TITLE: All She Needed

AUTHOR: DramaLexy

SUMMARY: Sequel to my story All She Wanted. Everything she never thought she wanted was exactly what she needed.

DISCLAIMER: Oh, if they were mine...but they're not.

DISTRIBUTION: Sure, if you want it, just let me know where so I can visit.

Everything was quiet out on CAP. Too quiet. Boring patrols could lead to all sorts of trouble. Lee sighed to himself as he saw a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye. "Apollo to Starbuck: knock it off."

Kara grinned, seated in her own Viper which was flying alongside her best friend's. "Aw, come on, Sir," she replied, 'waving' her wings again. "What else have I got out here to amuse myself with?"

"This isn't recess."

"I didn't hear the bell ring yet, did either of you girls?" Helo asked Starbuck and his pilot, Racetrack, from his spot in the Raptor that was also out on patrol.

"Nope," Racetrack replied. "Still recess." She made the Raptor give a little 'wave' as well.

"Remind me to never allow another shift with both you and I on CAP at the same time," Lee told Kara.

She laughed. "Come on, Apollo. You know you want to."

"Forget it."

"Aw, just a little one?"

"No."

"We won't tell anyone, Sir," Racetrack promised, her voice full of barely-contained laughter.

"I'll give you a stogie," Kara added.

"Are you serious?" Lee asked, surprised. "You're actually going to part with one of your cigars over this stupid of a stunt?"

Kara thought about it. "Better throw in an end-over-end flip-and-roll, too."

There was a moment of hesitation before Lee actually executed both maneuvers. The other three cheered. "I want payment upon landing, Starbuck," Lee told his best friend. She just laughed.

"I ran out a week ago."

The pair was still talking about the deal as they walked the halls of the Galactica that evening after their shift. "That was low, Kara," Lee admonished. She laughed.

"Get over it. It's not like I got anything serious out of you in exchange."

"You still owe me something."

"Like what?"

"I dunno…I'll think of something."

"Yeah right. You think I'm stupid enough to go for carte blanche?"

"You're the one who lied in the first place."

"I didn't lie, per se. I'm sure I'll get more stogies eventually."

"Uh-huh." They stopped at an intersection as Lee realized they were going in opposite directions. "Where are you off to?" he asked.

"A kidnapping," she replied. He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, really?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Anyone I know?"

"Your father. I think it's been a few days since he had a meal that didn't consist of either just coffee or something that had gone cold a few hours before. So I'm gonna take him to dinner before he forgets where the mess hall is." Lee smiled.

"He's not a fan of the mess."

"Yeah, well, neither am I, but it's either eat the food or starve." Lee shook his head.

"No, I mean he doesn't like actually eating there. Something he told me when I was younger: the officer's mess should be a place where everyone gets an escape from their day, not has their CO hovering around."

Kara raised an eyebrow. "Wait, we actually get to escape from our day at some point? Why didn't anyone tell me this? And that little philosophy has never stopped Tigh."

"Uh-huh. Remember who you're talking about."

Kara feigned shock. "Was that Lee Adama being insubordinate?"

"Of course not. You must have been hearing things." They both smiled. "How about we go grab a couple plates and take them to his office?"

"Fine."

Adama looked up from the papers spread around his desk at the sound of a knock on his door. "Come in," he called, and sat back with a smile as he watched his laughing son and almost-daughter come in the door, trying to balance three plates and cups. "What's all this?"

"The forgotten pastime of dinner," Kara told him. Adama chuckled.

"I think I remember partaking in that at one point in my life."

"We thought we'd bring you something to eat," Lee told him. Kara coughed pointedly. "Oh, all right. It was her idea originally."

"I appreciate it," Adama said, getting up and joining them at the small, low table in the middle of the room. "I heard you two were out on the same patrol this morning."

Lee nodded. "Kara's a rotten cheater."

She sat up, indignant. "I am not! You'll get your frakkin' cigar eventually!"

Lee pretended not to hear. "She tricked me with a false promise," he continued telling his father.

"Oh, my Gods, you are such a crybaby!"

Adama smiled at their antics. "Tricked you into what, exactly?" he asked his son, who suddenly busied himself with eating. Kara burst out laughing.

In all honesty, Lee and Kara hadn't been this close of friends since their Academy days, pre-Zak. There was a synchronization between them that no one else could really get, but they were both enjoying it.

"Aw, frak," Kara muttered to herself. She and Lee were both laying underneath her Viper doing maintenance, and she'd just discovered the source of the problems she'd had on her last patrol. Half of the fighter's systems were little more than temporary wirings and parts held in place by duct tape. "Hey, Lee?" she started. He handed her a wrench before she could ask. "Thanks."

"No problem. How bad?"

"It really needs total replacement. Half the port maneuvering control system is a mass of really crappy quick fixes."

"Don't let the Chief hear you say that," Lee teased. Kara laughed. "And unless you're going to magically make a new MCS appear..."

"I could steal yours."

Lee snorted. "Yeah, right."

Kara sighed. "Damnit, I can't get this casing off." Lee abandoned what he'd been working on with the fuel system and moved over to help.

