No Takebacks

Oh wow! What a great topic! I am totally coming back later with all of my favorites, cuz I have a ton! I just have to find all of them ;-)

From:

I have tons as well. And that IS a problem. ;)

From:

scifishipper.livejournal.com

One of my favorite lines, referring loosely to Daybreak, is from

kag523's Intaglio (http://kag523.livejournal.com/104446.html). It's simple and true.

Where she is, he needs to be, too.

ETA: I guess this isn't really dialogue, but it came to me. I'll try to come up with some other dialogue bits. :)

Edited Date: 2011-02-10 02:36 am (UTC)

From:

*hugs* Thank you :)

From:

Anything by Karin is always a good choice. The problem with her is that there is so much to choose from and it's impossible to stick to just a line or two. I'd have to quote whole chapters. :)

From:

scifishipper.livejournal.com

Hee. It is true! That one stuck out because I read it and immediately made her an icon with that phrase. I just love it. <3

From:

You are too kind, C. *hugs super tight* I always feel like I've shown up to the party two hours too late in fandom, so if ANYTHING makes the cut, I'm excited.

Thank you. Seriously - it means so much! *hugs* K :>D

From:

I (shamefully) must admit I ~~haven't read either of these~~ (turns out I did) But I have forgotten the details of them. *shakes head* Yes, I'm bad.

I DEFINITELY will be re-reading them now. Just... WOW!

Great topic AGAIN, C!

Edited Date: 2011-02-10 02:48 am (UTC)

From:

You're not bad. You're just too busy... writing, among other things. :)
Feel free to go on being bad that way. *hugs*

From:

Wow, thank you very much for including "Every Sense" in your list, that's so lovely. *hugs*

I'm about to quote more than I should.

A gesture that speaks volumes, from Amateur (http://mercurial-wit.livejournal.com/30990.html) by mercurial_wit:

“Briefing in five, Kara.” As Lee walks past his hand rests on her shoulder, just for a moment, and Anders doesn’t think she even realises that her own hand comes up in a silent tactile response, brushing the place where his fingers lay.

~~

A complicated rivalry, from tomorrow's dust (flares into breath) (http://community.livejournal.com/bsg2003fics/285532.html) by spamdilemma. Zak finds out that Lee has always loved Kara but never said anything about it. Lee tells him not to worry, that things are better this way, and that he himself could never be as open with another person as Zak naturally is with Kara:

"It's not so hard, Lee," you say after a moment. "You got to give up something of yourself sooner or later."

He gives you a smile, too wry, but exactly Lee. "I suppose it has to be later."

"Lee, could you just - I need you to be okay with this."

"I am," Lee stresses. "But you don't need my stamp of approval."

"Shut up," you say, "I need yours most of all."

Kara's chosen you, and maybe it makes you a lesser person to value her love more knowing how your brother feels - and refuses to feel. But perhaps it makes you a better person too, when that sense of triumph you thought might take over, does not. There's no winner, nor should there be.

It makes a weird sort of sense, in your mind. You've loved the same people all your lives, why should it be so different here? Lee loves first and you follow.

From:

No list of quotes would be complete without you in it. You really have a gift. And good taste. And a terrific memory. Loved all your choices. *hugs*

From:

Amateur = Best Sam POV ever, IMO. It's so great to see the K/L dynamic through someone else's eyes especially when that someone is another member of the QoD! There's one out there with Dee's POV too. I have to go find it. My bookmarks are a mess.

From:

Bittersweet descriptions from Projections (http://flowrs4ophelia.livejournal.com/96681.html) by flowrs4ophelia:

One of many things almost completely forgotten: a cool and still night in Caprica City years ago, Kara and Lee waiting outside a 24-hour diner they’d just come from while Zak was still inside using the bathroom.

She sighed, reaching back and pulling a band out of her hair and then shaking her head to toss her hair around with her eyes closed. Soft eyelashes resting on smooth skin above strong cheekbones, white arms reaching up to tie her hair more neatly back again as her shadowy, dark eyes gazed down. It all neatly came together in one brief glance he took in her direction when she moved. It was the first time he noticed she was beautiful.

