♥▪♥▪♥▪♥▪♥▪♥▪♥▪♥▪♥▪♥▪♥▪♥▪♥

Chapter 10

Kara ate her dinner just because it gave her something to do.

She avoided looking to her right, where her daughter sat, because every time Kara had done that, she'd seen Lee and his myriad of emotions and it was frakkin' her up.

She could hardly taste the meal she usually loved, although she wanted to draw it out as long as possible. Kara felt guilty, scared, desperate… most of all, she felt uncomfortable, like she'd rather take on a basestar and eighteen raiders than deal with the conversation she was about to have with Lee, as soon as dinner ended.

And there was this tiny, miniscule, part of her that was screaming with relief that Lee had found her—found them. Kara fought back a bitter laugh at the realization that fear had kept her from Lee all these year.

Fear.

She stole a glance at Mary, who was looking at her with those deep, understanding eyes, and it was almost enough to make Kara run. It was all too much to handle…

…except she didn't have the right to run this time. Aria deserved this, and despite the fact that Kara had been too much of a coward to ever tell Lee the truth about the past three years, somehow he'd found them.

The phone calls!, she realized with terror, figuring he'd probably traced the calls back to Mary's home.

During her entire stay on Earth, Kara had never decided whether she wanted Lee to never give up on finding her, or for him to move on; either one was too painful to consider.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and looked up to see Mary standing there with four plates already piled up on one hand. Kara piled her half-empty plate on top of the others.

Mary bent closer to Kara's ear, speaking softly, "Joe can give Aria a bath while you two talk."

Kara flashed Mary a thankful smile, except she didn't feel very thankful; she felt terrified. She stayed in her seat, frozen, as she heard Mary communicating a similar message to Lee and Aria, then Aria was taken away by Mary's eldest.

The grandfather clock in the room ticked steadily in the silence they were left in; maybe a minute or thirty passed before Kara worked up the courage to say his name.

"Lee…" she started to say as she turned towards him, realizing too late she hadn't thought of anything else to say.

"Kara," he replied, sounding so broken that Kara had to look away from him for a second.

"I--," she began again, before stopping and taking a deep breath. She stood from the table and glanced at the clock again. "I need to feed the horses… would you—do you want to come with?"

Lee nodded silently, getting up and following her through the kitchen and out the door to the corral and stables.

She'd fed the horses just before dinner, but she hadn't been able to think of anything else to say… she could only hope that the horses had eaten enough so she wouldn't look stupid. There was only another hour at the most of sunlight left in the day, and there was this irrational voice inside her telling her that if she took long enough doing this, Lee would just leave and forget he'd ever been there.

She took her sweet time grabbing a bale of hay, trying to ignore the way Lee's presence, even a few feet away, was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

He was the one to finally break the silence. "Horses?" he sounded incredulous, and just slightly like the old Lee she knew.

Kara smiled, unable to avoid the smirk on her face as she walked towards the corral. "Yes, horses. That's what I do now, deal with horses… and pigs, and cows, and the occasional goat," she pointed at the tamed horses to the right. "That's Flat Top… the black one is Flyboy, my current favorite. The tan one in the back is Chuckles, because he does this weird thing when he neighs…"

Lee stared at her like she'd grown a second head, before he finally looked away and laughed. "I think I see the resemblance," he regarded when Chuckles neighed.

"I crashed here, three years ago," Kara finally admitted, regretting it the moment she said it because Lee's expression changed immediately. "Mary saved me, hid me. I help her take care of the farm… found out I had a gift to tame wild horses, and I've been doing it ever since. The property's huge, twelve hundred acres… Mary's late husband's family has owned this land for over a century."

Lee reached out and pet Jolly on the head when the horse approached him. "And Aria?"

"Her name is Aristaeia," Kara explained softly. "When I—after I crashed… a couple of months after I crashed, I found out I was pregnant with Aria…"

"The bunkroom?" Lee asked, and Kara's mind flashed back to the two of them, cuddled up in her bunk as Lee told her about his Earth dream.

She nodded, fighting back tears.

"Why--," Lee started to say, "No, how… How could you keep something like this from me, Kara?"

Kara bit her lip, unable to answer.

"I mean, she's mine, right?" Lee asked, even though she'd already answered him in many ways.

"Yes."

"And you've been hiding her, in the middle of frakkin' Montana, without any regard…" he trailed off, anger finally surfacing.

Kara took a deep breath, realizing that many years before she would've had no problems dealing with an angry Lee; in fact, at the time, she'd preferred angry Lee to complacent Lee. But now, it was tearing her apart.

"I thought of you every day, Lee. Every morning, every night. Did you look at Aria? She has your eyes; I couldn't even look at my daughter without thinking of you."

