InsaneJournal

Summary: Lee falls for Kara while she's still engaged to Zak, and it changes everything. AU, pre-series/ S1.

<lj-cut text="Those whom the gods love die young. ">
As it happened, they didn't have a chance to confess; the law came to them, as soon as the Fleet stopped running. Lee and Zarek had found a prisoner with enough commercial flight experience to babysit the <i>Queen</i>'s controls, and Zarek and Mason had taken it in turns to watch him, armed with the former captain's pistol, while Lee got six hours of sleep. So he was the only one awake, alone on the flight deck flipping through the <i>Queen</i>'s log and making maintenance notes, when the shuttle docked.

It was Roslin. Of course it was Roslin. She was ambitious, Lee would give her that much. He sent one of the guards to get Zarek and walked to the hatch to greet her. She was older than he'd expected, still beautiful, in the way that strong woman always were, when they knew their strength. “Madame President,” he said, offering his hand.

“Captain Apollo?” she asked, taking it.

“Yes,” Lee said, feeling guilty for the lie. It was Roslin who did it, who made him feel like a child trying to evade punishment. “No. Come in and sit down.”

He told her the story, with the names left out: that he'd slept with another man's fiancée, that that man had been killed in an accident, and that he'd been wrongly convicted of murder. It sounded idiotic, when he said it to her. It was idiotic. Telling Roslin, he realized he could no longer even remember what Kara had been like.

It hadn't just cost him Zak, sleeping with her. Hadn't just cost him his relationship with his father, or his career. It had cost him the person he'd been, made him into someone he didn't recognize, someone Laura Roslin was a little afraid to be alone with. He'd been a nice guy, once upon a time: the man Roslin had thought he was, with the Caprican accent and the expensive education.

Now he was an escaped prisoner on a hijacked convict ship. “I'll understand,” he said. “If you want to lock us up and throw away the key. But we're not asking for forgiveness, we're asking for a chance to redeem ourselves.” Zarek had woken up. Lee could see him waiting, just beyond the doorway.

“Aren't we all,” she said, smiling at him tiredly. “Captain—Apollo. Naturally I will have to talk to the Commander about this. But I think that if ever there were a time for redemption, this is it. We're going to need all the willing hands we can get.”

“Thank you,” Lee said, and meant it. “Thank you for giving us a chance.” Zarek raised an eyebrow, and he shook his head. Why complicate things by adding terrorism to the mix? He stood up when Roslin did, walked with her across the bridge.

Just before she got to the hatch, she stopped, and turned toward Lee again. “Captain,” she said. “I came here to ask you to be my military advisor. I'd like it if you could do that for me. Be my go-between, when it comes to working with Commander Adama. I think he's uncomfortable talking to a civilian—not to mention a schoolteacher.”

Lee flinched. “That wouldn't work,” he said, which was like saying the Cylons had won the war, or his father was a little difficult. “The man—the man on Caprica, that they say I killed. That was Commander Adama's son.”

“No,” Roslin said. “It couldn't have been. They told me that one of Adama's sons murdered the other--.” She looked Lee full in the face, considering. “You're his son,” she said finally, and Lee knew she believed it. “You don't look anything like him, but still, there's something about you. He doesn't know you're alive?”

“I'd rather it stayed that way,” Lee said, not quite asking for it.

Roslin shook her head. “I'm very sorry for you, Captain Apollo.” And she climbed back into her shuttle and left.

“Leave me alone,” Lee said, and whatever Zarek saw in his face, it was enough that he turned and went without a word.

He was up to his elbows in the <i>Queen</i>'s engines when <i>Galactica</i>'s CAG came for him. “Send him in,” he yelled, and Mason opened the door with a crash. Lee kept working on the loose gimbal, not looking up as the footsteps came closer.

“Gods,” a woman said. “It <i>is</i> you. Lee, how could you let the old man think you were dead--.”

Lee sat up too quickly and cracked his head hard on a pipe. “Frak,” he said, half in disbelief and half in horror. “<i>Kara</i>?”

“He thought you were dead,” she hissed at him, same old Starbuck, always angry about something. “Do you have any idea what it did to him? Losing Zak, and now you?”