She yawned and met eyes with him, breaking the silence with “I get to ride shotgun this time.”

He met this with a challenging grin, saying back, "Like hell."

~~

She can't help but always go back to those memories even though it is like sitting down somewhere there was always a chair before and then falling because it's been taken away. She falls back into her old self that has a place in her life for the Galactica and the name Starbuck as easily and naturally as ever, like nothing has changed. The Starbuck who Lee and all those other officers who have been her family knew. And then she is always a little disoriented a moment to remember.

That morning and the way he looked at her. Kara Anders, just like he said. Right.

No, she has to tell herself before she lets certain thoughts about him grow too much. It's good that he is on the ship instead of here with them. She certainly can’t bring herself to regret that he isn't the one out there having to deal with toasters treating everyone like animals and worry about his missing wife. The very idea is as insane and ridiculous as it is strangely, distantly painful.

If only it wasn't still so natural for her to think of him. If only the distance between them and all the time that had passed made any difference now. She could feel him close and she can feel him far away.

From:

AU, Lee and Kara deciding to end their marriages after UB, from Gold to Iron (http://mercurial-wit.livejournal.com/35835.html) by stars_like_dust and mercurial_wit:

If she'd been the type to keep count, she would have been able to say that it took two days, one hour and seventeen minutes to go from admitting that she had missed Lee Adama to admitting that she was still in love with him. There were no fireworks and no ground-shattering epiphanies, just an evening when she visited the head before turning in, stood in front of the mirror and splashed water onto the still-sharp bruises on her face.

"Trying to wash yourself pretty, Starbuck?" came Lee's sleepy voice from behind her, and she ducked her head so that he couldn't see the reflection of her grin.

"Frak you, Apollo," she said, and spun around to flick a double handful of water at him. Lee tried to dodge, caught his heel on a wet tile and slid off balance, grabbing at her to stay upright.

And that's all it was: Lee's hand clenched absently around her upper arm, her own amusement and his bitten-back curse. When their eyes met she knew that they were in trouble, because somehow the months had slipped away and they were exactly where they'd always been: Starbuck and Apollo in a room full of cold hard surfaces, something frighteningly important flaring up between them.

~~

Lee didn't say anything, and she thought maybe it hadn't been enough. She tried to think of a way to articulate her emotions, accepting for once and for all everything she felt for him, the enormity of it, and couldn't. So she raised her hand instead and started to lean in, tried to rest her palm against his chest, but he caught her hand in his own and lowered it gently.

For a moment it felt worse than his punches, but his face had opened, changed after that quiet confession, and he hadn't released her hand yet.

"Kara," he said, and he didn't sound angry at all. "For once, let's wait until we won't be hurting anyone else to do this."

Kara had a feeling the hurting would happen either way, and when she saw Dee's face the next day she knew that she was right. Try as she might, she couldn't stop looking at the other woman, trying desperately to read her angles. Dee caught her staring and she felt guilty heat spreading across her cheeks, but after the initial moment Dee's expression became even more complex and she looked Kara straight in the eye.

"Believe it or not," she said, quietly, "I don't blame you."

"I don’t," Kara said before she could think about it. Her mouth was dry.

"What?"

She swallowed. "I don't believe it?"

Something flickered in Dee's face that might have been humour had it not been so drenched in fatigue and that painful shadow. "Right."

"Don't..." and she couldn't believe that she was saying this, but she needed to snatch at the guilt before it was out of her grasp entirely, or she would never live with herself, "...don't blame yourself."

That humour again, even darker this time. "Oh," Dee said, "no. I blame Lee."

From:

Gold to Iron is one of my favorites. *sigh* So many awesome stuff out there to read and re-read! I need more than 24 hours in a day Rachel!

From:

Amazing look at Kara's grief about Zak through Lee's eyes from in the months after his death (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2265261/1/in_the_months_after_his_death) by sangga:

two months

You’re starting to detect a pattern now and it’s not funny.

You don’t need to ask how it started because you were there, and it started over nothing. It’s what people have been trying to tell you, but you didn’t have the heart to believe them.

