Chapter Text
The day Admiral Cain kills the commander of the Galactica is the last day anyone on board the Battlestar Pegasus hears Lee Adama or Kara Thrace speak.
That’s not entirely true. They still do their jobs, flying their assigned routes perfectly and professionally. They follow textbook scripts for standard procedures to request clearances and report their findings. They communicate the needs of their planes to the deck crew, polite and to the point. Some assume that they must regularly speak to someone, each other at least, since a vow of total silence aside from these short exchanges would surely leave their voices raspy from disuse. Their voices are always clear and calm, even if they’re devoid of all emotion.
But if they do speak when they’re not on duty, no one else on board the Pegasus is around to hear it. For two months following the death of the Galactica commander, they fall silent. They never talk to anyone. Not in the mess, not in the gym, not in the bunkrooms. They keep to themselves, sitting alone and off to the side at dinner, disappear quickly after their shifts. No one tries to get them to talk, not even Taylor and the rest of the pilot corps. Everyone knows why they’ve set themselves apart, even if the official story won’t cop to it. Because, of course, Lee Adama is far from the only member of the Pegasus crew forced into service under the woman who murdered their family. So the Pegasus crew leaves them alone to their silence.
And then they’re gone.
Two months earlier.
“It’s not enough to survive,” Commander Adama says, voice rough and echoing across the ship-to-ship phone. “We have to be worthy of it.”
“I think that’s very wise, sir,” Kara says and breaks into a nervous grin. She takes her hand off of her gun and her shoulders relax. The relief she feels is sickly sweet. She looks across the CIC at Admiral Cain, talking to one of her officers. Something is going to have to be done about this conflict between Cain and Adama, but she’s just glad she’s not the one to do it.
“Congratulations, Starbuck.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll see you soon, sir. And,” she glances over again to make sure Cain isn’t listening. “I’ll meet Apollo when they get in. I’ll pass along your words. I’ll tell him.”
She knows the commander well enough to hear the relief in his voice, even if his only response is a simple, “Good.”
Kara starts to set down the phone when from the other end she hears a sharp crack. The connection drops almost instantly, Adama already in the process of hanging up. She stops. She can’t be sure of what it is. It was just a sound, there had been a lot of them on the other end, voices risen in excitement and triumph. There were always clicks, especially in Galactica’s aging comms system. But Kara is pretty sure that at the last second of the call, she heard a gunshot.
She swallows. She is a still point in the midst of the bridge crew’s celebration. Kara has never been one for ‘freeze.’ ‘Fight’ was her most ready response, ‘flight’ only if she had a fully loaded Viper handy to help her out with the ‘fight’ part. But now Kara feels herself freeze. She’s stuck in place, trying to understand that sound and what it meant.
It’s still possible she’s wrong. Maybe she misheard. Kara looks at Cain and tries to read her mood. The Admiral gives nothing away. She seems pleased with their op, nothing more. Someone could have broken a glass, or dropped something heavy, and the noise coming through the ship-to-ship just sounded like a gunshot.
“Captain Thrace?” Cain catches her staring. “Is everything alright?”
Kara manages to nod. “Fine, sir. Just…” She scrambles for an excuse. “Adrenaline. Could you excuse me?”
Cain nods. “Of course. Good work today, truly. Congratulations, captain.”
Kara doesn’t know where she’s going to go once she leaves the CIC, just that she needed to get out of there. She needed to breathe. She needs to figure out how to get information from the Galactica. Kara goes first to the Pegasus war room and tries the phone there, calling over to the other ship’s CIC. No one picks up.
“Frak this,” she spits and slams the receiver into its cradle, then turns to head to the hangar deck. She’ll get a Raptor over to the Galactica to check it out herself. She’ll probably get in trouble for slipping away but she just planned one of their most successful ops of the war, she’s pretty sure she can ride that goodwill to dodge punishment. And it will be worth it for the peace of mind. She moves as fast as she can without running, trying not to draw attention to herself.
Pretty much immediately, Kara picks up on an undercurrent of energy moving through the ship. At first, she thinks it’s her own anxiety reflected back at her, but the glances people cast in her direction, the whispers that trail her, aren’t in her imagination. The most obvious are a grouping of Viper pilots, still in their flightsuits, that she passes halfway back to the flight deck.
The pilots are buzzing, and fall silent when she reaches them. Their conversation picks back up as soon as she’s past. She makes it halfway down the corridor before it catches up with her that they’re her pilots. No matter what else is going on, she’s still Cain’s CAG and she can order them to talk.