“I thought you were dead,” Lee pointed out, wincing as he touched the back of his head. “Kara--.”

“Don't you call me that! I'm still mad at you, Lee. You let me think you killed Zak!”

“I pleaded innocent,” Lee said mildly. “At my trial, where you testified against me.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I'm sorry about that, Lee.” Same old Starbuck. He could remember now why he'd loved her, why he'd never stopped. Why she'd driven him crazy even then, when he'd never been sure if she was flirting with him or bored by him.

“What made you change your mind?” he demanded. And watching her mouth droop, “My father. Of course it was. He always knew I wasn't guilty. He just hated my guts anyway.”

“He loves you,” she argued. “He did everything he could, to try to keep you out of jail. It's because of him you didn't get the death penalty.”

“He cared so much he disowned me,” Lee said bitterly. “He couldn't be bothered to come to my farce of a trial. How the frak did you end up flying for him?”

“He asked for me,” Kara said defensively. “He's been really kind to me, Lee.”

“Did you frak him, too?”

She hit him across the engine room, which he probably deserved. He stayed on the floor. “Nice shot, Kara. You been practicing with the old man?”

“Get up,” she said. “So I can knock you down again.”

“I'm good where I am,” Lee said. “What do we now?”

“Your father thinks I'm here to recruit prisoners. We need some help, Lee, or everyone's going to keep on being thirsty. But you--.” She smiled at him. “You are a real prize. Do you have any idea how short I am for Viper pilots? If this keeps up I'll have to put Tigh in a flight suit, and no one wants that.”

“Yeah,” Lee said. “I'm sure my father would rather put me in a flight suit. And then send me out to face a basestar by myself, maybe.”

“Lee,” she said. “I'm sorry. For all of it. But you have to let it go.”

Lee looked up at her. She was thinner than he remembered, her face very pale, and the circles under eyes so dark they were almost black. Her hands were shaking, despite the fact that she'd tucked them in her pockets. “Kara,” he said softly. “Have you had any sleep?”

She turned away. For a beautiful woman, she'd always been surprisingly uncomfortable with having people look at her. “I'm the most senior pilot on <i>Galactica</i>,” she said. “Did they tell you that? I went from lieutenant senior grade to captain to CAG, all in the space of about ten minutes. I shot down a civilian ship with fifteen hundred people on it. I'm so full of stims I may never sleep again.”

Lee got up off the floor and wiped his hands on his orange jumpsuit. “I'll come,” he said. “If you need me. But not for my father, Kara, and not because I want to save the world, because I gave up on that crap a long time ago. I'll come and be your wingman, if that's what you want.”

She left, slamming the door behind her, and Lee went back to the engine. He wasn't sure if that had been a yes or a no, but with Kara you never could tell. And if she hadn't gone—if she hadn't gone, he wasn't sure he would have been able to keep from kissing her, despite everything.

It frightened him, how much and how little he'd changed. As a penance, he made himself take the crankcase apart so that he could change the seals. It was time consuming, frustrating, and gave him plenty of time to think about Kara, about Laura Roslin, about Zak, who might well be dead now even if he had not died on Caprica. About his father, whom he was going to have to face sooner or later.

He was still putting it back together—and swearing at it—when Zarek came in. “<i>Galactica</i>'s just been on the comm,” he said. “Back to Olympus for you, Apollo.”

“Pliers,” Lee said, putting out his hand. “I'll put in a good word for you, Thomas. For all the good it will do you.”

“It's a hell of a thing,” Zarek said softly, and he sounded sincere. “You spend your whole life fighting for something, only to have it—your cause and your enemy both—obliterated in a heartbeat.”

“At least you were fighting for something,” Lee said. “It was a good cause, Tom. I'm not sure you always went about it in the best possible way, but hell—at least <i>you</i> thought you were, right?”

Zarek smiled. “Not always,” he said. “Sometimes I did the most expedient thing, is all.”

“Yeah,” Lee said, and smiled back, “well it turns out, sometimes a little expedience isn't the end of the world.”

“That was your girl, wasn't it?” Zarek asked. “The one you were in love with, back on Caprica? I can see why you did it, now. If ever there was a woman who looked like trouble, it was that one.”