"Don't break the frakking thing," he admonished, reaching over her to attempt to get the protective panel off. It unexpectedly came loose, and Kara rolled to her side to avoid getting hit in the face with it. The move accomplished two things at once - getting her out of harm's way and getting right up in Lee's face. He instantly met her glare with a look of innocence. "I'm sorry! I didn't think it was going to come loose that easily. You said it was stuck. You going soft or something?" he couldn't help needling her. Kara made an attempt to smack him, but there was minimal space between them and Lee easily grabbed her arms.

Neither of them was exactly sure what happened next, but suddenly they went from her trying to hit him to his lips on hers. And neither of them was pulling back.

The sound of a toolbox hitting the floor just a few feet away got their attention, and they both turned to see a pair of legs standing beside the Viper – Tyrol. He didn't say anything, just walked away, but they knew he saw. Lee slid away, getting up from under the fighter. "Y-you should get back to work," he told Kara before leaving.

It was unfortunate that Tyrol wasn't the only one who had seen them. Gossip spread like wildfire on a ship like Galactica, and by the next morning, the rumors had made their way as far as the XO, who was not amused.

"This had better be someone's imagination in overdrive," he told Lee when he pulled him into his office. The CAG's silence made the answer obvious. "What the frak were you thinking?"

"I wasn't, Sir." Probably both the dumbest and smartest response he could come up with.

"As if we didn't have enough problems around here already," Tigh continued to rant. "What's your position on this ship?"

Lee squared himself. "Commander of the Air Group."

"Yeah. Be clear that that's on your father's order, not mine. What is Lieutenant Thrace's position?" Lee knew coming in the door exactly where this conversation was going to go.

"First Wing." His direct subordinate.

"When she's not in a cell in the brig. So let me give you a piece of advice, Captain: unless one or both of those two facts change anytime in the near future, I don't even want to hear a single whisper about the two of you doing anything other than keeping our squad in the air. Is that clear?"

"Crystal."

Tigh nodded, satisfied. "Dismissed."

Lee knew that he and Kara had to talk – somehow the clock had to get rolled back on things between them, he just wasn't sure how. When they wound up at the shooting gallery together the following afternoon, he realized that talking while holding deadly weapons might not be the best idea, but putting it off probably wasn't good, either.

"What happened the other day can't happen again," Lee finally got up the nerve to say while he reloaded. Kara emptied her clip into her target without even looking over at him. "Did you hear me?" She shot him a glare as she, too, began to reload.

"Yeah, Lee. What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. Some sign of acknowledgement."

"Fine. I heard you."

"Everything's got to…just go back to the way they were." He fired his first round.

Kara rolled her eyes. "Right…that'll work out great."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. We'll pretend it never happened. But you don't get to have your shorts in a twist when I live my life without you. This is your choice, Lee."

"No, it's not my choice. Believe me, I wouldn't be choosing this if I had an option. But I don't."

"Why? Because the big bad XO said so? Frak him."

"You think my father's opinion is any different?"

"Did you ask him?"

"It can't happen, Kara. We've got responsibilities that unfortunately overrule our personal lives." She put her entire clip straight into her target's head, then took off her glasses and holstered her gun.

"Keep telling yourself that Lee. Maybe one day you'll actually believe it," she told him before leaving.

It would have been a lot easier for Kara to go to sleep that night if Lee hadn't been right there across the room from her. He'd even forgotten to close his curtain in his exhaustion, so she had a perfect view of him dead asleep in his rack. Why did he have to be such a stickler for protocol? His brother sure hadn't been. She sighed as that thought came to her – definitely dangerous territory.

Kara closed her own curtain, shut her eyes, and made an attempt at counting backwards from one thousand to see if she could fall asleep before zero. Somewhere around eight hundred, she was out, but was nowhere near being able to get a good night's sleep. She had no idea where she was in her dream world, at least not at first. Everything was dark, but she could hear a sound…someone yelling, and someone crying.

As she looked around, her eyes fell upon the source, a blonde girl huddled in a corner as a woman stood over her, almost nonsensically ranting at her. "You belong here…and this is how you repay our efforts…believe me, you'll never have love…"

The moment was so familiar, but Kara suddenly realized that the child trying to make herself part of the wall wasn't her. It was a face she knew, though, even if it was slightly aged from when she'd last seen it.

"Lachel…" the word escaped her mouth before she even realized. If the platinum blonde Cylon before her heard, she didn't care. Her ranting only paused to allow her to make a few closed-fisted blows to the little body in front of her. Kara tried to move forward to stop her, but her feet were suddenly planted to the floor. She tried to call out, but her voice wasn't working. There was nothing she could do but watch a piece of her childhood reenacted.

Kara woke up with a start, relieved to find herself in her rack, not…wherever she'd been dreaming of. According to her watch, it was early, but almost time to get up if she was going to go running. She didn't particularly want to go back to sleep anyway. She's gone, she told herself as she got up and started getting ready. They can't hurt her because she's gone.

TBC...(see the pretty blue button? I live for feedback)