Kara whirls on them. “What’s going on?” When they don’t answer, all glancing at each other awkwardly, she turns it into an order. “I know something’s up. Tell me what’s going on.”
“There was an…incident on Galactica, sir,” one says. “It’s not yet confirmed, but they’re saying that Commander Adama is dead.”
Kara staggers back, reeling. It’s what she thought but it still hits her like a punch to the gut. Someone asks if she’s okay but the sound comes from a long, echoing tunnel away and she doesn’t respond. She just turns and stiffly walks away.
Somehow she makes it to the nearest head and in a flicker of luck, it’s actually empty. Kara staggers to a sink, breathing hard. She grips the edges until her fingers hurt.
“Frak, frak, frak,” she gasps then sucks in a hard breath around the tightness in her chest. Cain had done it. She knows it in her bones. The assassination plan had been a mutual one and Adama had blinked. Cain hadn’t. Because she wouldn’t. She’d never flinch, she said it herself. Kara lets a sob escape her and then punches the counter, hard, and screams, in anger and in pain.
Kara realizes she had seen them. The XO and the marines, on the way over to the Galactica. She’d wished him luck. He’d looked stressed and drawn, his face slick with sweat, and she’d been too wrapped up in her own head to process that the look on Fisk’s face had been a mirror. Bitter nausea rises in her throat and she gags. What have I done?, she wants to scream. What have I done?
She staggers into a stall and throws up what little she had in her stomach, then falls to the cold floor, with her head in her hands.
She still has her gun. She should go finish the job, Commander’s last stand-down order be damned. Surely that was invalidated as soon as Cain transmitted her own order? Surely Adama wouldn’t begrudge her a reprisal? Cain hit first, Kara was just hitting back. That was the way of things, especially here. No place for nobility and compromise in this war, even among allies it seemed.
Instead, she breathes out, “Lee.” And struggles to her feet to continue on her staggering path to the hangar deck.
She should be the one to tell him. He shouldn’t be alone for this. Neither of them should.
The world on the flight back to the Pegasus from the crash site doesn’t quite feel real. Lee answers the SAR Raptor crew’s basic orienting questions and then lays still and waits for their arrival back at the Pegasus. His chest still hurts like a bitch, but his thoughts are getting clearer as oxygen makes its way back to his brain. Not that clarity is welcome. As it sinks in that he’s, in fact, survived, all that he has to deal with comes flooding back at him: Leaving Kara on her own, with no one to watch her back. His father and the president conspiring to assassinate the admiral. The weight of war, of responsibility, of duty and legacy and all of it makes him want to close his eyes and will his heart to stop beating again.
They arrive back at the Pegasus without incident.
“Take it easy, Apollo,” one of the medics tells him. “Things are a bit busy but we’ll get you over to sickbay as soon as we can.”
“I’m fine.” Lee manages to leverage himself to stand. “Thanks.”
He steps down off the Raptor and immediately stumbles. Maybe he had underestimated how much his close call had shaken him up and taken the strength from him and should just sit quietly until the medics come for him. But his drive to find Kara and make sure she’s okay keeps him on his feet.
“Hang on, captain. You should sit down.” Maggie, coming straight from her own Raptor over to him while he’s still trying to ride out a dizzy wave. “You okay?”
“Thanks, I’m okay. What about you, Racetrack, you good?”
Maggie beams. “Frakkin’ excellent, sir. We did it, that was some crazy plan, but we actually did it.” She nudges his arm. “Just glad you came back okay.”
“Listen,” Lee glances around the hangar, but there’s nothing to indicate the mood. There are just a few deckhands talking amongst themselves, nothing to indicate whether their admiral had been assassinated. Or if there had been a failed assassination that had been put down. Cold sweat trickles down his neck. “Did anything happen while I was out there?”
“No?” she replies. “Everything wrapped up just like Starbuck said it would, we took out the Resurrection Hub and the toasters retreated. That’s it. Why?” She smirks. “That not enough for ya?”
“No, it’s…nothing. Do you know where Starbuck is now?”
Maggie frowns and shakes her head. “Not sure, but I’m sure she’ll be happy to see—”
“Good shooting, Apollo,” Taylor interrupts her. He’s in his blues. Either he hadn’t flown out with them or he’d already changed. “Glad to see you’re on your feet. You’ll report to sickbay for evaluation, of course. Before you do,” Taylor stiffens his shoulders, looking solemn. “The admiral has directed me to deliver some unfortunate news.”
