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I shot Lee.
A single thought, floating around in her mind, endlessly repeating and drowning out everything else.
I shot Lee.
She returned to Galactica, let a nurse tend to her own superficial wounds and curled up in a bunk, staring up at cold metal without seeing anything but blood erupting from Lee's chest, stopping him dead in his tracks.
I shot Lee.
The look on his face haunts her: there is pain, overshadowed by shock and surprise. But mostly, there is just… sheer disbelief. She knows that he must have mirrored her own facial expression, because she has trouble believing it herself.
I shot Lee.
She really frakks everything up, doesn't she? It wasn't enough that she had to bring one Adama into an early grave, she just had to take the second one too. She knows that the Old Man doesn't hold Zak's death against her – and that would also go for Lee, had he succumbed to the wound. The Admiral had told her that herself, while Cottle was still pulling the bullet out of Lee's chest. Accidents happen, he had said. I know you did everything you could do.
I shot Lee .
She remembers how she was shot herself, back on Caprica. Although the memory stands in the shadow of the horrible things that followed – her days in the hospital, secret inprisonment by the Cylons, and the sheer unnatural terror that was the farm – the slowly building pain of the bullet within her body is still fresh in her mind. She knows, without the shadow of a doubt, that she would have taken an entire magazine of bullets if it meant that Lee would take none. She also knows that Lee would say the same thing about her, and it's frustrating as hell.
I shot Lee.
Why does Lee always have to be such a hero? If he would have just stayed down like the other hostages, this wouldn't have happened. None of this would have happened! But no, Lee just couldn't stand by while others risked their lifes. It is something they shared, and that she had usually considered a strength – at least regarding herself. But now Lee was lying in the infirmary, and she is once again reminded that the trait could also be a weakness.
I shot Lee.
Someone – another pilot, maybe Kat or Racetrack, she isn't sure – tells her that Lee is awake. She rises, grabs her uniform on the way out and practically sprints to the infirmary. But upon her arrival, she finds that Lee already has a visitor. She walks in unnoticed and hides in the shadows, looking at Lee's pale face in the harsh infirmary light. She hears Dee's whispered pleas, hears the strength below her desperation. “You have to stay”, she says. “You have to really stay.”
Silently and with tears in her eyes that will never be shed, Kara walks away.