Title: The Rule She Needs to Break
Author: vegawriters
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Pairing: Sam/Kara (Mentions of Kara/Lee)
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: The entire series, really.
Disclaimer: I know that these characters all belong to the One True Writer, Ron Moore. I only hope that someday he will let me write one of his cylons. Until that time, I make no money from these characters and the rights are held by powers that be other than me.

Summary: What Lee doesn’t know is what Sam knows. Sam knows each scar. He knows why each tear falls. He knows that Lee knows Kara better than anyone, anyone at all. Anyone except him.

We sat for sometime together in silence
Never speaking in words
Of all her thoughts she spoke with her eyes
And I listened remembering all I heard
From: The Lady Wore Black (Queensryche)



There are times when Sam wonders if he should have just yelled at her and demanded fidelity.

I married you because it was safe, Sam.

Words that sting, but he knows the truth behind the lies. He knows she wants Lee because Lee is the safe one. Lee is the Galactica and hatred of the cylons and her life on Caprica with Zak. Lee is vipers and long nights drinking and playing cards but snapping to attention when the Admiral comes into the room. Lee is what she has to die for.

Why did you come back for me, Kara? Why? Was it that promise you made or was it because you actually love me? I was dead for all you knew.

I knew you weren’t.

How?

I came back because you give me something to live for, Sam.

He knows she cheats because she’s scared of stability.

Sam knew when she woke him up that morning on New Caprica what she’d done and who she’d done it with and part of him was glad it was out of her system and part of him wanted to run from her and tell her to frak off and to go be a coward with a man who would accept that of her. Instead he’d kissed her and helped her find the priest and in front of the Gods they both had committed their souls to they vowed that through all good and bad, they would be a team, together, working through any and all trials and tribulations.

His choice. He knew what he was getting in to. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

She’s so frightened of turning into her mother that she is becoming her mother.

What Lee doesn’t know is what Sam knows. Sam knows each scar. He knows why each tear falls. He knows that Lee knows Kara better than anyone, anyone at all. Anyone except him. He knows that she still feels guilty about Zak. He knows that part of the reason she frakked Lee was to reconnect with Zak. He knows that the night she met Lee, they almost jumped each other right there on the table while Zak was passed out on the couch. He knows that Kara dared him.

Yes. She confessed her sins to him. With each kiss and each touch and each Get up to the ship and have your way with me, she confessed her sins. Lying in her rack, tears mingling with their sweat, she’d told him everything. She wanted him to hate her. It destroyed her that he didn’t.

But she cannot forgive him for the choice she made. If she’d stayed up on the ship, gone with Lee, married Lee, she wouldn’t have been captured.

He knows where her heart really lies. He knows that when she curls up next to him and puts her head on his chest that she’s counting heartbeats until they are pulled apart again. He knows she blames Lee for the breakup of their marriage because it’s easier than facing her own insecurities. He knows that she wants to apologize and to start over but she thinks they are too far gone and so like any good soldier, she would rather cut her losses and run. If the battle seems lost, you pull out and try again.

What she doesn’t know is that Sam may lose battle after battle but he knows he’s winning the war.

He knows that she wishes she’d died in that doll house on New Caprica.

And that’s why he wonders if when she started looking elsewhere if he should have yelled at her. Rebellion. She wanted boundaries. He refused to give them to her. He refused to believe that maybe he was too in love with his Goddess of a Savior to realize that she was trying to push him away. He knows that Lee doesn’t believe it will ever happen to him. Lee believes Kara will be there always and forever. Kara loves Lee not because she is in love with him but as her CAG, as her co-pilot, as her wingman. He gives her boundaries. He gives her rules to break.

We were married, right? Sam? That was real?

Her broken voice is the only thing real to him and she talks and he listens and he knows, so well, what she is feeling. Is she one of them? Is she like him? He runs his hand down her sweaty back and her body trembles and she is as real and true as she as been since he’d pushed into her the very first time on that makeshift pyramid court.

It had happened before, sometime and when, and it would happen again and again and again.

What frightens him is that he knows that given the chance, the honest chance, to leave him for Lee, she would. She would chase after Lee and they would dance and play and when she grew tired, she would look the other way and he would never forgive her and then she would achieve all of her darkest fears.

To marry Lee means to become her mother.

Sam knows that he will always be more in love with her than she is with him. But he also knows that there is no level of devotion she will not show him. She defied the entire fleet to rescue him. She defied her heart and soul to prove herself wrong with Lee.

Somewhere in his heart, he knows that she knows he is a cylon. He knows that when forced, she will not put that bullet between his eyes. He knows she will spit on him and hate him and then, because it is forbidden, she will love him even more.

He is the rule she needs to break.