shhh,” over and over again, not sure what else to say.
He realized that the anger wasn’t as far away as he’d thought. It just wasn’t very important. He found that he wanted to be furious with her for leaving the fleet in the lurch. For coming up with a plan to eliminate the basestar and then sabotaging it by going A.W.O.L. He wanted to blame his father’s condition on her, on the fact that Boomer’s programming had been activated because she’d been pegged to take Starbuck’s place in the plan.
But he knew she’d be blaming herself; she didn't need him to paint her a picture in order for her to see the repercussions her choices had. It didn’t make his father get well faster. It didn’t even make him feel better.
She’d been back a day and clearly hadn’t been checked out by the doctors. He wondered again why Tigh hadn’t tossed her in the brig, but wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up. She must have been hiding out somewhere, because if anyone in the barracks had seen her they would have marched her straight to sickbay; if she’d put up a fight, they would have called him. No one else knew that they’d been on the outs lately.
He tucked her hair behind her ear and began rubbing her back through her work shirt. She wasn’t showing any signs of calming any time soon, so he shifted them both into a position that would be comfortable for the long haul.
He knew Kara well enough. He knew that the end of twelve colonies hadn’t resulted in a single tear. But the loss of her world – his father, him - she wouldn’t survive that.
He had no idea how to fix this. Fix her. He didn’t know what had happened when she’d gone back to Caprica. He’d heard vague rumors of a second Boomer-Cylon being on the ship now and something about the recovery of an E.C.O. whose name he either hadn’t heard or couldn’t remember.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”
Lee realized she was saying something, apologizing, though he wasn’t sure for what. It wasn’t that she didn’t have anything to feel remorse for – more the opposite – he didn’t know where she was starting.
“Shh.” He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure that once she started talking his anger wouldn’t surface and neither of them needed that now.
She began wiping her face with battered hands. Lee reached back to the cabinet near the bed and pulled out a small towel. He wiped her cheeks and eyes and then reached up to grab some tissues off the top. “Here,” he whispered.
Obligingly, Kara blew her nose. “I’m sorry,” she said again. Lee wondered how long it would be before she’d be able to say anything else.
He tilted her head back gently. “Not now, okay. Right now I’m just glad you’re back and okay.” He looked at the bruises on her face and only then noticed how she had one arm wrapped around her ribs. “Well, ‘okay’ may be stretching it. Why don’t we get the doc to take a look at you?”
Kara shook her head. “I’m okay. I’m fine. Really.” She pulled her arm back from where she’d wrapped it around him and crossed it over her chest. Protecting herself. Hugging herself.
Lee pushed her hair back from where it had fallen, revealing a three inch gash on her forehead that looked like it needed stitches at one point, but had healed over, messily, on its own. “Let’s let the doctor be the judge of that, okay? You can sit here, I’ll go get him.”
Her single protest seemed to be all the fight she had in her. Lee sat her up and got to his feet. He reached down a hand to help her stand. He remembered the last time he’d done that and how she’d deliberately ignored him and grabbed the ladder to haul herself up instead. Now she was just sitting there looking at him her hand half way between them. He thought she was going to pull away from him again, but when he looked again, he could see the bruises on her hand; she was trying to figure out how to do this without it hurting.
Lee reached down, his fingers wrapping lightly around her wrist, where there didn’t seem to be any discoloration, and pulled her up. Once she was standing, albeit unsteadily, he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. He felt her breath hitch as he squeezed too tightly against her abused ribs, but he didn’t let go, only loosened his hold.
After a few seconds, he moved her back to the chair and supported her as she carefully lowered herself into it. “I’ll be right back.” He gently caressed her hair before leaving.
He came back a few seconds later with Doctor Cottle in tow. The doctor made a check of a few of the monitors over the commander’s bed before turning to Starbuck. “Weren’t you supposed to present yourself for a physical some time yesterday?” he asked acerbically. Lee winced at his tone. Kara was calmer now, but he knew she was sitting on the edge. Probably would be for a while.
“I’m fine,” Kara muttered, more because it was expected of her than because she believed it.
“I think I get to decide that, young lady. Come on.” The doctor turned and walked off, the expectation that Starbuck would follow, clear on his face.
Lee gave her a hand, holding her wrist to help her stand again. “Go on. I’ll be right here when you’re done.”
Kara sighed and nodded.
Lee wished she'd told him to ‘frak off’.
+++++++++
Lee’s heart sped up when the doctor came back and asked him to come talk to Kara. She'd seemed beaten, but he’d seen her beaten up before, he hadn’t thought there was anything serious.