Now you know it’s true. She eggs them on, coaxing larger issues out of small tantrums – she has quite a talent for it. Over cards, over drinks, over tables, over mess trays. You wonder how her superiors put up with it, but they’re obviously of a mind to be lenient. You know if she wasn’t already a graduate she would never have gotten through the academy.

So this was over – nothing. Again. Something that the guy said to her, that she shot back, that he took the wrong way, that she fanned to flame, and then when the fists started swinging she took her opportunity, milked it for all it was worth. Lashed out hard, let herself lose it, too strong and furious to be held back. She has no self-restraint.

Which is not exactly true. She has enormous control, in some areas. She’s never treated him, for example, with anything less than respect. He’s seen her chest swell, her face grow rigid, holding in some tide of emotion, some internal war, when they’ve talked sometimes. It’s only that she has no balance: she can control the inside, but not the out. Not all things can be contained.

So for this he holds his tongue. Hands her a cloth-wrapped ice-pack for her knuckles, and she thanks him and hisses as she straightens her fingers, and sits quietly at the table while he wipes the blood off her cheek, doctors the cut under her eye, helps her stagger to the living area to sleep it off on the couch.

And he watches her face soften in repose, and washes the blood out of the dishcloth, and wonders if this is what they call enabling.

three months

A little bit later and he’s losing patience, because she keeps trying him out, goading him now, trying to get a response from him because he’s practically the only one close to her who refuses to be drawn in. He won’t budge, he won’t crack, but he has to keep putting up walls, fortifying the barricades. She seems to take a masochistic pleasure in battering herself against them.

Finally one day he grabs her by the wrists and yells into her face.

“Lords, will you just stop? Just STOP.”

And her face is drawn and terrible, her eyes like a freight carrier coming towards him at a million miles an hour.

“I CAN’T,” she screams back, before the breath dies in her at the admission, and her mouth works silently for a second.

In his shock he lets her go, and she stumbles back, slumps down into her chair, staring and staring.

“I want to,” she whispers, her voice breaking into uneven pieces. “I just…can’t.”

And she refuses to look at him, makes all the noises of crying, the soft desperate sobbing sounds, the trembling and the whitening, hugging herself. But no tears come out, and when he realises this something inside him expands again and he sits down and holds her hand.

She doesn’t know it, but she’s bought herself more time.

From:

shah-of-blah.livejournal.com

A few favorites:

1) From A Sunny Day in Tartarus (http://community.livejournal.com/remix_redux/27275.html) by

mercurial_wit (you really have to read the whole fic to fully appreciate its genius, ,but here's the bit that's always stayed with me):
1. There will always be time to discard your regrets

“I have to go,” she says, looking at him sideways as her limbs disappear into her clothing, shocked into sobriety.

“You’re coming back,” he says. “I trust you. Implicitly.”

Sarcasm creeping back around the edges of her mouth, and he’s glad, because he never wanted to destroy her: just hold her in place for long enough to change her. “Implicit trust, Lee? Is that anything like unconditional love?”

Yes, he thinks, yes: just as destructive and just as unavoidable.

“I wouldn’t know,” he says, “you’re the one who wrote it.”

“Yeah,” she says with her lips curving, “I guess I am.”

And she steps across the threshold.

And the air changes back.

2) From The Strange Dividends of Parapraxis (http://daphnaea.livejournal.com/8100.html) by

daphnaea (on Kobol, discussing Lee's earlier declaration):

“What happens now? I don’t know. What do you want to happen now, Kara?”

She drew back against the tree. “I don’t know,” she said, looking more than usually like a half-wild animal crouched at the edge of a forest, weighing instinctive fear against the scent of a cook-fire.

“Bizarre as this is to say, I think you are actually worse at this than the robot over there,” he told her, gesturing toward the shelter off to his right where Helo and Sharon were talking softly. “But if you don’t know, then I guess nothing happens. We just go on being friends. Easy, right?”

“So I don’t have to say it too?” she asked grudgingly.

He laughed. “Since when does Kara Thrace have to do anything?”

“Ok,” she said. She stared at him for another few seconds, then got out her gun and a cloth and set to work cleaning it. He followed suit, happy enough for the moment just to sit with her and not argue.