There it is. Lee’s heart rate skyrockets, testing the stability of the SAR crew’s resuscitation efforts, as a sick feeling settling in his stomach. Kara. He didn’t have her back. He left her on her own to face an impossible task and now something’s happened to her and it’s his fault for breaking his word—
“I regret to inform you that your father, Commander William Adama, has died.”
And a different shockwave hits.
“What?” Maggie sounds aghast and disbelieving. “That’s not possible, you must be making a mistake. None of the fighting got even close to the Galactica. What happened?” Her voice climbs a bit higher. “What happened?”
“You’ll have to wait for the report, lieutenant.” Taylor’s face is like stone. He gives nothing away.
Lee still doesn’t really believe it. It can’t be real. The majority of the human race being wiped out in a single afternoon had felt more real to him at the time than his father dying does right now. It’s the thought of a child. But Lee can’t force his already exhausted and muddled brain to maturity to accept it and so he simply doesn’t believe it, even as Maggie and Taylor wait for his reaction.
And then movement catches his eye. Kara, rushing onto the flight deck. She stops when their eyes meet. One look at her face and the reality clicks into place. Kara looks devastated, hollowed out. She wouldn’t look like that for anything else. It has to be true.
“Take whatever time you need.” Taylor has the good graces to look uncomfortable, glancing at Kara and then back to Lee. “Then report to sickbay for evaluation. That is all.” Taylor walks away and the strength leaves Lee’s legs. Maggie tries to catch him but has no hope of doing anything but falling with him. She keeps a hand on his back as he drops to his knees.
Kara’s staggering, unsteady gait brings her to them and she drops down too, wrapping her arms around him and clinging.
“He called it off,” Kara whispers in his ear. “I stood down. But she didn’t. She didn’t back down. Lee—” She lets out a single sob, convulsing against him. Her shaking hands grab onto fists of his flight suit, almost violently, like she’s trying to tear the fabric apart.
Lee just shuts his eyes and squeezes her tighter against him.
They stay holding each other until the Pegasus medical team comes to track down the patient they’d been expecting. The medics gently break up the embrace and usher Lee to a stretcher to take vitals. He goes in shocked silence, without complaint. Kara only reluctantly releases him.
“I’ll try and find out what I can,” Racetrack says, looking stricken. “I’ve got a shuttle run leaving soon, I’ll see what I can find. What the others know.”
Don’t bother, Kara wants to tell her. I already know. But she just nods and says, “I’ll stay with him.”
Kara has no intention of leaving Lee’s side and is prepared to fight over it — she’s still got her gun, can’t stop thinking about that gun — but the medics in the sickbay don’t pay her any attention. There’s still a weird celebratory mood as they move through the Pegasus halls. It makes her feel like she’s living in a different universe and just peering through to this one. But the doc is professional enough, taking Lee’s vital signs and proclaiming him on the mend.
“I’d like to keep you overnight for observation,” he says when he’s finished. “Temp is still a little low and we want to watch for any arrhythmias for a while. You feel short of breath at all, flag someone down. Try to get some rest. Good work today.”
He pulls the curtain behind him when he goes, leaving Lee and Kara in a dimly lit, silent bubble.
It stays like that for a few minutes, until Kara can’t stand the silence anymore and chokes out, “Say something.”
She doesn’t know what she’s expecting. Reproach, maybe, because this was her fault somehow. But Lee stares up at the ceiling and says something entirely unexpected: “You know, I wanted to die out there.”
Kara’s eyes sting. “What?”
“It wasn’t really a conscious…choice. I just felt so far away from everything and it felt so much easier to let go. It was better.”
“You were hypoxic,” Kara says, trying to rationalize it.
“Maybe. I think I was just…tired. And now…now I feel like this was my fault. Like somehow there was…an exchange. A balance. One of us had to live and one of us had to die. And I can’t help but feel that the gods chose wrong.”
Kara’s usually the one to believe in this sort of thing. Balances of fates and the gods and being cursed. To blame herself for deaths beyond her control. Lee’s supposed to be practical. He’s supposed to laugh in the face of her belief and she’s supposed to be hurt by that and pretend that she’s not. But this loss has shaken them both. She’d just been thinking about how it showed how meaningless the universe is. Take a win over the cylons, still lose the ones you love. How’s there any faith to be found there?