“Yeah,” Lee said again, but he was thinking that he'd fallen in love with Kara the first time he'd seen her fly, and not the first time he'd seen the shape of her body.

“Your father and Roslin are going to try to run things between them,” Zarek said quietly. “That can't be allowed, Lee. Not without an election. This is one of those turning points: you want a chance to fight for something, this is your chance.”

“Is this the right thing to do or the expedient thing?” Lee asked, trying to make a joke of it, trying not to imagine his father as dictator for life.

But Zarek's eyes met his, steady and terrible across the pieces of <i>Astral Queen</i>'s filtration system. “Sometimes they're the same,” he said. “We can have an election in six months or a year, Lee, or we can have a revolution in five years. You tell me which you'd rather see. These people aren't soldiers. They aren't pioneers. They aren't going to want to run forever. Roslin told me your father claims he knows the way to Earth. You think these people care about getting to Earth? They want running water, food, houses of their own. They want not to bring their children up in space.”

“I'll do what I can,” Lee said, but he didn't mean it. Zarek was a fanatic, was all: he saw what he was looking for, and he was looking for a revolution the way Lee's father had been looking for a war, the way Roslin had been looking for someone to save, the way Lee himself had been looking for a way to frak things up beyond repair. They were who they were, even at the end of the world. “Listen,” he said. “Roslin's not incapable of listening to reason. She's going to figure out who you are eventually, and she's going to forgive you for it. You heard her—if ever there was a time for redemption, this is it. She's going to give you a second chance, and you can use that.”

“You've grown up, Adama,” Zarek said. “You were a kid when you got Gemenon, weren't you? I think Zeus is going to be pleasantly surprised when he gets a man instead.”

“Maybe,” Lee said, and he didn't mean that, either.

They put cuffs on him, when they came for him, and he let them even though it terrified him. Kara wasn't with them, and they had no reason to be gentle. They were his father's people.

Stepping onto the flight deck of <i>Galactica</i> felt like going to be executed. There were a dozen pilots standing around, two dozen deck crew, Mark IIs covered in battle scars. That was how his father had survived: by putting antiques in the air to fight. Lee was almost sorry he'd missed it.

Colonel Tigh was waiting for him, which meant his father wasn't, and that Lee had few minutes grace, still. “Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Adama,” he said gruffly to Lee, and then, to the ECO, “Strike his irons, lieutenant. This is the old man's son.”

“Not any more,” Lee said, rubbing his wrists. “Not lieutenant, and not Adama. It's just Apollo now, Colonel.”

“We'll see what your father says about that,” Tigh said, smiling a little. He'd always liked it when Lee and his father fought.

“No doubt about that, Colonel.” But Lee put out his hand, in defiance of military protocol, and Tigh took it, and clapped him on the shoulder, after.
“My orders are to take you to the CIC, boy. Hurry it up. You know your father's looking forward to seeing you.”

Once upon a time Lee might have run. Now he followed Tigh, and he didn't rush doing it. <i>Galactica</i> looked the same to him, only a little older, with a few new wounds. The commander of <i>Atlantia</i> had called her <i>that bucket</i>, and it suited her: “that damned bucket of rust your father commands,” had outlived all the younger, sleeker battlestars. She was a grand old lady, in her way.

His father had changed as little as his ship. Tigh saluted before he stepped onto the dais; Lee stepped up beside him, hands at his sides, and looked the Commander full in the face.

“Lee,” his father said, so softly and painfully Lee was not sure he'd heard right. And that quickly, any sign of weakness was gone: the man who stepped forward to greet Lee was the man who'd turned his back on him on Caprica.

“I hear you're short on pilots,” Lee said. It came out flip, even though he'd meant it to be pleasant. He guessed he hadn't grown up after all. “Commander.” He couldn't salute. He tried to smile, instead. From his father's expression, it wasn't enough.

“This isn't a joke,” his father said. “I need men and women who are prepared to risk their lives in the service. If you can't do that, maybe you should go back.”

Back to prison, for a crime the old man knew he hadn't committed. “I'll do whatever you need me to,” he said. “Sir.” Pausing just a second too long: just that hairsbreadth of insolence that was not quite punishable. Kara had taught him that.