“I might,” she said after a minute of companionable silence, still hunched over her weapon. “I mean, if I had to say, one way or the other, then maybe I do. Too.”

From:

shah-of-blah.livejournal.com

A few favorites, part two:

3) From All I need is the air that I breathe (and to love you) (http://fadingphantom.livejournal.com/9890.html) by

fadingphantom):

I guess that’s all we’ll ever be now, huh?

She turns, and when she looks at him her eyes are gentle but hold an infinite sadness, as well as a glimpse of something else... something that scares him as her every self-destructive and hurtful tendency had not, because he would almost think it was goodbye, if he didn’t know better.

He frowns slightly, bewildered, because this is Kara and they’ve never said goodbye, not really, because they are both supposed to know deep down that their someday will come. Not today, but one day, when they are finally strong enough to trust each other with their hearts, as they do now with their lives.

But in the time it takes for those thoughts to flash through his head, she looks down and away, and then the moment passes, and the next time she meets his eyes she’s Starbuck again, and she’s punching him on the shoulder and telling him to move his ass already, because don’t think she’ll pass up the opportunity to have the CAG fly her wing.

And though she’s Starbuck once more he still sees a hint of Kara’s vulnerability lingering in the set of her shoulders, so he lets it slide, telling himself they’ll have plenty of time after this current mission is over, to sit down and unwind, and maybe even try to talk like the friends they once were.

He lets himself forget that for the space of a moment there he couldn’t breathe, because looking into her eyes left him feeling strangely shaken and scared, like a child standing at the crumbling edge of a precipice, unable to stop it from collapsing, and not understanding what would happen when it does.

Two hours later, that cliff disintegrates under him, and he understands.

4) From the end of The Reality and Immortality of Things (http://users.livejournal.com/wisteria_/925866.html) by

wisteria_:

She heads toward the shore, down the old path that is now overgrown with vines. As she hikes, she starts to feel happy, like a bubble is spreading through her chest. She's getting closer and closer, and she's ready. Lee begins to walk beside her, and she laughs when she looks over and sees him in his old flight suit. He cocks an eyebrow. “What's so funny?”

She elbows him. “Just like the old Apollo, huh?”

“Not old. The same. I was always Apollo, and you were always Starbuck.”

She smiles and keeps walking, feeling every bit like Kara Thrace and Starbuck and everything she has been over the years. They reminisce about Zak and that night in the old Delphi. Hundreds of CAPs and all the pilots they knew. His father. The President. Colonial Day and the Blackbird. New Caprica. The algae planet. Death and new life and Demetrius and Earth. All the conversations they had, and some she wishes they'd had. She feels like more than herself, more than she's ever been. And she realizes despite all the pain those memories had held at the time, now they're the sum total of her existence, and she's so grateful for them. For him. She catches her breath as they push through the last mountain pass, and she says, “You were always the most important part of my life.” He just smiles.

When they reach the sea, she skirts the coastline until she finds a high cliff with rocks at the base. It's a good place. It'll work beautifully. She turns to Lee with his short hair and flight suit. “I'm ready, Apollo.”

He nods, and his eyes are as blue as the sea. “See you on the other side, Starbuck.”

She backs up far enough to get a head start. Closes her eyes, breathes in the clear air, then takes off. She runs until the ground gives way under her feet, and soon she's flying again. She never lands.

From:

Great picks. I need to read these again. "The reality and immortality of things" is very high on my list of all-time favorites. And I don't think I've read "All I need is the air that I breathe (and to love you)" . So thanks for the rec. :)

(deleted comment)

From:

I don't think I've read this one. Thanks for the rec. :)

From:

“Forever, Kara," he whispers. "It means a lot. Not just the here and now. It means enduring the Sundays in bed, the messy fights in the kitchen, and all the boring times in between... Forever requires a whole lot of trust and patience.”
“I do believe I’m familiar with the term,” she replies lazily against his neck. Attempting to tamper his sudden seriousness she strokes his skin, fingertips dusting over the faint scar on his shoulder.
“This is the last time, I’m not asking any more Kara. I don’t think I can —“
“Yes,” she whispers then thinks he’s forgotten how to breathe. Pushing herself up, she kisses him long and slow, each second proving her love and marking his tongue as her own. He smiles against her lips and she feels unusually calm at the promise of forever.