“Stupid,” Lee says to the ceiling, breaking the spell. He slides a bit closer to his usual role so Kara does too, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes for a minute to say the funeral prayer silently to herself.
She finishes, opens her eyes, and gets up. She nudges Lee’s side until he slides over to make room for her on the cot. His skin still feels cold against hers, raising gooseflesh on her arms. They settle side-by-side in the quiet.
“I’ve been thinking about going to kill her,” Kara whispers. “I still have my gun. I don’t think she’d see me coming, but the Marines would sure as frak see me leaving. So it’d be suicide.”
“Don’t,” Lee says. “Don’t do it.”
“I won’t” Kara says. “Especially not now that I’m afraid you’d follow me.” She reaches out and takes his still-cold hand. “So I’ll live, if you live. We’re in this — all of this — together.”
“He’d be pretty pissed if we went and got ourselves killed immediately after…so okay. I’ll stay. If you stay.”
Kara turns and bumps her forehead against his temple. “You have my word.”
Lee is released from the sickbay the following morning and almost expects to be told to report to the brig. Instead, he’s given no orders at all, so he and Kara return to their bunkroom where he lays listlessly in his rack and Kara plays solitaire at the table and pretends she’s not hovering.
Then he’s summoned over the loudspeaker and he has to get himself together. The world still feels unreal and takes several minutes to pull his consciousness and sense of self back together from the jagged pieces.
“You want me to come with you?” Kara asks.
“No,” Lee says, pulling on his jacket with just a little wince. His chest still hurts from the resuscitation. “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”
“If you’re not back in an hour, I’m coming to find you, got that, Apollo?”
“I’ll be back. Promise.”
Lee drifts down the corridors towards the conference room he’d been summoned to, not in any particular hurry. He assumes the meeting is with Cain and is in no rush to face her, but when he gets there he finds Tigh standing in his dress grays, back ramrod straight and face drawn down by a deep frown. He’s holding a folded flag in his arms and when he speaks, the words take a minute to make it past the shocked fog.
“You already had the funeral?” Lee manages, when their meaning finally sinks in and line up with Tigh’s clothing, the flag. His voice scrapes against his raw throat. His eyes sting with tears but he refuses to cry in front of Tigh. “I was in sickbay one day, you couldn’t wait for me? Gods, you didn’t even let Kara go? You know what she meant to him.”
“No. We couldn’t wait. I’m bringing this as a courtesy to you, I don’t have to be here, Lee.” Tigh’s expression is hard. No love lost between them, apparently, even with shared grief. Seems even mourning his father can’t bring them together. “Take it, Lee. This is what I can give you.” Tigh holds out the folded flag again. “Take it.”
Tigh looks old, and sad, chin wobbling as he holds the flag out. Lee would pity him if he wasn’t boiling with indignant rage. They already had the funeral. We never got to say goodbye. Hardly the first time, and he’s certainly not the only one who had lost someone they loved suddenly and been unable to say goodbye. But at least in the wake of the cylon attacks, they had the collective funeral. They had the memorial wall. Lee now had nothing but being laid up in sickbay while they apparently committed the body of his last living family member to the universe.
His hands shake as he reaches out and accepts the flag. His father’s sash is wrapped around it, with his service pins and medals neatly ordered. Lee runs his thumb over the wings while Tigh snaps a sharp salute. Lee should return it, should follow protocols. He doesn’t. Frak this.
“Are we done here?” he asks in a flat voice instead.
Tigh nods so Lee turns to go. But the older man reaches out and grabs his wrist to stop him.
“Keep these safe,” Tigh says, with a rough, desperate tone to his voice. “You hear me? You keep these safe. Don’t let them out of your godsdamn sight, you understand?”
Lee tries to pull out of Tigh’s suddenly brutal grip on his arm. “Let go of me. You have no right to tell me what to do with them. They’re mine. He was my father, Tigh. I’ll do what I want.”
“Lee—”
He manages to break out of Tigh’s grip and storms away without a backwards glance.
Lee reaches the bunkroom still so furious he could scream. Kara hasn’t moved from her spot at the table, neither have the cards before her. She looks relieved when he steps in, then her expression darkens when she sees the look on his face. The only other person in the bunk room is a junior raptor pilot. She gets one whiff of the mood change when Lee walks in and wisely flees, leaving them alone. Lee sets his bundle down on the table.
“They already had the funeral. We weren’t invited.”