She was standing by the exam table pulling on her tank tops when they arrived. Without preamble the doc started talking to Lee in a tone of voice that was clearly meant for her. “She has three cracked ribs, among a large assortment of contusions and abrasions and a couple of lacerations that should really be reopened and stitched. Her knee is torn up again and she has signs of minor radiation sickness.” He clearly wasn’t concerned with breaking doctor/patient confidentiality in order to get Lee on his side. “Nothing is life-threatening, but she is going to be uncomfortable as hell for a while. She needs to spend a few days on a strong analgesic so that her ribs won’t bother her when she breathes and she won’t give herself pneumonia.”
“Pneumonia?” Lee asked.
“With fractured ribs, patients don’t breathe deeply. Hurts like hell, so I don’t blame them. But it’s not good for you, you’ve got to get enough air in and out to prevent infections from taking hold. She needs to take the pills to avoid that.”
“I don’t need any frakking pills,” Kara muttered, struggling to get her work shirt back on.
“And she has a lot of torn and spasmed muscles,” the doctor added, but neither of them complained as Lee helped her get her arm into her sleeve and pulled the shirt up to her shoulders for her.
“She needs rest, and she won’t get it as uncomfortable as she is,” Cottle insisted.
“I don’t need the frakking pills,” she hissed with a little more venom.
Lee leaned against the bed and crossed his arms as he watched her struggle to put her shoes on. “Why not, Kara? You can’t expect us to believe you don’t hurt like hell.”
“It’s fine.” She said quietly.
Lee’s eyebrows drew together. “What’s fine?”
“I’m fine,” Kara clarified, absently. “The pain. It’s not that bad. It’s fine.”
Lee looked over his shoulder at the doctor, his expression asking for a minute alone with her. Cottle shrugged and left.
“You don’t have a problem with pain pills, Kara. What are you doing here?”
“I …” She took a breath and tried again. “It’s okay. I don’t… I can’t…” She squeezed her eyes shut, but didn’t try to finish her sentence.
“You can’t what?” Lee asked quietly.
“Nothing, nevermind.”
“You can’t what, Kara?” he asked more emphatically.
“I didn’t mean that, I was just trying to say –“
“Bullshit,” Lee said quietly. She was breathing fast, her hands back around her ribs. “I can see that you’re hurting,” he told her, pointing to where she was literally trying to hold herself together. “You can’t what?”
She pressed her lips together, her eyes flickering in the direction of the commander’s bed. She squeezed her eyes shut, but one tear escaped anyway. She ducked her head but didn’t try to answer Lee’s question.
Lee pinched the bridge of his nose, his breath coming out in a huff as an idea occurred to him. “You can’t be forgiven?” he asked quietly. “You think you deserve this?”
Another tear made its way down her face but she didn’t answer.
“Kara, I’ll be the first to say this is all a frakking disaster, but you getting pneumonia because you can’t breathe right isn’t going to fix a frakking thing.” He wanted to shake some sense into her.
“The fleet’s low on supplies. I’m not hurt that bad. Save them for someone who –“ she faltered for a second. “-who needs them.”
“Who deserves them?” Lee asked critically. “Kara, you really aren’t in any frame of mind to be making decisions like this right now. You’re exhausted, you’re miserable, and if I had to guess you’re scared to death.” He hated to play dirty but she wasn’t leaving him a choice. “And your mom was full of shit. The gods don’t think we should suffer.”
Kara glared at him, the tears drying instantly, anger taking over her expression. “What the hell do you know about it? Or my mom or –“ Lee watched as her fingers curled into a fist and her arm muscles tensed.
Preemptively, he moved up and held her wrists to her side. “I know that she beat the crap out of you and told you that it was your fault. ‘Your punishment for your sins’. And because you were a kid you believed her. And I think deep down, you still do. You think that everything that happens around you is your fault and that you deserve whatever the hell happens to you because of it.” Lee took a deep a breath and spoke more quietly and calmly when he started again, but he was no less emphatic. “It’s all crap, Kara. The level of insanity we’re currently living through… it takes more than one person to set all this in motion. Might things be different if you hadn’t been put between the president and the commander? Maybe. Probably. But Boomer was a Cylon from the word ‘go’, that’s not your fault. She would have gone off sooner or later. In fact, I talked to the sergeant-at-arms when they captured her – it, whatever. We think she may have gone off once or twice already, but even she didn’t know it.”
He pulled her into a hug. “The whole frakking universe is not your fault,” he told her gently. “My dad’s gonna be okay. He’ll be glad to have you back. But when he asks to see you, I really don’t want to be the one to explain that you’re stuck in a hospital bed with pneumonia because you refused a couple of pain pills.”
