Chapter Text
KARA
It’s been at a full day since Kara’s seen anyone but the guard who brings her her meals.
At first it had been a flurry of people. She’d been marched from the hanger deck straight to medical by a squad of Marines, though Lee and Sam had pinned themselves to each side of her.
She’d been poked and prodded and examined in every non-invasive and invasive way Cottle’s medical team could come up with. Finally, the old curmudgeon had been forced to admit that as far as he could tell she was human, was Kara Thrace.
Despite her hopes that the cold mask with which Adama had been regarding her would relax at this, it did not. In fact, it almost seemed to make him angrier. Adama, Tigh, the President, Cottle, Lee and Sam had plied her with question after question for hours. She’d answered as much as she could until every shred of memory and information she had had been gone over ten different times.
Then she’d been left to stew for a while while the grown-ups talked. She could hear scrapes sometimes when voices were raised. She thought she caught something from Adama about Lee not getting a say if he was ditching the military to be Zarak’s Quorum lackey.
Eventually, Adama ordered her to the brig. Sam had tried to play the “she’s my wife card” and get some time with her but Adama shut it down hard and Sam just wasn’t up to going toe to toe with the old man.
Lee on the other hand was basically made to clash with his father. Two Marines had to be left behind from her detail to restrain him and Kara could hear him shouting at his father for several corridors.
She was so confused, so hurt, by Adama that it felt good even to have just two people in the universe believe her. Kara tried to hold on to that as the hours in the brig stretched together.
Sam was the first to visit her, and Kara guiltily swallowed down her disappointment when she saw it was him. He had every right to be the first person to see her (though she wasn’t sure what apparent death and resurrection meant for a marriage certificate) but she couldn’t help wanting for someone else. Gods, she has been the worst kind of wife to him.
“I’ve been trying to see you, but they wouldn’t let me,” he said immediately and strode straight over to her and hugged her. They stood like that for a long while, just silent.
Eventually, Sam pulled back and looked at her “Gods, Kara, this is so surreal. I really thought I’d never see you again.” He shook his head and smiled a little…. and then he just stepped away and went to sit on the cot.
Kara hadn’t been sure what to expect from Sam but he hadn’t tried to kiss her, hadn’t said any of the things a husband might be expected to say to the wife he’s just been reunited with. That said everything really. Kara relaxed, finding herself relieved and went to sit easily beside him.
“I know you must still want to ask me things but I don’t know if I can stand to go over it all again. There honestly isn’t anything else I can say that I didn’t tell you all ten times in medical” Kara preempts. “But I do want to know things, will you tell me about the last two months?” She queries, still needing to orientate herself in so many ways and knowing Sam will help. “Tell me what I’ve missed? I mean you’re a pilot now, how’d that happen?”
Sam gives her a look like he maybe wants to argue, wants to probe her but he acquiesces to her wants anyhow. Like always, she thinks fondly and sadly.
“Well I guess I knew they were down another pilot, and not just any pilot but Starbuck.” He emphasises her call sign with the exaggerated tone of hero worship civvies and nuggets use and quirks a little grin at her in acknowledgment.
“And it seemed like Apollo might not be long for the job either. It felt like a good way to honour you, I thought you’d be proud.” Kara's heart clenches a little at that, he’s always been such a good man her Sammy.
“I like it more than I thought I would.” Sam continues. “It’s a bit like pyramid in strange ways. Gearing up for a match, planning your moves. You’re fighting your opposing player but you’re also part of a team working together. It feels good to be doing something worthwhile again.”
She squeezes his hand. “What else?” Kara asks. Sam pauses and takes a deep breath.
He turns around to better face her and sighs. His expression is calm though. “Maybe this isn’t a fair time to say this but I don’t know what is going to happen so I think that I should.”
He breathes deep and slow again, "I’ve been with other women, you should know that. I don’t want to hide it. Gods but it was bad at first. I was so sad and angry that you could be gone, that I’d lost you.” He gives her a melancholy look as he continues, “but I think really I’d been losing you for a long time and it was finally just all those feelings coming out. Slowly I made my peace, tried to focus on the good that had been between us and be grateful for that time. I knew I’d always have you with me,” and he turns back so he can bump his arm against hers so their tattoos touch. “I really have loved you, Kara.”
Kara understands. Can hear the echoes of those good times and the love that has been between them but can also recognise in his voice that Sam has let that go, and with it the hurt and struggle as well. So she knows the answer before she asks the question really.“Past tense, hey? Is this goodbye Sammy?”
Immediately getting dumped in the brig isn’t exactly wonderful but Kara finds it doesn’t hurt as much as it once would have. Sam is right, it’s been a long time coming. Their story has already ended and there is no point in waiting to close the book. Perhaps she can recognise the closure Sam has found because she feels the same.