“What?” Kara surges to her feet.
“Tigh just came to see me, give me the flag and the sash,” he gestures at the pile. “Like it’s the same thing.”
“They can’t have.” Kara touches the cloth, like she believes it’s an illusion. “They can’t…Tigh can’t have…you’re his son.”
“Well, I guess that doesn’t mean much anymore.”
“They can’t have,” Kara says again. “I can’t have missed…what the frak?” She looks like her heart is shattering. Lee's pain of being excluded from this is compounded by the look on her face. Lee’s eyes sting.
He swallows and picks up the sash. Not that Lee is at all inclined to follow Tigh’s order. The spiteful part of him wants to chuck the pins and the sash and the flag in the nearest incinerator just because Tigh suggested the opposite, he’s that angry. Instead, he removes the pair of golden wings and then carefully folds the sash into the flag and tucks it under his mattress. He sits at the table and hands one set of wings to Kara. He keeps the other.
They pin them to their tanks, under their uniforms, where no one else can see.
They make a plan and they go together, standing side-by-side like they had on that last day aboard the Galactica, when the commander had broken the news about their transfer and reamed them out for faltering in their duty. Only this time, they’re requesting a transfer, not having one thrust upon them.
“I think the reasons are obvious,” Lee says as he places the copies of their formal requests on Admiral Cain’s desk.
Cain doesn’t pick them up. She just studies the both of them for a minute, her eyes sharp and shrewd.
“I’m going to have to deny that request,” Cain says finally.
Kara watches Lee take it like a blow. He gets the same pinched, hard look on his face when the commander had ordered them both to Pegasus in the first place. Kara is surprised at the refusal for a second, before she realizes the logic behind Cain’s decision.
She’s worried about a cult of personality, Kara thinks. And she’s right to. Commander Adama had commanded the respect and love of his crew long before the ship was their sole home and refuge. Cain clearly thinks that his son might garner the same loyal following. She wants to keep him under her wing, avoid letting him become a rallying point for any resistance to her command. Kara might — might — have been able to spin her own transfer back to Galactica without Lee, but they’ve yoked their fates together now. She’s not going anywhere without him.
“Then I resign,” Lee says and Kara blinks. She scrambles to keep up with this development. It’s stupid that it hadn’t occurred to her this would be his next move. Her resolve to stick together wavers a bit as she confronts possibly leaving for a life out in the civilian fleet, but she remembers what they said that night. She gave him her word. They’re in this together. She manages to keep her only response to throwing away everything — her career, her identity, flying, the fight — a swallow and a twitch of her hand.
“I’m afraid I am also going to have to deny that request, lieutenant.”
Lee makes a sound that’s almost a laugh. He reaches up and starts to unpin his wings from his collar. Kara doesn’t move yet. “Deny my request to quit? I don’t think you can do that. I’m leaving. I don’t care what you—”
“I can and I have. We are at war. The normal rules do not apply. I would have thought that was obvious. The two of you are too talented and we are too short on pilots to let you go squander your lives eking out a living on those squalid civilian ships, do you understand me?”
“I think I understand very well,” Kara says, narrowing her eyes. “We’re being pressed into service, is that it?”
Cain doesn’t rise to the bait. She keeps her eyes and her tone even. “Yes. This is an unprecedented war. We’ve had to resort to extraordinary measures to keep ourselves in fighting shape. So you will remain, with your ranks, under my command.” She looks between them. “You will follow every order given to you to the letter, or you can spend some time thinking about your commitment to the fight in the brig. Or, if you believe this to be an insurmountable problem, an airlock.” She says the last in a low, serious voice. A chill travels down Kara’s spine. “Am I clear?”
Lee doesn’t say anything. He’s shaking, furious.
Cain slowly stands. “Alright. Let’s make this more clear. You can return to your posts or I can find something in the logs — there’s really plenty to pick from — to charge you with. Insubordination, mutiny, desertion. Under the current circumstances, I have broad authority to decide the sentences. Any attempts to leave will be counted as desertion. Being a minute late to briefings will count as desertion. Now, will you be at your scheduled shifts tomorrow? You can join your friends in the brig and be escorted to your shifts by Marines if that makes this an easier pill to swallow.”
“We’ll be there, sir,” Kara speaks for the both of them. She glances sidelong at Lee, daring him to contradict her.
“Yes, sir,” Lee says after a tense moment.
“Dismissed.” Cain sits back down and returns her attention to reports.
