Author's note: Welcome to the second part of this epic! This could be posted as a stand-alone sequel, but hey! It would be nice to have a BSG story of mine go past Chapter One!


Kara Thrace threw her hands up and laid her head down on the desk in front of her. The flight schedule this week was not working out. There were only a limited number of Raptors and Vipers that the deck crew had ready and waiting to hit the air. Most patrols brought back their ship with at least a handful of problems that would keep it from being relaunched. That made it hard to rotate the ships so no single vehicle was taking on the majority of the wear and tear of space.But that wasn't even her main problem. The shortage of ships she could deal with, but right now the thing that had her so frustrated was the pilot shortage. She had a limited number of birds, but she had an even more limited number of qualified people who could fly them. The Cylons kept coming and coming, and they were slowly picking off her pilots one by one.There was a soft knock on the door. She had selected this office because of its location away from the main traffic of Galactica. That way, she knew when someone bothered her, it was really important.

"Come in," she yelled without lifting her head.

"Captain."

Kara scrunched up her nose as Wipeout hesitantly entered the room. "Is this about the nuggets?" her muffled voice asked.

"Yeah, they're not ready to be put into CAP rotation."

She groaned. It had been a miracle when she discovered Wipeout's previous experience with tutoring first years in the Academy back on Picon about fifteen years back. She had immediately enlisted him to take over part of her flight instructor duties now that she had taken on the job of permanent CAG. Right now, he was dealing with the third batch of nuggets that Central Command had sent their way.

"I was really counting on you to push them through, Wipeout."

"I know, Starbuck. But they hadn't even seen your basic Viper cockpit when I got them. At least they can take off and land now."

"Isn't that enough?" she asked, finally sitting up. "Take off and land. That's all a CAP really is."

"If the Cylons don't show up. Which we know they will. Eight of the last ten CAPs have been interrupted by some sort of Cylon attack. They know we're here and they aren't happy."

Kara shook her head at him. She had always considered Wipeout one of the smarter pilots left in the Fleet. But she couldn't tell him why they weren't leaving and why they weren't surprised that the Cylons were able to keep attacking. She was surprised he hadn't figured it out on his own by now.

The Cylons had set up shop on Kobol, birthplace of the gods, and the Fleet was just floating around in the space above them. Humanity in the form of the few officers in power knew the toasters were there, but Kara couldn't tell anyone that.

"Just try to get them ready by the end of the week," Kara said, looking down at the schedule again. "There are about fifty holes I need them to close up."

"I'll try," Wipeout said, giving her a short salute before retreating behind the closed hatch.

Kara knew that she should be angry that this fraking pilot schedule was taking so long. She had a million other things to do like take her own turn flying CAP, give the Commander a report on the status of pilot morale and whether the third class of nuggets are shaping up, and convince the President that there was still reason to stay where they were in space, just to name a few.

Sighing, she shoved the papers out of the way. She had to come up with a reason why they were still in the Kobol airspace to tell President Roslin. It had to be something good enough to make her believe that they should stay on.

The President had admitted to Kara privately only a few days before that it may have been a mistake to place so much of the Fleet's future into the hands of an age-old prophecy and a drug-induced vision. Roslin wasn't faltering in her beliefs, but she was starting to become convinced that she had taken a wrong step somewhere down the line. She had told Kara that she was afraid she had sent Lee Adama to his death and admitted that it grieved her greatly if that turned out to be true.

The only reason Kara was able to keep her temper in check was the look on the President's face. The woman was visibly thrown by the idea that she had indirectly killed a man she had come to trust and care for so dearly since their whole world was destroyed.

Which is why Kara felt like she had more reason to keep up hope. Not only did she and the Old Man need Lee to return, but the President did, too. Hence the necessity of a new theory as to why they were staying on Kobol when they had neither the basic equipment nor the spiritual arrow-shaped compass to start forward on their search for Earth.

Previously she, the Old Man, and the President had gone with the theory that they were gathering intelligence from the Cylon forces who didn't know they were there. By studying them to see if the toasters would make the first move, they would understand a little more of the tactics behind the machines. The Fleet sent out several reconnaissance missions composed of flight personnel and members of the crew that kept things running.

It all went according to expectations until the second mission ended in tragedy. The Chief, the Vice President, Specialist Cally, and Crashdown were the only four to survive the crash of their Raptor. They were the only ones still alive when Kara finally came up with a way to distract the Cylons long enough to send in a rescue ship.