Lee sighed. He’d played every card in his hand. He needed her to meet him part way now. “Okay?”
Looking pretty unhappy at having been manipulated she nodded slowly. “’Kay.” She cleared her throat. “Okay. I won’t argue any more. I’m sorry.”
He carefully hugged her. “It’s okay.”
She pulled back, crossing her arms over her chest and turning away from him. “I have to know, Lee. Why don’t you hate me any more?”
Lee’s eyes got wide as he took in her question. “Wh-What?” It was all he could get out.
“When I left, you hated me. You were so pissed at what I’d done with… And now things are so much worse… Why are you even speaking to me, let alone being this… this nice to me? How is it that you don’t hate me even more now?” Her eyes were dry, but her voice was breaking.
Lee came forward and gently rested his hands on top of her shoulders. “I won’t pretend that we don’t have a lot to talk about. We both know that we do. But I just got six days to find out what my life would be like without you in it in any way, and I’m not ashamed to say that it would suck. A lot. But before we try and hash all that out, you need to get cleaned up, you need to take a pill and you need to get some sleep. We’ll talk,” he promised, “I won’t let you run off on me this time. But I don’t think either of us is up for that right now. Can it just be enough for now for me to say that I don’t hate you, and that it wasn’t even fair of me to be angry in the first place?”
Kara nodded, not letting him see how relieved she was that he didn’t hate her and wasn’t going to let her avoid him. She wasn’t sure she’d have enough strength to go to him, but she figured that if he could come to her, the least she could do was stop running away.
+++++++++
Doctor Cottle handed Lee the bottle of pills when he came back and explained clearly that she was to take one every six hours and two at bed time. He gave Starbuck back the cane she’d finally been able to ditch just two days before she’d leapt for Caprica.
She didn’t argue, which worried Lee, just took the damn thing back and headed for the door.
He thanked the doc and ran to catch her, which wasn’t hard as slowly as she was moving. “Hey!”
She stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“Give me a minute,” he said quietly. “I’ll grab my things from my dad’s room and walk back to quarters with you.”
Kara just nodded and leaned up against the wall.
Lee checked on his dad and collected his paperwork before collecting her and getting her back home.
She didn’t talk on the way back. He knew she was steeling herself for what was to come. Neither of them had any idea what the other pilots would think of her return. Would they be glad to see her? Angry for at her for leaving? Would they be able to tell that the best thing they could do for a while would be to leave her alone? Or would he have to risk Kara getting pissed at him by trying to subtly run them off?
She hesitated at the door, swaying slightly on her feet. Lee rested a hand between her shoulder blades. “You okay?”
She squeezed her eyes shut but nodded her head.
He decided to take her at her word and opened the hatch.
Crashdown was the only person in the bunkroom. He was apparently searching for something in his locker. He glanced over his shoulder to see who’d come in and openly stared at Kara for a minute before coming over to hug her. “Lords of Kobol, I thought they were just rumors. You are back!”
Kara hissed as he squeezed, but made an attempt to hug him back.
“Watch her ribs,” Lee said for her, “she’s had a rough time of it.”
Kara glared at him, but didn’t say anything.
Crash pulled back to look at her. “Yeah, I can see that now,” he said as he pushed her hair out of her face to see the gash over her eye. “You’ve definitely looked better,” he said with a smile, “But I am really frakking glad you’re back.”
Kara looked at his own somewhat battered appearance. “Looks like I’m not the only one who had a run-in with someone’s fist,” she teased, the ghost of a sincere smile playing on her lips.
“Actually first it was a Cylon raider and then gravity, but yeah, I’ve had better days.”
Kara nodded and then shifted a little, wincing and tucking her free arm around her ribs. “I want to hear about it, but… maybe later?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Crashdown said looking her over critically. “Actually I need to get a briefing. You look like you need about a month’s worth of sleep.”
Kara nodded and gave a little half-smile. “A week’s worth at least,” she said with forced humor.
Crashdown hugged her one more time before heading out.
As soon as the door shut, Kara swayed noticeably on her feet. Lee caught her carefully, realizing that acting as normal as possible for that short period of time had really taken it out of her. He took the cane from her, giving her his hand instead; wrapping his other arm around her, he led her to her bunk. “There’s no one else here, Kara. Will you let me help you get settled into bed?” Fortunately it was time to switch from day shift to mids, which meant everyone from their unit was either at a pre-shift briefing or a post-shift debriefing. The bunkroom should be quiet for the better part of an hour.