“You'll have to re-qualify as a pilot,” the Commander said. “First thing in the morning, Mr. Adama--.”

“Call me Apollo,” Lee said politely. “Everyone does.” His mother would have hit him for it. <i>Zarek</i> would have hit him. His father turned away, just like he'd been doing all Lee's life. This man is no son of mine; no son of mine would have done this thing. Once upon a time it had broken Lee's heart, but now it made Lee gloriously, selfishly proud of himself. It was easier to live down to expectations than up to them.

They gave him a room to himself, at least, instead of putting him in with the other pilots. Who—Kara excepted—would probably have lynched him. They locked him in, but he didn't care. It seemed like a lifetime since he'd had so much privacy. There wasn't enough water for a shower but he wiped the worst of the dirt off with a damp towel and shaved, dry, before he put on a dead man's clothes and went to sleep.
Kara woke him, banging on the door. “Up,” she said. “Hurry. I don't know what you did to piss off the Commander and I don't want to know. But he says you've got to meet all the qualifications, not just the flight ones, and you have to do them all today.”

“Frak,” Lee said with feeling. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “All of them?”

“Just like at the Academy.” Kara was too bright, too cheerful; Lee knew that something was wrong, but he no longer had the right to ask, no longer even had the words for it. The past was a dead language, and best it remained so, but it hurt to see her like this.

After she went out, he got dressed and ate the protein bars she'd left him. He'd been twenty-one when he'd qualified the first time, and in the best shape of his life. He was twenty-six now, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd run a five minute mile. Much less three of them.

<i>Galactica</i>'s medical officer did his physical exam with all the finesse of a racetrack veterinarian, but he didn't say anything about the scars Lee'd acquired in the last few years. Lee's blood tests were clean, which was a tremendous relief. He hadn't been tested since before Delphi, and he'd always wondered. And the only thing worse than explaining his sexual history to his commanding officer would have been explaining it to his father.

The first laps around <i>Galactica</i> weren't bad. He'd run on Gemenon, not seriously, but enough to stay a little bit fit. But the sixth time was pure torture. He stopped and threw up once on the crew deck, and again near the bridge with his father and Tigh both watching. By then, though, he was too tired to care. When he finished he sagged against the wall, leaning over and gulping in air.

“Marginal,” his father announced, noting the time for Tigh. “But a pass. Congratulations.” Lee shuddered and wiped his mouth on his tanks. He did better on the strength portions, at least: better than he'd done at twenty-one, even. As he put on the flight suit he'd been given, he realized with some surprise that the sick feeling in his stomach hadn't gone away. It wasn't exhaustion, or at least not only exhaustion. It was nerves.

He was afraid to climb into a Viper. He was afraid to die the way Zak had—screaming. His hands shook as he fastened the collar around his neck. He opened the door and went out onto the flight deck. His father and Tigh were waiting, and it wasn't only nervousness that made their eyes hard, their faces fiendish. If it had been anyone else but his father there, he might not have managed, but his pride was stronger than his fear.

He did his safety check, and then he sat in the launch tube waiting, panicking quietly. He could not remember what to do. “Apollo,” said the voice in his headset. “This is <i>Galactica</i>. You are cleared for launch.”

“Affirmative, <i>Galactica</i>,” Lee said, and almost without thinking about it he closed his eyes and his instincts took over. His body knew what to do, if his mind didn't. His Viper streaked out of the tube and into open space, and he compensated for the drag, kept his nose up, and shot into formation with the CAP.

A part of him was still quivering, still terrified by the thought of doing a combat landing on the <galactica</i>'s flight deck, of misjudging, of burning to death. It was fast, he'd said when told his mother. It was so fast I doubt he even knew what happened, he'd said to Kara. It had not been true. It might not be true for Lee, either. “Blue Leader,” he said. “This is Apollo. Waiting for orders.”

“Affirmative, Apollo,” Kara—Starbuck--said from the lead Viper. It shouldn't have been a surprise. He'd known she was the CAG. But it felt different to fly under someone he'd loved, someone his own age, someone he'd once outranked, even.

