This will be a series of stand-alone stories which deal with the choices that the characters on Battlestar Galactica have made throughout the mini-series and first season (I'll be posted in as much of the order of the season as I can). I want to explore what would have happened/changed if things had gone differently. Some of the stories will be angst, some will be shippy, some will be funny. There will be different pairings throughout. Don't feel like you have to check out each one to understand the others. All I ask is that if it intrigues you, then give it a try. Hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed writing them!
There are pivotal moments in one's life where if you take the wrong path everything may change. Those changes may be for the good or for the bad. The possibilities are endless.
Lee Adama stared out of the main window in the CIC at the space embracing the Battlestar he had been calling home for so long. There had been many moments in his life where he cursed the cold, chilliness of the vast vacuum of space. There had been moments he would have given anything to feel the sun beating down on him instead of the bitter atmosphere of the endless void which chilled him to the very bone.
Despite all that he had to admit that at times like this, it could be a beautiful sight.
"Lee?"
He heard her hesitant voice clearly resound in his head, but he found he couldn't tear his eyes away from the window. "What do you need, Dee?" He felt her come up to stand beside him.
"I just wanted to ask you how you were doing."
"Because of this," Lee said, gesturing out the window. "Or because of what happened ten years ago today?"
He turned to look at the woman unofficially in charge of keeping the whole ship running. Her face told him the answer to his question clearly. He wished there was something more he could do to make the sadness that he had seen lodge itself deep within her so long ago disappear. It was the same for every other person he came into contact with during the day. It had been a long journey from home so far for all of them, and every day it was beginning to become too much to ask for them to continue on.
When he tried to apologize for not being able to relieve some of the burden, Dee was always quick to remind him that he was the one holding the most sadness and suffering on his shoulders. She didn't have to remind him that it was his choice. Neither one of them ever forgot that.
He had suffered a lot so that he could give her and the rest of the Fleet at least a little bit of hope. It was what they needed.
"Sir." She cleared her throat and, almost by impulse, grabbed his hand in hers. "Lee. I think you need to talk about it."
"This is not the time," he replied. "In fact, I don't think there is time."
"There never really was."
For a few stolen moments, neither one of them pulled their hands away. It was nice to be in the comfort of a friend. Lee knew that he was lucky to still have Dee around. After all, she had shared something with him that day ten years earlier. And because of that she really was the only person who could understand.
"Lee?" she finally said, quietly breaking their silence.
"Yes?"
"Do you ever… I mean… well… do the words… can you still hear them sometimes?"
He watched her looking up at him, expecting an answer. If he told her no, it would be a lie, but it might make her feel a little more confident in his sanity. If he told her yes, then she would understand that she was not alone in remembering how important that day had been, but she would also wonder what his next move would be.
"Lee?" she asked again when he failed to answer.
"Every day. I hear them every day when I wake up. When I'm trying to figure out how to spread out too few pilots to fly not enough birds. When I sit alone in the mess hall or when I'm running by myself through the corridors in the morning. When I'm helping with the mechanical work down in the hangar bay. I hear them all the time."
"You shouldn't be alone so much," she pointed out softly.
"It wouldn't matter. I hear them when I'm with people, too." He sighed and pulled his hand away from hers to rub his face lightly. "Mostly I hear them when I try to go to sleep. That's when it hits me the worst. Closing my eyes, I can just hear the pain in her voice as if it were happening at that very moment." He shrugged his shoulders and gave her a sad smile. "I haven't been sleeping so well lately."
She gave him a small nod of understanding. Of course she had caught the circles under his eyes and the way he found himself zoning out during briefings. She would be the one to notice that he wasn't getting enough sleep without him actually having to tell her. And she would also be the only one who could really understand why.
It was those words.
He turned his attention back to what was going on outside the window in CIC.
"I wish she was here, too," Dee whispered.
He wasn't surprised when she slowly walked away as silently as she had come. Dualla had always understood when he needed to be by himself.
And he truly was by himself these days.
Unless he counted those words.