He was suddenly in her personal space, arm tugging on hers to force her to look at him. "Then why, Kara?"

"I don't know, Lee. I don't know why," she told him. It was the truth, but she knew it wouldn't be enough.

"You had no right…" he said and trailed off. He turned from her and placed his arms on the metal enclosure bars of the corral.

"No, I didn't," Kara agreed. "And I knew that, which is why every time I even thought of telling you about Aria, I just couldn't… because I knew I had no right keeping her from you in the first place."

Lee still didn't look happy, but at least he seemed to accept her answer for now. She turned around so that she was leaning against the metal bars next to him. The sun was starting to hide behind the mountains, and she knew it was going to get chilly soon but she couldn't bring herself to move.

"How's your father?" she finally asked, both because she genuinely wanted to know and also because it would move the subject away from how big of a frak-up she was.

"Retired," Lee replied. She didn't say she already knew that from the tidbits she'd read in magazines or seen on TV. "He's living in New York. I haven't seen him in a year and a half… he always tries to get me to go visit him, but I just haven't gotten around to it."

"Everyone else?"

"Anders is good…"

Kara bit her lip, not sure why Lee had jumped to conclusions, "I didn't mean him, Lee," she tried to explain only to be interrupted as Lee laughed softly.

"I know you didn't, Kara, but Anders is the person I bump into the most in Colorado… they're starting to give him and the others a little more freedom. Accepting them," Lee explained.

She wasn't sure how she felt about that, so she just moved on down her list. "Helo?"

"Commander Agathon is great," Lee said with a smirk at referring to Helo by his new rank, "I mostly hear from him through Dad. Last I heard, Sharon's pregnant again."

Kara grinned wide at the news, her eyes still reflecting the sadness of being separated from her friends.

"Tigh's in Colorado, in the same compound as the others, but he mostly keeps to himself these days; Cottle's working on base; and Gaeta was transferred to M.I.T., apparently he's trying to help them with building new F.T.L. drives for Earth ships."

Kara had heard that last bit of information from a special on Baltar, but if Lee wasn't going to bring the traitorous scientist up, she wasn't about to either.

They stood there together until the sun was completely set, talking about their former acquaintances. His elbows had moved as he talked, and the tips of his fingers were brushing against the ends of her hair. She'd pretended it didn't affect her, and had continued talking.

Kara stopped mid-sentence as she saw Joe emerging from the house with Aria; the teenager carried the squirming toddler half-way to them before he gave up and set her on the ground, letting her run on her own.

"Sorry," he told Kara, "but she was getting impatient and throwing tantrums…"

Kara smiled at him, "It's okay, Joey… thanks for watching her this long," she barely saw Joe return to the house because her attention suddenly shifted to Aria running and attaching herself to Lee's leg. "I, uh.." Kara said awkwardly, "she does that a lot. We call them leg-hugs," she tried to explain.

Lee's eyes were wide open and she could tell he wasn't sure what to do. Kara was about to move and pick Aria up, when Lee finally pulled Aria away from his leg. He pulled the toddler up with ease, settling her too high up on his waist to be comfortable. And then Kara's heart stopped as Lee turned to their daughter and spoke a single word: "Hi…"

Aria's hands moved to frame his face as she said hi back. She was too young to realize the importance of the moment; Kara couldn't breathe as she watched her daughter turn in Lee's arms to look at her. "Momma," and then Aria turned back to Lee, "daddy," she added before giggling and settling on his shoulder.

♣ Two Years and Three Months Before♣

Kara glanced at the bundle in her arms, still in disbelief.

Aria's eyes opened briefly and Kara stared into sharp blue eyes; Mary had said they'd probably change colors but Kara was pretty sure they wouldn't. No, this was already typical Adama-blue.

Kara's fingers reached for the cordless next to the bed, trying not to disturb the peaceful infant in her arms, as she dialed the number that Mary had found on the internet for her.

"Peterson Air Force Base switchboard, how may I direct your call?"

"Lee Adama, please," she said, deeply aware of how her voice broke multiple times as she said his name, and it had nothing to do with her almost completely healed pneumonia.

"One second," the woman on the other end of the line said but if felt more like a lifetime to Kara, "I'm sorry, but Mr. Adama is no longer living on-base. He does still have a voicemail box setup, would you like to leave a message?"

Kara swallowed the lump in her throat as she declined and thanked the woman before hanging up.

He was making a life for himself on Earth, and if she hadn't run away, she could be there with him now. He'd moved on, and she should too. She already had, in many ways, with her new life, on a farm in Montana. Except, unlike Lee, she would have to look at a reminder of them every day; but then Aria cooed in her sleep, and Kara realized she didn't mind that reminder at all.