For eight hours she put him through his paces without any mercy at all. Lee thought that if he had not recognized her voice, her call-sign, he would never have guessed whose orders he was following. Not because she was tough—he could remember Zak complaining about how tough she'd been. But because there was no humor in her voice, no flair to her flying. Everything she threw at him was strictly textbook. It was the kind of thing Lee had always been best at, but Kara had never gone by the book.

By the time he put the Viper down, with perfect, textbook precision, he was so tired he wasn't worried. His fingers, curled on the controls, were almost too stiff to unbend. The deck chief took Lee's helmet and hauled him out of his ship without a word. Lee stumbled down the ladder, looking for Kara, but she was gone.

There was no one waiting to clap him back in irons. Lee assumed that meant he'd passed. In fact, there was no one waiting for him at all. And so he went after Kara. He tracked her the length and breadth of the ship, asking everyone he passed, and he found her in a hallway full of photographs of dead. She was on her knees, a picture in her hands.

Lee stopped behind her and looked down at it. Zak, himself, Kara between them; all three of them in uniform and impossibly young. “I'd forgotten,” he said hollowly. “Forgotten what Zak even looked like. <i>Gods</i>, Kara. I miss him so much.”

She set the photograph down on the floor, and he saw that there was a small hole in it, at the center, on the top. A pinhole. She'd had it tacked up here with the others, with the pictures of the worlds lost when the Cylons invaded. Zak had been two years dead, then: she'd been mourning Lee.

He flopped down beside her, shoulder to shoulder, as close to touching her—as close to touching anyone that way--as he'd come voluntarily in more than two years. “Kara,” he said, running his fingers absently over the edges of the picture. “Kara--.”

She looked over at him, her eyes very dark, her mouth trembling. “No one calls me that any more, Lee. Apollo. No one. They call me Starbuck, or they call me Captain Thrace, sir, and they salute when they say it. And that's the way I want it. Can't you understand that? I can't be their friends. I can't be yours.”

“Can't you?” Lee asked, gently, gently as he'd handle a Viper with mechanical failure, on the edge of disaster. “Starbuck.” Throttle all the way in, and watching her the way he'd watch the pressure gauges falling. “What's wrong with you?”

“Gods, Lee,” she said, and for a second she looked like the old Kara. “You don't know what you're asking. What I did.”

Lee looked at her steadily, and tried not to ask. He knew that whatever she had done it would be something terrible, something unforgivable. Kara had never dealt in half measures.

“I killed Zak,” she said softly, but not so softly he could not hear her. “All of this. All of it is my fault, Lee.”

The only thing that kept him still and quiet was his shock; he did not think he could have moved if he'd wanted to. But once she had begun, the words spilled out of her. Lee could only listen, fists clenched tight in his lap.

“He should never have passed Basic Flight,” she said. “He was a lousy pilot, and I loved him enough to pass him but not enough to fail him. He wasn't prepared, he wasn't good enough, he should never have been behind the controls of that Viper. He's dead because of me. You went to prison because of me. Your father lost both of his sons. Gods, Lee, I did this to your family. I frak up everything I touch, I always have--.”

“Hey,” Lee said, caught by the hopelessness of her voice more than the words. “No, Kara, no. We did this to ourselves. You didn't exactly force me into bed with you, you know. You did everything you could to train Zak. He should never have even been at the Academy. He only ever did it because he thought it was what Dad wanted. And Dad and I—you couldn't have ruined things between us if you'd tried. Nothing I ever did in my whole life was good enough for him, anyway.”

He caught her hand in his, and squeezed it. It was small in his, but her fingers were strong. She was crying, hard: ugly and painful sobs that sounded more like exhaustion than grief. He wanted to put his arms around her, but he wasn't sure she'd tolerate it, if she hadn't been able to stand him using her first name.

Instead he sat with her, until finally she fell asleep. He dozed a little, too, his back against the wall and her face against his thigh, but as tired as he was he couldn't relax enough to sleep properly in in the hallway, with no door to lock against the world. He was awake enough that when the speakers clicked on, he heard the request for Captain Thrace and Ensign Adama to report to CIC. He touched Kara's cheek and she jerked awake. “My father,” he began, and she rolled to her feet before he could finish.