White Dwarfs in Centaurus (aka Diamonds are Forever), by gwassh0ppa
http://gwassh0ppa.livejournal.com/4504.html

“I just don’t get you, Lee Adama. Some sort of frakking masochist.”
Lee chuckled, his voice going low and suggestive.
“Only if you’re into that...”

Falling and flight by kag523

(Lee is talking to Kara about his relationship with Kendra)
“I trust her.”

“That’s what she said,” Kara said. “Exactly what she said – that you are a friend and that she trusts you. Is that all it is?”

Lee focused all his consideration on her, “Is that all? Kara, when all is said and done, having someone you can count on is all that matters.”
Beauty and the Beast by Innibis

From:

*happy sigh* Again. Thank you! :>D

From:

Wow ... this is going to take a lot longer that I thought and I actually haven't even scratched the surface!

From my One True Fic - kag523's Irreplaceability of Things Lost

(It's super hard to just find small quotes from this, but I'll try)

For those of you who haven't read it, first off, what the heck are you waiting for and second, it's a crossover fic with Inception.

If he couldn’t be near Kara, to fly with her, talk with her, be her friend, then he felt more lost than ever.

The setting for this one is the memorial hallway scene after Kara's death.

Lee took a step back toward him, a line of concentration between his eyebrows, and Dom had a moment to really gauge Lee’s expression. His eyes were haunted and brooding. There was a deep, crushing weight of pain pressing down on him, almost tangible. His whole body moved as if flayed and bleeding. But he’d wrapped himself in a semblance of calm. An iron mask behind which he walked; projecting an outward image of control.

He reminded Dom of himself.

“I lost a friend...” Lee said, hand dropping into his pocket reflexively. “A good friend actually... and more than that too.”

Dom nodded.

“But you can’t let her go,” he said quietly.

Before him, Dom watched as Lee’s calm demeanour flickered for a second and all the anger and fears rose like a wave to the surface. His expression darkened, then calmed again. Lee back in control.

“No,” Lee said finally. “No, I can’t.”

And from the same chapter/scene

“Some people say the time of scriptures is here,” Lee said, speaking overtop Dom’s words, almost as if talking to himself. “Others say you just have to have a little faith; that you just need to believe in the will of the gods...”

Cobb waited for a moment, making sure he was done before speaking.

“And what do you say about it?”

“I say it doesn’t matter. If I could get Kara back – even just for a day – I’d make it right... It wouldn’t matter how or why. I’d just... I’d tell her I loved her... That I’d always loved her... That she’d always been the one for me...”

Lee took a sharp breath that sounded like a sob, turning back to the wall and finally taking her picture from his pocket. Setting it gently in place, before running his fingers along the line of her cheek one last time.

“I just never realized it until she was gone.”

Right after Kara comes back:

She grinned at him again and that was the moment when Lee knew that it really was her, because her smile was the one he’d been looking for in crowds ever since her death. Even before that, actually... right back to that night so many years ago when she’d opened the door of her apartment and stepped back. It was the smile that had changed absolutely everything for him.

Kara Thrace was alive, and that meant so was he.

It didn’t matter how Kara had come back to him – ghost or cylon or whatever else she might be – Lee knew all he needed to know.

Kara was with him and he didn’t intend to let her go.

From the "table frak" scene:

Every other woman he’d ever touched suddenly disappeared from his memory as his lips had brushed her own. None of those times had been real; only this. She made a small gasp and his tongue darted into her mouth, tasting the slight burn of ambrosia and something sweeter... Kara.

Gah! There's so much more, but seriously you have to just go read the fic.

From:

From

workerbee73's Borrowed Time. The whole fic is just full of simmering, build-up moments like this and it's become my fanon canon for pre-mini.

She was better than him, he realized. Normally this would have bothered him, seeing as he was used to being the most technically proficient pilot no matter who the company. Funny enough, he didn't seem to mind all that much. Her flying style was riskier—at times, it was down right suicidal—but somehow flying with her just felt … right. He smiled to himself. Gods, if they could do that in the sims, just think what they could do in actual birds. The thought was like an aphrodisiac.