She made a face, and at first Lee thought she didn’t understand what he’d said, but before he could repeat it she began hobbling towards her locker, “I really need to clean up before I do anything. Gods, how can you even stand to be near me?” She opened her locker and braced herself for the pain of bending down to root out the clothes she wanted.
Lee grabbed her shoulders as she started to stoop. She was on the verge of falling over from exhaustion as it was, but he figured she had to be uncomfortable with blood in her hair and clothes that were tattered and torn and had been inhabited for more than a week straight. He figured a few minutes in the shower wouldn’t tax her unduly as long as she let him help. He noticed how she braced her ribs with her hand as she tried to kneel in front of her locker. “Uh-uh. Stand up. Tell me what you need.”
Kara gasped as she changed directions, straightening back up, the slight bend she’d achieved before Lee stopped her already making her a little sore. “Um… underwear, tanks… I think I have a pair of clean sweatpants in there somewhere…”
Lee dug around, careful not to disturb anything and trying not to see anything he wasn’t actively looking for. People on a battlestar got precious little privacy. Digging around in someone’s locker just wasn’t done. He had permission, of course, but that didn’t mean he needed to be unearthing any secrets she wouldn’t want to get into. One thing he did grab, that she hadn’t specifically asked for was a pair of socks. He’d noticed while holding her hand that her fingers were cold, so if she was cold while fully dressed, once she was wet, she’d be freezing. “Anything else?” he asked before standing.
“Shower bag. It’s on the hook in the back.”
Lee grabbed the mesh bag and closed the door. As they made the slow trek to the head, he said quietly, “You have blood in your hair. Can you get your arms up to wash it out or are you going to need help?”
Leaning on her cane, Kara slowly stretched her free hand up over her head to see. “I think I can manage it.”
Lee nodded. When they got to the long line of shower stalls, Lee put her shower bag on the peg in the stall and set her clothes on the shelf in the adjoining changing cubical. He pulled the curtain to the changing room closed with them both inside.
Kara turned to face him. “I’m fine, Lee, really. I can take a shower by myself. Been doing it for more than twenty-five years now.”
“Normally I wouldn’t have any doubts about that. Today you’re off balance, you’re stiff and you’re still discovering places you hurt. I think I’ll stick close.”
Kara glared at him.
“We’ve lived together on and off since we were seventeen years old. You think you got something under those clothes I haven’t seen yet?”
She had no idea why she laughed at that, but she did. And it felt good.
“Come on, sit here,” he indicated the short bench, “I’ll get your shoes.”
Kara stood looking at him for a long minute before sitting down and trying to be gracious about accepting his help.
Lee pulled off her shoes and socks, noticing the ugly bruising and swelling of her right ankle. Between her knee and her ankle he wondered how she could put weight on that leg at all. He then helped her pull off the workshirt he’d just helped her put on in sickbay earlier. She turned her back before undoing her BDU pants and letting them drop, but took the offered hand to keep her balanced as she stepped out of them. Lee winced at the black and blue marks that covered her legs. He didn’t wait for her to try her tank tops. He’d watched her struggle to get them on in sickbay, and he imagined that getting them on, moving down, had to be easier than trying to reach up and pull them off. While her back was still to him, he took the bottom edges of her tanks and flipped them around inside-out as he pulled them up and helped her get her arms through without too much bending or pulling.
She began shivering in her underwear and bra. Leaning on the wall, she reached forward and turned the shower on, letting it warm up before she stepped in. “Turn around,” she told him, as she pulled her bra straps down her arms.
“Kara, come on,” Lee cajoled wondering why it was funny before but she seemed unsettled now.
“Turn. Around,” she said again, enunciating clearly, but not raising her voice.
“Kara –“ he couldn’t understand why she was going all modest on him now. They’d seen each other undressed countless times in the course of living together in various community bunkrooms.
“Lee, please, I’m trying to be as cooperative as I can, but would you just…” Her voice trailed off her head hung, her arms crossed over her chest, her bra straps down, but the back still fastened.
Lee realized that she was fading pretty quickly, there were tears in her voice that she’d been successfully fighting off since she’d calmed down by his father’s bedside. She was exhausted, in pain and, he realized, severely traumatized. He needed to stop expecting her to act like he was used to. “Okay, okay. I’ll step out until you’re in the shower, but I’m not going far.”