Sam begins to speak again and his tone is sort of rueful “You know when Cottle was examining you I was sitting out waiting with Apollo and I asked him how we were supposed to fit you back into our lives after having accepted you were gone and let you go. Do you know what he told me? He said he’d been trying to let you go since the moment he met you and never managed so I was on my own answering that one. It’s the same for you, isn’t it? Even when you thought you should, even when you wanted to, there was no letting him go for you either?”
Kara smiles sadly at him and nods.
“I’m sorry Sammy, I hope you know I’ve loved you too. I always will in a way… but you deserve every part of someone’s heart Sam, and I can’t give that to you.”
“It’s okay Kara, like I said, I’ve made my peace with it.” In turn, he takes her hand for a moment and squeezes. “Can I ask you one thing though? Just so I can understand and fully let it all lay. Why did you ask me to marry you that day?”
Kara cringes. “Why ask that now?” She questions, looking away. They’ve gone so long without Sam actually asking that Kara is surprised. She’d figured long ago that he didn’t really want to know. “It won’t make anything better Sam. Can’t we just leave it?” She asks.
“I’m not expecting it to make anything better Kara but it is the last question I have left. It came so out of the blue but I wasn’t complaining. And I’m not complaining now. I don’t regret our marriage Kara but this was the one thing I kept wondering about when you were gone and I thought I’d never get the answer to. If you really don’t want to tell me I’ll accept it but after everything is it really too much to ask for one moment of honesty at the end?”
Damn him Kara thinks. Sam had always had a knack for the fine art of taking the moral high ground and nudging and guilting her just enough to get an answer without pushing so hard she’d snap back.
She sighs. “I slept with him at the Groundbreaking okay!” They both know who he is.
“I don’t know why it happened then after so long and all these false starts but it did. Feelings just spilled out. He was so sure it would all be easy. Just tell you, tell Dee, live happily ever after.” Kara gives a sad kind of chuckle. “But I could see he hadn’t planned any of it, hadn’t really thought about it and I lay there and all I could think was every reason it wouldn’t work, every reason it hadn’t before. I’d drive him crazy, be the death of him and he’d crack me open and break my heart.”
Kara sighs again. “I told myself then that I saw it clearer than him. Saw how it’d all go down in flames. I told myself it was right to be with you instead, someone it felt easy and good with, but I can see now how I panicked. I wasn’t ready to face everything I felt. I needed another wall, stronger this time than any of the fracks-up I’d put between him and me in the past. So I married you, believing I’d never break it. I meant to honour my vows when I said them, Sam, I hope you know that. But what you said before is right, I’ll never be able to let Lee go and I don’t think I want to try anymore. I don’t know what’s going to happen but I know I’m not afraid now.”
She’d said more than she intended. Maybe it needed to be spoken. Needed to be let out to be let go. She’d hurt a lot of people, herself included, with that choice. Kara didn’t know if Sam would forgive her and was pretty sure Dee wouldn’t if she knew but she realised that somehow in the time she’d been gone she’d forgiven herself. And not just for New Caprica but forgiven herself for the way she’d lay under Lee on that table, for passing Zak, for lying about it, for Colonial day and the bunkroom, for all the nuggets, for not escaping Leoban, for how she’d acted after, for her father leaving and her mother’s anger and loneliness. The nebula had burnt away so much of the weight she’d always carried.
She knew she wasn’t going to get a bright shiny future. Even if her marriage was over Lee’s was the best it had ever been. It hurt but in a different kind of way. She could admit now (even if not to him), without fear, that she loved him, needed him.
“Thank you for telling me” was all Sam said but he squeezed her hand reassuringly.
“What happen’s now do you think?” She asked. Kara wondered how people got divorced after the end of the world. Was she even considered people right now? Kara had staunchly refused to ever contemplate betraying her vows to the Gods through divorce but now she knew that she could. She’d do it to set Sam free and whatever price the Gods wanted to charge for her sin she hoped leading the fleet home to Earth would be enough to pay it.
“I asked actually,” Sam admitted. “I mean I signed your death certificate Kara so I was a bit confused about where that would leave us. The Admiral put me to this Lawyer Apollo’s been working with, Lampkin. He did some reading for me and said the closest case he could find, which would therefore set the legal precedent was of a man who disappeared in a plane crash only to turn up alive years later to find he’d been ruled dead. The marriage had been considered ceased, and the same goes for us, and that couple had to re-sign paperwork to be considered legally married again. So we don’t really need to get divorced, we’re just choosing not to marry again.”
“Okay then,” Kara agreed. That was more than she'd hoped for. Maybe the Gods would see this as a lesser offence. Sam put his arm over her shoulder and laid a kiss on her temple. “Thank you for all the good times, Kara, I hope you’ll be happy, I really do”. “Yeah” Kara agreed softly.
Sam released her, stood and knocked to be let out without looking back. Kara lay back on the crib. It was done. Whatever had happened to her in that nebula, and whatever was coming next at least she was moving forward.