Lee gives a crisp salute and storms out. Kara follows. She watches him carefully, but he keeps it together until they make it to a deserted corridor.
“What the frak does she even want with us anyways?” Lee spits, rounding on Kara. “What’s the point of this? She murdered—”
“It’s about control,” Kara says. “She can’t let us go back to Galactica, she can’t let us go to the Fleet. She’s trying to cover it up, and if she doesn’t control us we could blab.” Kara tilts her head. “Though admitting it would be admitting our roles in the conspiracy. We can’t tell anyone we know it was her without implicating ourselves.”
“Great. Okay. So we’re stuck. What do we do now?” Lee asks, leaning against the bulkhead.
“Our jobs,” Kara says. “Because the only other option I can see is dying and I’m not ready to do that, so you better not be either. And the cylons are still out there. The Fleet still needs us. We still have to protect them. We figure out what’s next…as it comes. Together, alright?”
Lee nods and slumps. “Would have been hard to go back to Galactica anyways. Without him. With Tigh.”
“Dodged a bullet,” Kara says flatly. “Tigh in command, and the two of us running around? Would have ended in a triple homicide by the end of the week.”
“This is frakked,” Lee says as he drops his head to the heel of his hands.
“Yeah,” Kara says. She doesn’t take her eyes off him. “So say we all.”
Lee’s consolation for being denied the funeral is that, for a while at least, Cain also seems irritated that the Galactica crew conducted the funeral services so quickly and privately. She seems to be in a bad mood at least, that the gossip filtering down attributes to not getting control over the funeral.
He’s summoned to her office one night as he’s coming off a late standby shift. He was still stuck on Raptors and no one wanted to talk to him so these shifts mostly just involved sitting in silence in the ready room and waiting for something to happen. When Taylor tells him to report to the Admiral’s quarters, Lee wonders if this is it. She might have decided he was too much of a loose end and it was time to put him in the brig with Helo and Tyrol, or maybe just put a bullet in his head. One or both of those possibilities should disturb him. Lee doesn’t feel anything at all as he walks down the corridors and the marine guard outside her door lets him in.
She doesn’t kill him or lock him up. Instead, she pours him a drink.
“Sit down, lieutenant,” Cain says, gesturing at a chair.
“I’d rather stand.”
“We don’t have to be this way. You know this was a practical decision, and I know that your father and the president were plotting against me to do the same damn thing. If I had any proof of that, Roslin would already be in a cell herself. As it stands, we all need each other to fight this war. So sit.”
Lee does, but he doesn’t touch the drink, nor give any sign he knew about the plot.
Cain studies him. She looks almost remorseful. Lee’s pretty sure it’s an act. She finally says, “I didn’t bring you here to talk about this. And I know that it will take much more time for you to understand why this was necessary.”
“Why did you call me here then? I’ve done what you asked, I haven’t been a second late to any of my shifts, I haven’t spoken to anyone—”
“I came here to talk about a memorial service,” Cain interrupts. “Your father deserves that much. He served this Fleet faithfully to the end. We should honor that service.”
“You mean we should appease the crew.”
“Careful, lieutenant, you’re striking dangerously close to insubordination.”
Lee scoffs. “So is that why you brought me here? You want me to plan a funeral with you?”
“No. We’ll go by the book. I just want to make sure you’ll be there.” She doesn’t have to say, failure to attend will count as desertion. The implication is there. She decides to twist the knife. “And to make sure that Captain Thrace will be in attendance as well.”
“She wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good. Because I wouldn’t want to uncover any evidence of a conspiracy.”
Lee very carefully doesn’t let anything show on his face. “We’ll be there. Are we done?”
Cain studies him for a minute. “You know, I thought you’d understand what needed to be done. You’ve made hard choices when you saw something you felt was wrong. I wouldn’t figure you for one to support what your father and the president were planning.”
Lee doesn’t answer. To say anything would be to confess.
“I don’t derive any pleasure from this,” Cain continues. “But I did what I had to do to keep the Fleet in fighting shape. We don’t have any room for insubordination on these ships, these last ships.”
“And yet, what was the point?” Lee can’t stop himself from asking. “You kept Lieutenant Agathon and Chief Tyrol alive anyway. You couldn’t have tried to come to a compromise?”
“There’s not room for those either, lieutenant. Agathon and Tyrol’s sentences are temporarily suspended, not commuted. Tell me, would your father have stopped trying to get them back if he had lived? Or would he have been just the same stubborn bastard that you believe me to be?”