Kara nodded and waited to hear the curtain rustle as Lee stepped out and rustle again as he closed it behind him. She finished undressing and stepped under the warm spray. She kept one hand on the wall for balance and support. The water was warm and the pressure was high enough to feel good on any unbruised skin it could find, when the spray hit the bruises she winced, but held still until she felt at least a little cleaner. She made a quick pass with the soap, hoping that she was at least getting the worst of the blood and dirt off. She started scrubbing at one particular smudge of dirt that was being stubborn until she realized it was a shadow from the overhead lighting hitting the plumbing. She rolled her eyes and dropped her soap back in her shower bag. She knew she was beyond tired, but that was just dumb.
She was careful of the several bruises under her hair, washing it was going to be difficult and she wondered if there was some way to back out of her earlier assessment and get Lee to help. She sighed and leaned forward with both hands against the wall. She knew intellectually that all she had to do was ask. She could turn the water off, ask Lee to hand her a towel to wrap around herself and then ask Lee to help her get the blood and dirt out of her hair. Then she could step back into the shower, hand Lee the towel and rinse off.
Intellectually she knew it could be that easy. Lee had been incredibly gentle with her since her return. If he found a bruise and she winced, he wouldn’t press there again. It could be that easy. But a primal fear deep inside her was afraid that asking for anything, even something he’d already offered, would be too much. That if she let him know how needy she felt that he’d turn his back on her and walk away. Her head hit the wall between her hands with a thump.
“Kara? You okay?”
It could be as simple as saying, “I’m fine, just having problems getting my hair washed,” she thought.
“Fine. I’m fine. I’m just going to wash my hair.” It was as close as she could get to the truth.
“Let me know if you need any help. Your arms seemed a little stiff when you were getting your tanks off.”
There it was, another opportunity. All she needed to say was, “Yeah, they are. Would you mind…?”
“I’m fine. It just might take me a few minutes.”
She stayed pressed against the wall, the water streaming over her back.
After several long minutes, she stood up straighter, feeling every vertebra in her back protest as she did, and pulled the small bottle of shampoo out of her toiletries kit. She squeezed some into her hand and managed to get her hand up to the top of her head before the spasm hit. Her arm locked up, the muscles in the juncture of her neck and shoulder shrank and froze. She couldn’t help but gasp.
“Kara?” Lee asked again, alarm evident in his voice. He’d heard her. Frak.
“Muscle spasm. It’s no big deal.” She managed to slide her hand down from the top of her head to the painfully tight muscle where her shoulder and neck joined. She tried to put some pressure on it to get it to release, but it wasn’t going.
“Kara, let me see.”
His voice was closer now, like he’d moved from the bench to right next to the curtain.
“Frak.” Kara couldn’t think of a way out of it. She couldn’t get the damn muscle to release and she couldn’t wash her hair if she couldn’t move her arm. She wrenched off the water with her free hand. “Hand me a towel.”
Lee stuck a towel through the curtain without looking, thankfully without arguing. Holding the edge of it under her chin, she managed to get it wrapped around her body with one hand. She couldn’t get the edge tucked in, so she held it closed with her free hand. “All right,” she said reluctantly.
Lee pushed the curtain aside, frowning at the way she was holding her neck. “Still spasmed?” he asked, carefully pulling her arm down to her side and feeling along the top of her shoulder, carefully mapping out the hard muscle with his fingertips. Her head dropped down sideways, trying to keep the muscle from pulling as her arm was lowered.
“Yeah,” she said, hissing on the end of the word when he pressed at the center of the knot.
“This may hurt a bit,” he warned as he began a massage of the offended muscle. After a few minutes he pressed her head the other way, away from the pulled muscle. She didn’t protest too much so he guided her into turning her head back and forth a few times while he pressed down on her shoulder with his other hand. “Better?”
Kara rolled her shoulder, testing it. There was a lingering soreness, but no longer any acute pain. “Mm-hm,” she muttered, staring at the tiles. “Thanks.”
Lee pulled his hands away and found the right one covered in something green and slimy. “I take it you were washing your hair when this happened?”
She had a vague memory of having told him that already, but before she could make a remark to that effect she glanced up and saw her shampoo dripping down his hand. She winced apologetically.
“Ah, hell with it,” Lee laughed. “While I’m here, I might as well see about getting that blood out of your hair, since you can’t see it.”
Kara closed her eyes and turned her back to him, letting him do so, sending up a silent prayer of thanks to whichever God had put that bug in his ear. She’d so desperately wanted his help, but just couldn’t bring herself to ask him for anything.
Lee’s fingers were sure, but gentle. Once he’d gotten her hair all lathered up he used his fingernails to dislodge the dried blood and then used the pads of his fingers to gently scrub out any remaining dirt, deftly avoiding any areas that made her wince or hiss. And then, just because he could, and she was likely to be too sore to hit him, he stood the shorter layers of her hair on end in little spikes, the shampoo acting like styling glue to hold them up.
