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Chapter 38
(Adama's POV)
I am more than a little surprised --not to mention incredibly relieved-- when I see Lee and Kara walk into the CIC side by side, smiling and looking far more relaxed in each other's company than they have been since this whole thing with Kara first came out. It takes me only a few seconds to realize that something must have changed while they were out there and I can't help but to shake my head at that.
For more than two weeks now Cottle had been doing everything in his power to keep Kara out of the cockpit in a desperate attempt to force her to straighten things out with us and yet as soon as he gave in to the inevitable and allowed her to go back out there, the two of them seem to have managed to overcome their problems in a matter of hours. That is ironic.
Of course, I also know that in a way it is only natural. Out there there is no room for games, especially not when you are in the middle of a dogfight. When you are flying you have no choice but to trust your wingman with your life... not to mention that you blink and you are dead, literally. That, I suspect, is what Cottle failed to consider.
As a doctor he doesn't get to see them when they are out there --in their element-- so he was looking at the whole situation from the wrong perspective. He was looking at them as Lee and Kara without even realizing that the answer was to be found in Starbuck and Apollo instead. In other words, in his attempt to help them bridge the gap between them, Cottle ended up taking their bridge away from them instead and that in turn only served to make matters worse.
Oh, I know there's no way Starbuck and Apollo can't sort this one out on their own, not completely --if for no other reason than because Starbuck and Apollo are part of Lee and Kara and not the other way around-- but apparently they were all that was needed to put them on the right track.
Sure, this is still far from over. I know Lee and Kara still have plenty of things they are going to have to deal with before we can safely say that things are back to anything remotely resembling normal, and they are not the only ones, but at least now it seems like that first hurdle is behind them. It is apparent that the two of them have now regained some level of trust between them and that means that, if we are lucky, things between them will get a little easier and maybe --just maybe-- that trust will trickle down to the rest of us.
The truth is that up until now the biggest obstacle we had faced in our attempts to reach Kara had been, well, Kara. As Laura said, Kara has been keeping people at arm's length for way too many years and she doesn't have a clue as to how to allow anyone past those defenses. That has been the real problem all along.
Yes, she trusts us on a rational level, there is no question about that, but at the same time she has always kept her distance... only now I get the feeling that Lee may have finally found a way to breach that final gap.
THE (not quite) END
Author's notes: Hi guys, okay first of all, sorry about the delay in getting this chapter posted. An unexpected but very necessary visit to my friendly neighborhood sadist (aka 'the dentist') left me in no shape to clean this one up last week.
Also, I know that ending it here may feel a little abrupt but there are a couple of reasons why I decided to finish this story here. The first one has to do with giving those readers who feel that it is moving too slowly a safe spot to walk away and the second has to do with giving myself more freedom as to how I move on from here, not to mention that I think the rest of this will probably work better as a series of short stories rather than as part of a massive fic.
In other words, while this is the end of this particular story, I am nowhere near done with this universe. Yes, it will probably be a few weeks before I post the first sequel but I do have a number of ideas floating in my head... now I just have to figure out how to organize them.
So that's it for now. Thank you for sticking with me, I really appreciate it (and, if you want to know what happens next, stay tuned!)
Alec