He climbed out of the sims cockpit, still shaking with adrenaline and exhilaration. He pulled off his helmet and let it fall to the floor. He looked across the space between the two sims. She was standing right in front of him, about six feet away. She pulled off her helmet too, and they just stared at each other. Panting. Trying to suck in whatever oxygen was left in the room. They were silent, completely absorbed in each other. It was as if they were both in a trance, afraid to break the spell by uttering some casually dismissive phrase.

From

uberscribbler's Portraits of a Marriage over on ff.net) WARNING: for those of you who haven't read it, the fic is pretty graphic. Very NC-17!

Lee Adama had never been able to escape Kara Thrace – not at the Academy and not afterwards – so it was only natural he ended up marrying her. It was so ridiculous that it seemed fitting it happened in the cell of a civil militia barracks on Tauron, with an inebriated Orthodox Priest presiding while he and his prettier half held each other upright, a pair of bored patrolmen acting as the legal witnesses.

That was how it was with them: the inevitable happening where and when it would, savaging their pride in the process. Well, her pride maybe; his had called 'Krypter' and ejected out of his life since the first day he'd caught her eye.

...

There would be a part of Lee Adama that would always disbelieve in the word "forever". His childhood, while by no means as terrible as his wife's, had taught him that people were unpredictable and that instability was the natural order of things. He compensated by exerting a careful control over his reactions to external events; this gave him an aura of decisiveness and competence he always felt was just skin-deep. Even joining the Fleet gave him only the most momentary respite, because the universe saw fit to ensure that Kara Thrace's path intersected with his.

Kara Thrace, who had wormed her way into his life and heart so deeply that the chaos and excitement she embodied seemed to take over. She'd drawn him into her orbit from the first moment their eyes had touched, and then sucked him in as surely as if she were a naked singularity. It was out of sheer self-preservation that he'd become hyper-vigilant of his surroundings and to observe everything in his visual range; Lee knew he'd never live down tripping over Connery in the mess hall and really wanted to avoid adding to the list of Kara Thrace-inspired mishaps.

Sadly, it seemed Thrace had some kind of built-in stealth package as he never actually realized it was her in his vicinity until it was too late. It didn't matter if it was in the library, the student union, a lecture hall, or an otherwise empty runway; one second he was attending to his business, then he'd turn and find her barely an arm's length away.

...

In time, they would sleep, hands and bodies entwined.

In time, they would wake to the new day…both not a little shocked the other was still there. He would call her "wife", and she would call him "husband". It sounded too normal, too natural to be real between them, but neither would say this aloud, knowing even the gods themselves could not have made something so perfect.

His hands and lips would resume their exploration, while hers would seem to know where they were wanted. He envied her for that, knowing the rest of creation would envy them for what they now were.

She tasted like forever, and for the first time in his life, Lee Adama found himself believing the word.

Edited Date: 2011-02-11 09:56 pm (UTC)

From:

From

innibis Cinderella - Frakked Up Fairytale

"That night, on the balcony," Lee's voice was soft in her ear. "I—I just didn’t know that it was possible to be that happy. I never thought that someone like you would want someone so predictable and dull. And then it turned out that you didn't." Kara tried to turn around, but Lee held her firmly. "That was my fault Kara. I never told you how I felt. Never asked you out or did anything to let you know how much you mean to me. And then I made the biggest mistake of all, letting you walk out of my life." He nuzzled her ear. "So what I'm getting at is that in about fifteen seconds I am going to tell you that I love you and if you don’t say it back, we are going to sit here and finish our movie and then grab dinner on the way to work and we will be fine."
...
"Lee?" Kara breathed.

"Yeah?" he whispered back.

"You were saying?" Kara licked the shell of his ear.

"I was saying?" Lee's hand had drifted from her shoulder and was now cupping her breast. He ran a thumb teasingly across her nipple.

"Your fifteen seconds are up, Adama." Kara tried to sound stern, but her head dropped back and she arched more fully into his hand.

"Oh, that," Lee said. He dropped a gentle kiss in the hollow of her throat and moved his hand back up to clasp her shoulder firmly. "I love you Kara Thrace," he said directly into her ear.