Kara tried to roll her eyes up far enough to see the top of her own head. “What?” she asked when she saw the silly look on his face.
He didn’t say anything, just stared at the top of her head.
Kara shifted the edge of the towel into her other hand and lifted her good hand carefully to touch the top of her head, feeling the spikes. She flattened them out with her palm and glared at him wondering where he found the energy or disposition to be silly after everything they’d been through. “I need to rinse off,” she said quietly before shutting the curtain again and handing him the towel from her side.
A few minutes later Kara was asking for her towel again, wrapping it around herself and managing to tuck in the corner this time before opening the curtain. Lee was waiting there with another towel. He got her seated on the small bench and carefully patted her skin dry, noting and cataloging the different bruises, cuts and scrapes, any trace of his previously found humor gone in light of them. “How do you feel?” he asked softly.
“Better. At least I don’t feel like my skin is going to crawl right off my bones any more.”
“Good. ‘Cause, you know… you look like hell.” He’d meant the comment to be flip, but couldn’t keep the worry out of his voice.
“Thanks a lot.”
He couldn’t tell if she was really pissed or not. “I-I just mean that… the doctor gave me the list of your injuries, Kara. I’m just worried that maybe you should be spending the night in sickbay where they can keep an eye on you.”
Her face went cold. “I’m fine,” she bit out. “I don’t need anyone frakking hovering over me. I just need some sleep.” She reached for the stack of clothes on the end of the bench she was sitting on, but froze up as she tried to stretch out an arm that still wasn’t cooperating.
Lee wondered if the hovering comment was directed at him. Even if it was, he wasn’t sure what to do about it. She’d shown many times that she really wasn’t able to take care of herself. “Kara…”
She dropped her head, the brief moment of pique costing her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I didn’t mean you. In sickbay the damn nurses come in every two hours to wake you up to see if you’re sleeping okay. I really don’t have the patience for that kind of crap right now. I appreciate your help. I’ll take the stupid pills, but I just want to sleep in my own bed. For a long time.”
Lee smiled at her, glad she wasn’t getting pissed at him. He picked up the extra towel and carefully rubbed the extra water out of her hair and then helped her get her feet into her underwear. He tugged them up to her knees before helping her stand and turning his back so she could finish pulling them up under her towel. He carefully pulled her tanks over her head and helped her maneuver her arms through the holes and pulled them over the top of the towel.
Kara pulled the towel out from under the shirts and let it drop to the floor. She needed to get up and put her sweatpants on, and possibly get her sweatshirt out of her locker, she was starting to shake again, but it was suddenly just so much effort.
“Almost there, Kara,” Lee whispered quietly from where he’d knelt down in front of her. “Here, I got you some socks, slide down to this end of the bench so you don’t get them wet when you stand up.” She shifted painfully to the edge of the bench closest to the outer curtain. Her eyes were closing of their own volition and she didn’t even realize she was drifting to the left until Lee caught her arm. “Sit up!” he said urgently. “You don’t want fall off this bench. It’s not long enough to lay on. C’mon, I’ll get your socks on for you, we’ll get you in your sweats and then we can get you tucked into bed.”
Kara nodded listlessly and let Lee do what he’d outlined. She knew she should be insisting that she could take care of herself, but she just didn’t have the strength to both stay upright and talk. Nevermind if he actually believed her and expected her to dress herself.
She was almost asleep sitting up when Lee hauled her into a standing position and pulled her sweats up over her hips. She didn’t remember him putting her feet in them, but apparently he had. She wondered if she had, in fact, drifted off for a minute. She was leaning against his chest and once he had her waistband straightened out, his arms had slipped up to simply hold her against him, one hand remaining around her waist, the other rubbing her back through her tanks. “Ready for bed?” he asked rhetorically. She was damn near literally asleep on her feet. She nodded against him and let him lead her back to her bunk.
Halfway to the door she realized all her crap was still in the shower stall. “My stuff…” she muttered, pulling away to go after it.
Lee pulled her back, “Your clothes are already in the hamper. I’ll come back to get your shower bag once you’re in bed.”
Kara made a face at needing him to do yet one more thing for her, but she just couldn’t find the strength to argue, so she just nodded instead.
Lee held her hand, his arm locked to give her the support her weak knee and ankle needed until they made it back to her bunk. Once there, they both sat on the edge of the rack, while Lee pulled the blankets back. Once they were at the foot of the bed, Kara leaned back and Lee pushed her feet around until her head was on the pillow and her feet were up on the mattress instead of hanging off onto the floor. He pulled her pills out of his pocket. “Don’t fall asleep yet, Kara. I’m going to get you some water so you can take your pills.” He pulled her blankets up around her shoulders and then went into her locker looking for the mug she’d have in there somewhere with her toothbrush. He found it, emptied it of the toothbrush, toothpaste, comb and whatever the hell else she had in there and went to fetch some water.
