It was time.
She traced her fingers over the picture, the tips grazing the worn surface of the photograph.
"Got to put you away," Kara Thrace mumbled to herself. She slipped a well-chewed nail beneath the corner of the picture and pulled it loose of the clip, her grip tentative.
"Hey Starbuck!"
She dipped her head forward. "Hmm?"
"Just about ready to roll?" Karl Agathon asked, his voice a bit too loud.
"Just about," Kara replied, turning away from him. "Gimme two."
"Sure, sure," Helo exclaimed. "Time's a wasting"
Kara snorted. "Trust me, Helo, they'll be plenty of time for me to kick your ass all the way back to your little farm as I…"
"Hey now," Boomer chided as she walked through the barracks, dressed in a skirt and silky top. "He might like that."
Kara smirked. "All the flyboys do."
Boomer reached up and clamped her hand over Helo's mouth before he shoot back. No good could come of letting the two of them get into it. "Let's go and leave her to get dressed."
"I'm dressed," Kara protested, glancing down at her green cargo pants.
"Shore leave," Boomer reminded her. "Get adventurous."
Kara rolled her eyes. "Go, I'll be out in a sec."
With her hand still pinned over Helo's mouth, the tiny pilot exited the barracks, leaving Kara alone with her thoughts.
And the picture.
Two years ago she had accepted the offer of service aboard the Galactica partly because after the death of her fiancée she had needed a change but mostly because the man who had offered it to her had been Zak's father. Zak's death had cost her both a lover and a friend in the Adama boys so it was somewhat fitting that it was their father who ended up saving her.
But now that too, like all things must, was ending.
The Galactica was due to be decommissioned in two weeks and Adama was likely to either retire or be offered a desk job somewhere. He hadn't indicated a decision yet but with all the technological advances the Fleet was insistent on making, retirement seemed a certainty.
Which meant that she would again be alone without family.
That wasn't exactly fair- she knew full well that'd he still be there if she needed him to be but it was hardly the same.
Everything had to end some way or another.
Everything had to change.
And everything had its time.
She looked at the picture in her hand, the one of her standing with Zak while his brother and her then close friend Lee stood a few feet away.
Ugh, she didn't even want to think about Lee.
To be honest in some ways his loss hurt just as much as Zak's.
In a different way of course.
She ran her thumb over the picture again; lingering a bit longer then was probably necessary on Zak's face. Then and with a dramatic sigh, she pulled open the drawer next to her bunk.
"Goodbye," she mumbled, quickly burying the photograph under a stack of clothes. She shut the drawer and grabbed for her jacket, stopping when she caught her image in the mirror.
"Adventurous," she grumbled. "Frak."
He was a beautiful man with dark eyes and charcoal hair that fell over his forehead in waves. His skin was olive and his smile was whimsical if not a bit goofy. He told her his name but she really didn't hear it.
His name wasn't important anyhow.
She hadn't taken the shuttle to Caprica City to get moody and melodramatic. She could have done that on the ship and gotten away with it.
No, Boomer was right, this was about being adventurous.
This was about moving on.
Finally.
Two years later.
There'd been other men between then and now but this was different. This was the marker, the night that told her that she was finally over Zak's death.
Moving on then.
It certainly didn't hurt that Lieutenant Whatever The Hell His Name Was of the Battlestar Genesis had an accent so damned thick that she could barely understand a word of his so-called romantic wooing.
Yeah, he'd do just fine.
And so dressed in a skirt that she didn't care for one damned bit she followed the pilot back to his hotel room and let him remove her clothes, moaning in obligatory bliss as he kissed his way down her body.
And then she closed her eyes and let go.
She let him touch her and feel her. She let him move with her, her eyes closed tightly so she didn't have to look at him.
She couldn't.
She was moving on but it was still just sex.
Just a night to let Zak's memory fade.
And it was working.
It was working.
It was…
"Why are you crying?"
She blinked and looked up at him. "What?"
"You're crying. Why?" he asked, his accent thick as fog.
She touched her own face and felt the tears beneath her eyes. Horror swept over her and then sharp pangs of panic.
Oh God he'd seen too much.
Jumping up quickly she pushed away from him, dressing herself as she fled the room, his voice echoing with deep concern behind her.
She didn't look back.
"You okay Starbuck?" Helo asked, a hand resting lightly on her shoulder. "You've been kind of moody since we got back."
She nodded slowly and offered him a half-smile. "Fine. Be there in two."
"Okay," he said, watching her for a moment longer and then reluctantly leaving the barracks.
She watched him go and then moved quickly to the drawer, yanking it open with almost brutal force. She tossed the clothes from it until she managed to find the picture.
"I tried," she said, her voice cracking just a bit. "Damn, I tried."
She crossed back over to her locker and pulled it open. She slid the picture back into it's clip and stared at it.
"Not yet," she whispered. "Not yet."
-FIN