Disclaimer: These characters were created by Ron Moore and David Eick, and they're owned by them, the Sci-Fi Channel, and probably others. I am not of their number. I'm just having fun here.

First Flight

In the history of awkward car rides, this had to rank near the top.

Her ancient hummer, a relic of the last war, had finally expired last week. Unless her car or her finances miraculously recovered, she would be stuck bumming rides for the foreseeable future. As problems went, it seemed fairly minor – Zak drove a jeep, and though they couldn't share an apartment without risking official attention, carpooling wasn't a court martial offense.

But she'd been trying hard to stay out of his hair this week. His brother was in town, and Kara didn't want to see him. She'd politely declined Zak's every attempt to talk her into joining them for movies or pyramid or – Lords of Kobol – drinks.

She had a feeling Lee had been quietly assisting from the sidelines; Zak cajoled her over the phone, but whenever he called on Lee for support he found that his brother had casually wandered out of earshot. Just once, she'd heard Lee's quiet voice in the background of Zak's laughter: "She said she's busy, Zak. I think we'll manage."

So it was a nasty shock to see Lee behind the wheel of Zak's car as it pulled into her parking lot. His brother was nowhere in sight.

"I'm sorry," he said immediately as she approached the passenger door. "Really, but it's been a crazy morning. Zak and I went out running and he tripped and sprained his wrist, and then once I got him to the E.R. he had an allergic reaction to the meds they gave him. I swear, it's always something with him. They're keeping him under observation for the next few hours, and he didn't remember until about twenty minutes ago that you guys were supposed to ride to class together today. I'm sorry," he said again.

She stared at him for a second while he tapped a nervous thumb against the wheel. It was disturbing how familiar his hands were, how many details she apparently hadn't forgotten.

"Seriously," he offered with a slight smile. "I couldn't make this stuff up."

She rolled her eyes and climbed in, and they made good time to the highway.

After a few more questions about how Zak was doing, she stared straight ahead out the windshield and said very little. The wind caught her hair, still too short for a ponytail, and made a mess of it. He was still in his running clothes, regulation tanks and ratty shorts, an odd counterpoint to her regulation blues.

As a form of practice for the many unpleasant family holidays they had to look forward to, Lee tried to make polite conversation. Kara wasn't really into that, but answered him and then let things drop, trying to make it clear that she felt no need for words.

They were sitting at the last intersection before they reached the air base when his voice turned low and quick. "I know you don't need to hear this or say it, but I do." She tensed, and he kept his eyes on the traffic light. "I'm sorry, it will never happen again, and I don't think the less of you for anything you said or did. I hope someday you can say the same for me." His hands shifted on the wheel. "That's it, I'm done. Okay?"

She didn't know what to say.

They sat for another minute, and then the light changed. Halfway through his right-hand turn he glanced at her. She raised an eyebrow and shrugged."Okay," she said. "That wasn't so hard. Right?"

He laughed, surprised.

Once they passed the checkpoints, she directed him to the airfield; today's lesson was a practical run through combat maneuvers in low-level orbit. He keyed off the ignition and leaned back in his seat, looking relaxed for the first time since they'd met. His eyes moved over the rows of Vipers lined up beside the landing strip. His pleasure in the sight was nearly invisible; the light lines around his eyes and mouth deepened. She watched her nuggets, one by one, take notice of her arrival and step to attention. She felt an unexpected rush of pride.

She turned to him. "Come up with us."

His eyebrows skyrocketed. It was fun to watch. "What?"

"You're qualified," she said. "You can take Zak's bird – I'll authorize it and I know he wouldn't mind. Come up – help me show them how it's done."

Amusement and dismay were shifting across his face, but it didn't take him long to find the challenge beneath her words. If he really wanted to be friends, then he could prove it.

"Double dog dare you," she pushed, looking straight in his eyes.

In less than a second he lost every trace of relaxation as his whole body locked into sudden, poised control. His expression didn't even flicker. "You're on," he said, and climbed out of the car. He walked down the full line of cadets in his crummy civvies and stepped to attention, ignoring every eye that followed him. She watched the effects ripple down the line, as every single nugget pulled their stance upward with nervous precision. They were parade ground perfect in less than thirty seconds.

Impressive. But she wanted to see him in the air.

She put her students through their paces in orbit, letting them get used to balancing the planet's gravity pull without the buffer of atmospheric friction. Predictably, some of them didn't restrain their momentum enough heading into their turns, and wound up in unintentional, dizzying spirals. She corrected them with her usual combination of insight and insults, all the while watching Zak's familiar Viper out of the corner of her eye. It almost hurt to trace its easy, graceful arcs, so different from the listing heaviness that normally marked its presence. With Lee at the helm, the plane moved as he did; light and sharp.