“You didn’t have to—”
“I did what I felt I had to to keep my Fleet in line.”
“You had me,” Lee says. “If you really needed a bargaining chip that badly, you had me.”
Cain sits back. “Do you think that would have worked?”
If Lee was really honest with himself, he doesn’t know. He could have had a gun to his head but if his father felt strongly enough about his convictions, it might not have been enough. Maybe he was never a particularly good hostage. He would never say any of this to Cain.
“I did what I had to do,” she says. “Maybe, one day, when — when — we win this war and take back our homes, you’ll understand.”
“I doubt it.” He gets to his feet. “And if I resign — attempt to resign — again? Because you can’t expect me to just sit here and take—”
“Not a chance.” Cain looks up at him, grave. Lee’s hand shakes. “You saw the Marines outside. I can assure you if you try and slit my throat with a letter opener or something equally stupid, they’ll be on you in a second.”
He almost wants to try it. Let himself be taken to the airlock. But he remembers Kara, making him promise to stay. He broke his word to her once already, he can’t bring himself to do it a second time.
“Do we have any further problems? The brig is still on the table if necessary.”
“No,” Lee says, even though he seethes.
“Then you’re dismissed. Dress grays, day after tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
When he’s almost at the door, her voice calls him back. “I trust that you won’t discuss anything we’ve talked about tonight. Just as I won’t discuss what Kara Thrace was doing in my CIC the night of the op. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.” Lee’s mouth is dry. He leaves.
Kara is nearly beside herself when he gets back to their bunkroom. Not that she shows it much outwardly, but she sits at the table tapping a pen repeatedly on the metal. “Where were you?” she asks as soon as he steps over the threshold.
“Meeting with the admiral,” he says. Kara’s brows knit together. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
He’s glad she takes him at his word. Cain’s threat has worked, sealing the words in his throat for fear she’ll come after Kara or Roslin. He’ll keep his word and his mouth shut because he can’t imagine a universe without them in it. The Fleet needs them. His father is already gone. He feels another part of him wither and is suddenly exhausted.
Kara touches his arm.
“I’m fine,” he says again and she lets it go.
The memorial service is an awkward affair. As much as Cain has tried to bury the truth under layers of classified documents and orders to secrecy, pretty much everyone knows she ordered the commander’s assassination. Lee feels every eye on him as she gives a hollow speech about his father’s years of service and valiant sacrifices. He hates that his presence, standing at the front of the formation in dress grays, legitimizes the farce.
He would tear off his sash and storm out, screaming how it’s a sham, if not for the back of Kara’s hand gently brushing against his. They don’t hold hands or anything so showy, but the soft, glancing touch of their hands together is just enough to keep him from entirely losing it.
Cain concludes her speech with a call to unity that gets Lee so worked up that Kara presses their hands together hard. It’s both a warning and a support, and he presses back, then steals a glance at her face. Tears stream down her cheeks. She doesn’t make any move to wipe them away. Lee presses the back of his hand harder into hers, running his knuckles across the fine bones. He itches to take it, grasp on and squeeze hard, but restrains himself.
When it’s over and the formation disbands, Kara’s breath hitches. “I need a minute—” She chokes out and staggers away.
Lee wants to flee too. He should give her the time she needs, but he doesn’t want to be adrift here in the crowd. He sees Tigh, who he really doesn’t want to talk to, standing with the other bridge crew, and starts in the opposite direction.
“Lee,” Roslin stops him. She catches his elbow and he turns to face her. Laura’s dressed all in black and looks devastated. “Oh, Lee.” She pulls him into an embrace. The pins on his sash dig into his chest, she hugs him so hard. The one he’s keeping hidden inside, pinned to his tanks, bites at his skin, a little pinprick of sharper pain against his collarbone.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I’m so truly sorry.”
“Thank you,” Lee says, feeling numb.
“Are you doing okay? Is there anything I can do? Anything you need?”
“No, madam president, I’m fine.”
“Yeah, right.” The president pulls back and studies him, keeping her hands on his arms. She looks like she wants to say something, but can’t find the words. “I wish I could…” Laura starts, but trails off, biting her lip and looking away.
Lee remembers that look well enough from the wake of Zak’s death. No one knew what to say to him then either. So he spares her.
“Madam President,” he says in barely a whisper, with a note of clear dismissal. He tugs out of her grip to go catch up with Kara.