Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 1?

Author: abelard

Rating: K, soon to be M

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 1

She came back dead.

Starbuck was hauling ass away from Cylon-infested Picon with one hundred and fifty-eight survivors crowded into a heavy raider. The viper squadron managed to keep pursuing Cylons from blowing Starbuck's ship out of space. Lee wasn't flying; the Admiral told Lee he was needed in CIC to run tactical as Starbuck executed her crazy rescue plan. (After getting the Caprica and Sagittaron survivors out alive, her exact words were, "Picon should be a snap.") But when Lee heard Kat say Starbuck was all clear, that the enemy raiders had been destroyed, he sighed in relief and listened with happiness to the victory cheer swell up around him.

Then he heard Starbuck mutter over the open channel, her voice subdued and serious (she's never subdued or serious, thought Lee in a flash of panic), "Lee, I love you."

Next came the Chief's voice, yelling into the com, telling CIC that Starbuck had crashed hard into the deck.

Lee did not hear the Chief's frantic report. He was running by then. Starbuck had just said she loved him. That could only mean one thing.

He got to the ship – by now, a wreck – and the Chief had already managed to get the main hatch open. Lee had no eyes for the shivering, terrified civilians in the hull. He saw only the pilot, sitting at the controls, motionless. Almost calmly. "Starbuck!" he screamed. He reached her and put his hand on her shouler; she fell over. He noticed the pool of blood surrounding her seat as he hauled her out of the chair, out of the ship. He had her on the ground, on her back, and shouted in her face. "STARBUCK!"

"She was hit in the stomach," someone said. Lee looked up. One of the Picon survivors. A man in his early 50s. "She was shot as we were boarding. I don't know how she managed to pilot us out of there, but she did, bleeding to death the whole time."

Lee doesn't remember any of the next ten, twenty minutes. He remembers arguing, using as loud a voice as he's ever used, fighting with Cottle (Lee doesn't remember what he was trying to get Cottle to do or not do), following Starbuck – she was on a stretcher – to Life Station. These are sounds and images that form a massive blur in Lee's memory. The next thing he remembers with clarity is saying:

"Then please, please, just leave me alone with her. Please, I'm begging you." He said this to Cottle. He recalls that he was crying.

Cottle and the other medics, as well as the somber group of deck hands and pilots who had been trailing Lee, left.

Lee looked down upon her body. Apollo gazed upon the corpse of Starbuck. He stayed there a long time.

He did not know. he did not know he did not

then he knew. He knew what to do.

He picked up the phone and called for Helo and Cally. They showed up. Lee gave a few orders. Apollo held Starbuck's cold hand waiting for the orders to be carried out.

Helo and Cally returned with what Lee needed: all the thread they could find, a pair of sewing needles, and a near-antique silk parachute stolen from what would have been the Galactica's Aeronautical History wing, had it been allowed to retire into museumhood. Then Helo and Cally left.

Apollo filled a bucket with warm water and found a sponge. First he stripped Starbuck down, surveyed the mess of blood at her midsection, the bruises on other parts of her, the tattoos. Her flesh. Then he bathed her body until it was clean. He was thinking of literature, of stories of fallen warriors, of how their bodies would be annointed before burial. Lee had no scented oils for her, but he could do this. This he could do.

He cut the white silk parachute into two pieces, and began to sew. He sat in a low stool beside her just-washed nakedness and sewed her shroud. To imagine putting her to rest in a dress uniform, or, gods forbid, formalwear of some kind, was ridiculous. Lee didn't quite know why, but this was right. A shroud it would be, like in ancient times, and he would make it for her.

When the shroud was done, he couldn't bring himself to sew her up in it. Instead, he sat – all night, in fact – and continued to hold her hand, the white silk half-enclosing her. He did not speak to her. He did not sleep. He grew cold, almost as cold as she, and held her hand.

The clock told him it was five in the "morning," and his father walked in. Admiral Adama took in the sight before him – the partial covering, the loose threads, the grieving man, the dead woman – and ripped the gold braid from the right sleeve of his dress uniform. "Use this to close it," he said. "The funeral is in one hour."

Probably better that way, Lee thought. Better to do it soon, now, go through it quickly since it has to be gone through. But was there any getting "through?" Lee felt as if he was entering a dark tunnel that had no end.

He shredded his father's gold braid and threaded it through the eye of a needle. Part of Starbuck's shroud was sewn together with those remnants.

They sent her coffin out to space with no speeches. Words were past everybody. There was no music. Lee had thought of playing something of her father's, but rummaging through her locker, sorting through her music collection, was beyond him. It seemed as if the entire ship stood at attention as they jettisoned her. The hundred and fifty-eight survivors, for whose lives Starbuck had traded her own, were there. Even the President was there.

Lee was sure Roslin hadn't meant him to overhear what she said to the Admiral about Starbuck's funeral:

"You know why so many were in attendance?" Roslin asked Adama. The Old Man shook his head. His blue eyes were wet. "Because now they're frightened."

"They weren't before?" Adama asked.

"Captain Thrace was a talisman for them – proof that they could face these incredible odds and still come out intact. Now that she's gone..."

Lee walked away then. He was conscious of becoming a different man, a different...entity, with each step. He felt his normal human functions closing down. From now on, there would be the outside, his duty, his decisions, and then there would be the wall. Nothing would penetrate that wall. Behind the wall, Lee was not sure what he would keep, but he knew that she, the memory of her, would be one of them. All of the conversations they never finished, would never finish, the loose threads, would be kept there behind the wall. And no one would get behind that wall again. Maybe not even himself.