She was just this side of awake when Lee came back. He helped her sit enough to swallow two of the pills (which she did without even a token complaint) and then laid her back against the pillow.
For a long time he just sat there with her, watching her, marveling in her return and her seeming willingness not to hold it against him that he’d been such an asshole the last few times she’d seen him. Funny how your whole world ending – again – could make a person see what’s truly important.
+++++++++
There were only a few people left. Twelve, she remembered. There had been twelve people left when she’d been sent out to destroy Colonial One. They’d been leaving a trail of ship-particles across the galaxy as the population shrank and shrank, causing them to consolidate and then destroy the ships that were manned only by corpses. She hated the duty. She’d done it more than once and every time, just as her thumb grazed the firing control she had the nagging thought that someone could still be left alive, hiding in a closet or under a blanket. What if someone was left and she destroyed them?
But every time, she sited her target, closed her eyes and fired. She opened her eyes to a fireball that was a thousand times brighter and more vivid than any sun she’d ever seen. And every time, she swore she heard screams.
She shook off the memories and popped the hatch. She removed her helmet and slid down the side of her ship. There was no more flight crew to pull a ladder up when a pilot landed.
She ran through her maintenance check and began refueling her fighter. She was surprised that no one came down to meet her. Even with the few people left, someone usually came to talk to her while she did her post-flight. She’d been the last pilot for over six days, which meant that she ate little, slept less and flew as much as her body could stand. She wasn’t on deck very much and she, like the few other survivors, tried to take comfort in the company of any other human being as often as possible. She and Tigh had even managed a sort of strained truce.
A cool breeze swept through the hangar and she shivered. Something was making her anxious. For the past month people had been dying in droves and she had been adjusting, once again, to being one of so few survivors. So much time in her cockpit, with only D. or Tigh’s occasional order or comment as her only companionship, she was starting to become immune to her own loneliness.
After all it was her fault.
She had no idea that besides nuking the hell out of Caprica, the Cylons had seeded the air with a virus. She had no idea that when she’d returned with Boomer and Helo that the three of them would become walking sources of contamination and that within fifteen hours of contact with one of them, ninety-nine and a half percent of all humans fell ill, and suffered a thirteen-day slow death.
They’d thought at first that the second Boomer was the cause, and had jettisoned her out the airlock. When that didn’t stop the contamination, Doctor Cottle had insisted on testing her and Helo. When word got back that they were the carriers, Helo had killed himself in order to try and stop the disease at the source. But Kara had known it was too late. The plague was spreading and there was no way to stop it.
With her Viper maintenance done, she headed for CIC. No one was there. A panic began to set in and she began running through the corridors, searching every room, every crawl space, every single place large enough for a person to fit. No one was there. No one living. Every three or four rooms she’d find a corpse or two. Lifeless eyes staring up from most. A few looked like their faces had melted like some kind of movie special effect.
She began the search again. And again. And again. She refused to believe she was the only human left in the universe. “It can’t be me, it can’t be me, it can’t be me.”
She opened the hatch to her bunkroom and stepped through. As she crossed to her bunk, she felt an ice-cold hand grab her arm. The reality that all of humanity had died sank in quickly and she realized that the only thing that could be grabbing her would have to be a Cylon. Or a corpse. Could the dead be looking for vengeance? Were the Cylons about to achieve total victory? “Get the frak away from me!” She turned, putting all of her weight into her right cross.
“Ow shit! Kara!”
She blinked. She was in her bed, not next to it. And she could hear the random night noises made by a room of twenty people. Her breathing was fast and her right hand hurt.
She hung her head and tried to figure out what had happened.
Her curtain had been pulled part way back and from between her fingers she could see Lee pulling himself off the floor. She squinted at him, trying to figure out what he was doing there and why he was holding his jaw.
Lee frowned at her as he stood up and moved back towards her. “If I sit back down am I going to get hit again?” he asked ruefully.
Kara flexed her right hand, grimacing at the way her knuckles felt like they were starting to swell. That was when she noticed that two of the cuts on her knuckles she’d gotten on Caprica had split back open. She hung her head. “Oh gods…” The general despair and terror of the dream came back to her and she pulled her good knee up to her chest and buried her face. As she squeezed her eyes shut she saw herself running through the Galactica tossing over furniture and screaming, hoping to find at least one other person alive. One other human survivor. She felt her stomach flip-flop unpleasantly.