“Gods,” she swore. “Did I fall asleep? Here? I was supposed to report to the Commander as soon as CAP was over. Frakking—frak. Get up, Apollo. Move!”

Lee got up, stiffly. “I'm moving,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Kara--.”

“Don't,” she said. “I can't, Lee. I can't be her. I won't. She—she got people killed, all right? She was a weak, silly little girl, and I don't want to be that person. Not now and not ever.”

“You think any of us get to choose who we want to be?” Lee demanded, but her back was to him. She was walking away from him, or she was walking toward his father, and Lee had no choice but to follow her.

He did not have to like it. Kara stopped at the edge of the bridge and saluted crisply. After a moment Lee followed suit. They stood at attention until his father deigned to notice them. “You had orders to report here directly after CAP,” he said, presumably to Kara, but his eyes were on Lee's face. Lee wanted to look away, but he knew better than to do so.

Beside him, Kara was making some excuse. She was good at it now, much better than she'd been as a cadet. Someone, his father or circumstance, had taught her respect: the deferential tone, the tilt of her head, the sincerity of voice. She sounded like an officer, where before she'd sounded like a petulant teenager. Lee had sounded like an officer once, and was suddenly afraid he'd grown out of it, and sounded like an angry child when he spoke to his father.

There was logic behind the old rule that had governed the Fleet: that no one should have family to command. Of course, all of the retired admirals who had taught at the war college and run the Academy and the Fleet--all of the brilliant military minds of Caprica and the Twelve Colonies—were dead now. Only his father was alive. It was not the most persuasive argument for their wisdom.

“Are we boring you, Ensign?” his father demanded, and Lee lifted his eyes, startled. He hadn't been able to sleep earlier, sitting on the carpeted floor of the hallway, but he'd been close to asleep on his feet in front of the Commander.

“No, sir,” he stammered, and flushed, despite himself. He had been a model cadet and a model officer, not because he was ambitious but because he hated being in trouble. To have the trouble be with his terrifying and scornful father seemed brutally unfair. He'd heard, his whole life, about what a monster Commander Adama was to serve under: that only <i>Atlantia</i> and <i>Pegasus</i>--the two flagships—were worse assignments for a young officer. He had survived <i>Atlantia</i>. He was less confident about surviving <i>Galactica</i>.

He stood, sullen and quiet, while Kara recounted every move, every mistake he'd made. Even his father's eyes were a little glazed by the end of it. But he pinned Lee's wings onto his borrowed flight suit, and he returned Lee's salute afterward. And then he said, “You're both dismissed for tonight. I'll see you in my quarters at 0800 tomorrow, Ensign Adama.”

Lee saluted again, glumly. “Yes, sir.” Kara was already walking away, and he had to hurry to catch her, but by the time they left the CIC he was on her heels.

“Captain,” he said, and when she didn't turn to look at him, didn't even slow down, he grabbed her arm.

She turned then. “Don't touch me, Ensign,” she said, and her eyes were dark and dangerous. “You heard the Commander. Get your ass to quarters.”

“Sure thing, sir,” Lee said, drawling it like the guards had on Gemenon, when they'd been talking to Tom Zarek. “Where would that be?”

Kara stared at him, flustered. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

“Am I an officer or a prisoner?” Lee asked her. “Do I get my own private room again, or am I bunking with the other pilots? And where's the mess?”

Kara sighed, and he could almost see the anger drain out of her, leaving nothing but exhaustion in its place. She said, “The senior officers' quarters is practically empty. You can bunk there. Do you have any gear?”

Lee shook his head. “Nothing but what they gave me last night.”

“Yeah. Well, there's plenty of spare, I guess.” She pushed her hair out of her face. “Come on. You can have Ripper's stuff. He was more or less your size. You need a shower before they'll let you near the food.”

“I thought there wasn't any water,” Lee objected.

Kara smiled. “They've got your buddies from the prison ship on it. I'm sure things are taken care of.”
“Frak,” Lee said, thinking of Zarek, and elections. He wasn't looking forward to talking to his father in the morning.