They were always there, playing and replaying in his memory of that day ten years earlier.
Apollo found himself running security for a woman who frankly deserved to have a run-in with a few angry Cylon. This latest screw-up of Starbuck's had finally set him over the edge. He was tired of cleaning up her messes. He was tired of being the one to make sure that she didn't do something so stupid she sent herself spiraling down a path of self-destruction. He was tired of constantly having to save her from herself.
But what he was most tired of when it came to Kara Thrace was the constant sitting around and waiting.
He knew what was slowly happening between them wasn't in his imagination. The way he caught her staring at him in the morning while he was shaving in the head. The way he found himself enthralled with the little hints of body language that gave away whether she had a winning hand in Triad. The way she had looked so proud when the sight of her in a dress had made such stupid things come out of his mouth that night on Cloud Nine.
But mostly the way she had just melted into his arms when the music had changed from an upbeat swing to a jazzy sway as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
It was memories of that which had caused him to lose his temper in that hangar bay.
He had really thought he wasn't imagining the way she felt about him, no matter how inconceivable it was or how frakked up it would make their lives.
His mind jolted back to the present as he heard her request to talk to Galactica Actual. After that, all transmissions to his Viper cut themselves off. Obviously she was on a scrambled channel. What could she possibly have to say to his father that was both so important it couldn't wait until after the test flight and so secretive that she didn't want him to hear?
And if she was about to screw up again, how was he supposed to save her from herself if she wouldn't let him hear what she had to say?
The impulse to scream at her again for fraking it all up came back to him suddenly. To yell at her for sleeping with Dr. Baltar and not even seeming a little bit sorry for it until a few hours ago in the hangar bay and then for only being able to offer him a pitiful 'I'm sorry' before he had to move on to finish his duty.
He hated her for all those reasons.
But as much as he hated her, he loved her more.
He suddenly noticed the slight shift in atmosphere as the Cylon Raider's FTL drive was powered up. "What are you doing, Kara?" he said, hoping to the gods that even if he couldn't hear her on the comm channels, she could hear him. And maybe, if he was lucky, she'd answer.
He saw the Raider shift forward, almost as if it was going to make a jump, before the FTL drive powered down slightly and the ship hung idly in the air.
"Lee?"
Her hesitant voice erupted into his earpiece, breaking the silence that had been imposed upon him. He couldn't disguise the small feeling of hope that sprang forward from the sound of her voice in his ear.
"Starbuck, you know better than to use any other name other than my call sign when we're in the air." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized that he had called her by name only seconds before. He was chastising her for a mistake that he was also guilty of making.
But then again, he had done it in a state of panic. Hadn't he? He thought she was about to do something incredibly foolish that would get her killed.
Obviously from the tone of her voice, it wasn't the same for her. Kara was definitely in control of her emotions. She wasn't panicking. She knew what she was doing. And why did that scare him even more?
"I asked Dee to give me a secure, scrambled channel as a favor. No one else can hear me except for you and for her."
"What's with all the subterfuge?"
"No one can know that I'm talking to you. Gods. I shouldn't even be talking to you. But I can't leave it like we did."
"We can talk about this on the ground, Kara."
"No, we can't. Listen. When I said that I was sorry about what I had done, I meant it. It wasn't just me trying to make things run smoother with my boss." He heard her pause abruptly before continuing on. "It never occurred to me before, but I guess you finally did it. You stopped acting like you were my friend, and I finally starting thinking of you as my CAG."
"And you only had to do something as stupid as fraking the Vice-President to make me take on that role." He prayed to god that Dee had kept her word and given them a scrambled channel. Otherwise, a good portion of the Fleet had just gotten a little too much information and Starbuck would have a lot of explaining to do when they returned to Galactica.
If they returned to Galactica. He had a bad feeling that what she was trying to tell him wasn't going to end up with both of them flying back to the ship they were calling home.