They were halfway through the lesson when a flash of electric fire burst in Birdy's cockpit and her shriek cut through their comms. A fused circuit had blown up in her face, and the uncontrolled spin of her plane made it clear that she was unconscious, or worse. Kara's hand moved instinctively to her panel of automatic eject buttons – she had control over her trainee's emergency back-ups in case of just such an emergency – but she hesitated. If the explosion had cracked Birdy's helmet, then her Viper canopy was her only protection from the vacuum. Ejecting might kill her before any rescue Raptor could be deployed from the surface.

The damaged plane would hit atmo in a minute, though, no matter what Kara did, and without a conscious pilot at the helm, it would burn up on re-entry. Making a snap decision, Kara barked, "Everyone out of the way!" and tore after the sinking plane. Without thought she noted Lee's Viper pulling alongside hers.

"Plan?" he asked tersely.

"I have to try and ram her, connect our planes at the fuselage so I can take over her steering."

It was crazy, which was why she mistook his silence for shock. But after a minute he said, "No good."

"You're not in charge here, Lieutenant Adama! Now back the frak off!" she yelled, driving furiously downward as Birdy's plane came in range.

"That's Captain Adama!" he shouted back, sounding desperate and rushed. "Even if you don't blow yourselves up, you'll snap her neck too hard if you ram her. She's got head trauma already. Get under her and nudge her out of re-entry angle; it'll only take a few degrees. I'll catch her at the other end. That's a frakking order, Lieutenant!"

Kara swore to herself. She had three seconds to decide one way or the other. Lee was already swerving off to take up a receiving position – and to avoid the blast radius if she tried her own plan and failed. Bastard.

But, bastard or not, he was right, and his plan was impossible enough in its own right. She committed, swinging her Viper just beneath Birdy's and spinning with her, edging the noses of their planes closer and closer. Her navigation readings showed that it would require an immediate shift of seven degrees to bounce the stricken plane off the outer edge of the planetary atmosphere and prevent re-entry. She would only get one shot – it was like skipping a stone across an immense pond.

No. It was like nailing the perfect pyramid pass. She'd been training for this since childhood.

Deep instincts for motion and speed guided her hands as she pushed her Viper gently into Birdy's and twisted outward and upward. The jar of connection was bruising, but after a mere second her student's plane was spinning away from her, faster than ever. Kara watched, not breathing, as its slightly altered trajectory played out. For a few moments it seemed unaffected, and then with a glancing, burning brush of friction it skimmed against the atmospheric line and bounced forward, its vertical descent temporarily redirected. The gravity well would catch it again in a moment, but Lee's Viper was waiting. He moved smoothly under the rising wings and pushed gently up and out. Together, she and Lee passed the ship between them over and over, shifting it gradually deeper into open space. Eventually, they moved beyond Caprica's dangerous pull.

Kara's nuggets had alerted ground control, and a Raptor with a full emergency team was waiting to take over the rescue. Kara wanted to wait and hear their report, but a call came in from base headquarters ordering them all down. Going AWOL in the middle of endless debriefings, she finally found a comm unit and confirmed that her student's injuries weren't critical.

She was so exhausted by the end of the day that she spent a good ten minutes searching the parking lot for her old hummer before remembering that she needed to find Lee. It turned out he was waiting for her at the airfield, sitting in the back of Zak's jeep.

She slumped down beside him, their elbows brushing.

"Thanks," she said.

"Sure," he answered. She looked at him, and wondered for just a second what it would be like to feel like this every day of her life.

Then she narrowed her eyes. "How old are you?"

Astonished pique was a good look on him. "What?" he sputtered.

"There is no way you made Captain on your own merits unless you're older than you look. You're too good for your Daddy except when you need him to pull some strings, is that it?"

He wore anger even better, it turned out. "My Dad hasn't done a thing for me since I was nine years old," he growled. "And I'm not a Captain."

She glared at him. "What?"

His expression turned smug, and he enunciated clearly. "I'm. Not. A. Captain."

She could feel her whole body building toward a truly brutal right hook, and imagined the ricochet of his face into the seat's upholstery. "You're telling me that you not only pulled rank on me, you pulled rank you didn't have?"

He grinned. "I think what you're really getting at is, not only am I a bastard, but a lying bastard?" He shrugged affirmatively.

"Impersonating a superior officer is a court martial offense, Lee!"

"Only if I'm charged," he answered, unconcerned. After a pause, he added quietly. "You made the right call, Kara. I just had to get your attention."

He let her stew for a minute, then raised an eyebrow. "Friends?" he asked, too sweetly.

She punched him.

He took that as a yes.