Lee sat back on the edge of her rack, gently reaching out to stroke her hair. “Must have been one hell of a nightmare,” he said quietly.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she hated how often she seemed to need to say that lately. She reached up to touch his jaw, see what kind of damage she’d done.
Lee deliberately pulled his hand away from his jaw and Kara could see where a red spot threatened to blossom into wicked bruise.
“We’ve given each other worse with a lot less reason,” Lee consoled. Kara pulled her hand back and buried her face again. “Want to tell me about it?”
The images of empty room after empty room, exploding ship after exploding ship lit up behind her eyelids and she found herself with no idea where to start. She felt the emotions of the dream acutely, but had no idea if there were words that would even come close to capturing them.
But Lee deserved something. Some kind of explanation for her unprovoked assault. She opened her mouth, but still couldn’t find the words. She closed it and tried again, but still couldn’t capture the extreme isolation and devastation of the dream in words.
Lee slid up onto the bed with her and pulled the curtain shut. “Don’t worry about it,” he said as she tried to force herself to say something. “When you’re ready, I’ll listen. Until then, let’s just get you settled back in. Come on, lay down.” He offered her a hand to brace herself against as she lay back down. She allowed him to get her settled in and sighed as he pulled the blankets up to her chin, smoothing first the blankets and then her hair.
She cleared her throat, tried to speak again, afraid that if she didn’t give him a reason to stay he’d go. And even through she could still hear Crashdown’s slight snoring from the bunk across from hers, could still hear someone shuffle off to the head, she knew that if he left, she’d be alone in the universe once again. “I was all by myself,” she finally managed to grate out.
Lee nodded. “Can I ask who you were swinging at, then?”
Kara remembered the ice cold of the hand on her bicep, such a complete contrast to the warmth of Lee’s hand on hers. She sighed. “Either a Cylon or…” she stopped herself. He’d think she was nuts if she finished that thought.
“A Cylon or what?” Lee asked gently.
She shook her head.
“It was a bad dream, Kara. It’s all right.”
She wasn’t sure if he was letting her off the hook or telling her that he wouldn’t think she was crazy. She looked up at him, and found him looking back expectantly. Apparently it was an attempt to communicate the latter.
“Or someone who was dead. Everyone was… there were a lot of…” She felt her breath speed up even more and wondered for a second if she was on her way to hyperventilating. “I can’t. Lee, I can’t.”
He must have seen something in her eyes that convinced him that she really wasn’t up to the discussion at that point. “Okay. It’s okay,” he whispered
“I’m okay, now. Thanks,” she said quickly, knowing he was going to go and hoping that if she made it sound like her idea, it would hurt less.
“Okay,” Lee said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “How about if I stay until you’re asleep again?”
Kara tried to drag up a calm enough voice to insist that she was fine so that he’d go. She was still desperately afraid of being alone, but again, couldn’t ask him for what she wanted. What she needed. She told herself that he didn’t really want to stay, but polite convention demanded that he ask. She didn’t want to force him into something he was only offering out of obligation. Lee was one of the good guys; he’d stay if she asked, even if it was the last thing he wanted to do.
“Hm?” Lee asked quietly, when she didn’t respond. “Why don’t you roll over and I’ll rub your back until you drop off.”
It had been years since he’d offered to do that for her. When they’d been at the academy and she’d gotten all worked up about a test or flight evaluation or if someone got under her skin at a card game, she’d end up pacing the floors all hours of the night. She didn’t remember how he’d come upon it, but at some point he’d learned that if he could get her to lie down and let him rub his hand over her back in circles and in random patterns, just a touch to comfort, he could get her to sleep in less than an hour. Every time. No matter how upset she’d been.
She knew that nothing she’d been worked up over at the academy was going to come close to either the dream she’d just had or, worse, her current reality. It might not work this time, but she was so exhausted and feeling so fragmented that she couldn’t say no. She needed it too much. Her walls crumbled and she hoped fervently that he wasn’t humoring her. She hoped with all her heart that he really did care for her as much as he seemed to, because she knew that it would be very easy to become comfortable with, if not dependant on, the kind of kindness and support he’d offered since the moment he’d laid eyes on her in sickbay.
She shifted until she was on her belly, hugging her pillow to her chest. She felt Lee stretch out next to her and before he even touched her, she found herself starting to unknot.
“Just close your eyes,” he whispered.
She prayed quietly to the gods that this time she’d sleep dreamlessly. And that Lee wouldn’t remember that he should hate her in the morning.