"I just wanted to let you know that…" He could hear her struggling for the right words. It was completely uncharacteristic of the loud, brash pilot he had been trying for so long to get to settle down. "…that the only reason I went with him… I couldn't let you… it hurt too much… what you and I are… we're so frakked up on so many levels."
"You don't have to tell me that," he said, thinking of the sore jaw he was still trying to get to stop aching.
"I lied to you."
Apollo stared out the window of his Viper at the Raider hovering in space next to him as her abrupt statement sunk in. He knew she was in there, speaking to him, but he just couldn't imagine the tough Starbuck he knew admitting to the things that she was. If his jaw didn't ache and his hands still hurt from the punch, he would have thought that the past few hours were a dream he hadn't woken up from yet.
"When you went on that mission to take out the Cylon mining base. I gave you the impression that I didn't think you were capable of completing your assignment."
"You said that I would overthink it."
"I just wanted to say that I never thought for one second you wouldn't get it done in the end. I… I was just worried it would take you dying to do it. And I didn't want that happening."
He didn't know what to say to her. The way she was talking, it just was not like her. It reminded him of the warning signs he had been taught to recognize when one of his pilots had a death wish. "Kara? Why don't you just finish the weapon test and then we can continue this little confession on Galactica?"
"I'm not going back to Galactica."
"What do you mean?"
"The Fleet has no hope of finding Earth."
"Yes we do. My father just told me yesterday that he thought we were getting closer."
"The Old Man lied. He has no idea where we're going. But the President thinks she can figure it out."
Lee's mind flashed back to an argument he had had with President Roslin earlier that day. She had seemed so insistent that this planet they had discovered was Kobol and that it was the key to finding salvation. "She's sending you on her mission to Caprica."
The surprise was clear in her voice even through the muddiness of the connection. "You know about it?"
Now was not the time to tell her that the President had offered the assignment to him first. Kara was just unstable enough to let that little piece of information push her over the edge and away from his Viper and from the Fleet. "She spoke to me of Kobol and what finding it must signify. She mentioned the prophecies so I did my homework. Kara, I told her the idea of returning home was ridiculous."
"It's all we have, Lee."
"It is not all we have." Lee tore his gaze away from the Raider to look down at the sudden bleeping coming from his control panel. Galactica had just launched a handful of Vipers and Raptors. It appeared like his father was determined to keep her with the Fleet almost as much as he was.
"It's all I have." His eyes jumped back up to the Raider. "I need to give the Fleet hope. They need to have hope."
"It's not your job."
"I'm the only one who has nothing to lose in this."
There was a certain amount of truth to her words, but that wasn't enough to make him agree. "Kara."
"Lee. I can't debate this with you right now. My gut is telling me go."
"What about your head? What is your head telling you?"
"My head is telling me that the Old Man has already launched an attack force to keep me from going so the time to talk it out is over."
"You're wrong, you know. About having nothing to lose."
"Please don't do this, Lee." The faint choked up sound of her voice threw him off. Deep inside that Cylon Raider, Kara Thrace was crying. For what he still was not sure. "I don't need you to give me a reason to stay right now. I have to do this. I just…"
"Didn't want to leave without telling me goodbye?" The small laugh that carried through the channel made his heart ache.
"I frakked this up real good. I just wanted to tell you that…"
The rumble of the approaching ships cut off her words. The atmosphere began to stiffen once more. She was powering the Raider's FTL drive back up. The brief time they had together was over.
"Don't do this," he pleaded one last time.
Her last words before jumping flew over the radio so softly that he wasn't sure he had even heard them.
"I love you."
When the Raptors and Vipers showed up, they found Apollo's Viper floating in space alone.
He felt the words leave his mouth like a death sentence. "Galactica, Apollo. She just jumped away. Repeat. Starbuck and the Raider just jumped away."
"Commander Adama?"
Dee's voice jolted him away from the pain remembering those words caused him. "I'm coming," he said with a nod in her direction.
Stepping away from the window, Lee made his way back to where his Fleet needed him the most.
And Earth loomed outside the window of the CIC like the shining ray of hope Kara had said the Fleet needed all those years ago.