From

ez_as_pi's Changes

Lee had slept on the floor for over a week.

Then he just sort of shut down a few days later.

Oh, he still commanded his ship, did his shifts, signed enough reports to give him carpal tunnel syndrome. He was where he needed to be when he needed to be there.

He still took his solitary morning runs, gym every third day, was clean-shaven in his crisp uniform every morning.

Couldn't tell by looking at him, but he thought that he might be going nuts.

He had entertained a plethora of rather strange thoughts from left field; that maybe they would run out of paper and that would make his day a little shorter, maybe the Cylons would find them and that could fill a few hours, maybe he could resign and move to the planet...open a bar, chief could build him a still.

He knew that he had been within reach of everything he wanted, and it was now gone. There really wasn't anything left.

Ten days had passed that may have well been ten years.

He felt like a damned parrot. 'Yes, I'm fine. No, nothings wrong.' They became his mantra.

What did they expect? 'No, I'm miserable. I miss Kara. I'd like to take a raptor and abandon my post and go after her?' Right.

He hadn't been able to touch Dee since that night. The one time he'd tried he had experienced such a crushing pain in his chest, she had called the medic.

Who had told him in private, after running a few dozen tests, that no, he wasn't having a heart attack, he had a panic attack.

His only defense had been to just switch off.

From:

Cont'd ... from

ez_as_pi's Changes - Kara's POV

Kara had been sleeping in the CAGs office since she got back.

She scheduled herself for CAP every day, too often a double. She ran every day. Made every pilot take advanced combat training… which she planned and instructed…every day.

She’d drag Karl down to the gym and beat the crap out of him when that wasn’t enough to quiet the voice in her head…which was almost every day.

The day he tried to get her to tell him what the hell was going on, she broke his nose.

Most of all she avoided Sam...every day.

She told herself it was because she was waiting for the bruises and other marks Lee had left on her to fade.

It wasn’t.

BEST marriage proposal ever IMO. From roofietoof's A Long Time Ago, We Used to Be Friends (over on ff.net)

He looked at her for a long time as she wrote something across a page. "Do you wanna get married?"

She finished putting her thought down on paper and then looked up. "Sure." She said simply.

"To me?"

"Well, I've already promised Hotdog I'd marry him. But we haven't set a date yet, so I guess I could break it off." She teased.

"Do you wanna do it soon?"

"Well," She shrugged. "It all depends on how fast you can get my dowry together."

"Your dowry?" He laughed. "I thought dowries were what women gave men so that they would marry them."

"I changed the rules." She winked. "And if you wanna get married, I suggest you get used to me doing that."

"Okay." He pondered it for awhile. "All I've got are three cigars that Representative Bagget gave me."

"That'll work." She said. "Oh, by the way, you only have two now." She saw him shake his head in astonishment and then return to his report. "Don't keep stuff like that where you know I can get to it." She warned him as she looked back to hers.

"We could do it soon. Unless of course you wanted a real wedding." He raised his head and locked gazes with her.

"You mean a real wedding? Where I'd stand below a canopy of flowers in my virginal white gown and we'd recite love sonnets to each other while harp music played?" Her eyes narrowed and she scrunched up her nose as she shook her head in rejection of the idea.

"Yeah." He laughed in amused understanding. "I figured that wouldn't really be your style." He looked back down and circled something on the rotation that looked out of place, showing it to her. "Make sure you fix that."

"I will." She took the paper from him.

"The President is sending around a priest to all of the ships for grief counseling a couple times a week, he'll be here at 09:00." He scribbled something down on the next paper he saw. "You busy tomorrow?" He looked back up to her.

"Very." She responded as she made the adjustment on the rotation with a red pen. "I have training in the morning and CAP in the afternoon."

"I see." He stated.

"But I'm free for an hour in between." She looked back to him. "We could do it then."

"Sounds good." He nodded as he put the pen down on the table. "I gotta go, I'm due in CIC." He rose from his chair and leaned over to place a kiss on her forehead before starting to walk away. "I'll see you later."

"Bye." She smiled tenderly as she went back to her paperwork.

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