The justification for the risks they took was the more understanding they had of the Cylons, the easier it would be to blow them out of the sky and out of their lives. But they couldn't allow their people to die for reasons unknown to them.

So that initial reasoning was starting to wear thin as it became clear that the Cylons were not going to attack them if it wasn't in the form of retaliation. No one knew why this was, and the only person who had even a little chance of being able to explain it had been sent away on some crazy, religious pilgrimage to the hell they left behind.

Kara groaned and placed her head in her hands. She needed a new reason, and she needed it now. It couldn't just be any random reason, either. It had to be good enough to make the President look past the actual reason why no one wanted to leave Kobol. Now that the level of potential danger was steadily rising with each minute they sat dormant, Roslin would want to get them to move on. If Kara was going to convince her to keep them stationary, then she couldn't let on to why she really didn't want them moving one inch.

She had grieved for Lee Adama all her life. It had started when she realized the huge amount of pressure he had on his shoulders at the Academy. He was Commander William Adama's son and therefore expected to be on a level above all others. He had lost most of his childhood innocence and naïveté within the first week.

Then, she grieved for him silently and without notice as he lost his best friend to his little brother. Zak Adama had consumed all her thoughts and dreams since the moment she realized she was falling in love with him. And she had just shrugged off all attachments to Lee. Later she would grieve alongside him as they both dealt with the loss of Zak.

She had grieved the death of Lee himself three times. First was the day she thought Lee had been killed protecting then-Secretary Roslin's shuttle. Days later, he had come waltzing into the hangar bay, smirking and clearly very much alive. Second was the day she thought Lee had been shot out of the sky securing a new source of tylium for the Fleet. She grieved for her part in his death, thinking that nothing could get tougher than that. Then he had returned like a phoenix rising from the ashes. And she learned a whole new definition of grief.

The Lee who had been returned to her was not the Lee she had known. He was cold. He was calculating. And he blamed her for everything.

She was currently in her third round of grief for his death. The newly-altered cold, calculating Lee had left the Fleet as quickly as he came to go on some sort of prophetic mission to Caprica for President Roslin. He had felt the risk he was taking could be justified in the fact that the Fleet didn't actually need him. She had tried to convince him otherwise, but she didn't know how to talk with the changed man Lee had become.

This time she was pretty sure the grieving would be permanent.

And that was the real reason why they were still hovering around Kobol even though they knew the Cylons were right under their noses.

They wanted to give Lee a shot at being able to come back from the dead for a third time even if they all knew it wasn't likely.

Grabbing the schedule from where she had flung it minutes earlier, she penciled her own name into five of the slots that weren't filled. Double shifts weren't that foreign any idea for her. She would just place herself into as many of them as she could sneak past the Old Man's approving eye. The other empty slots would just have to stand. She was pretty sure that most of the pilots were getting used to going on CAPs without a full team.

Kara stood up and walked over to the large window in the side of the office. This was the other reason she had selected this space. If she needed a break, space and her pilots were just a few feet away to serve as a distraction. At the moment, she could see the switch being made from one patrol to the next.

Even with the pilot shortage, she was doing a good job as the CAG. Morale was high, and there hadn't been a pilot in the brig in over three days. She was a lot better at this whole leadership thing than anyone had imagined.

And she was surprised to realize how much she enjoyed.

She had always teased that only a dipstick would take the job, but somehow she had been proven wrong. Keeping a handle on the pilots of Galactica kept her grounded in reality. She hadn't pulled a typical Starbuck-type move since she had agreed to take on the CAG position permanently. She couldn't afford to risk herself when she knew for a fact that there was no one else available who could take her place.

Kara had never worked so hard as she was to make sure that the pilots she was in charge of knew what was necessary to stay alive. Lee had asked her to do that before he left. He had asked her to teach them the things he hadn't been able to, to impart her special way of working through grief, and give them the hope that one day they will be able to mourn and move on. On that day he had asked her to explain to them why he was not man enough to do it himself.

He was wrong to think that. Because her job would be impossible if he hadn't been the CAG before her.

Lee had taken this ragtag bunch of pilots and led them through the end of everything they had ever known. Not one pilot was lost to human weakness, and every single pilot had been given time to grieve. He had given them hope in all the subtle ways that she hadn't noticed until it was too late.

Her mind drifted back to the last words that he had said to her before disappearing from her life once more.

He had asked her to forgive him for abandoning her as well as the rest of the pilots.

She stared out the window at the ships Galactica was protecting. He had given her everything that she held dear, and he still wanted her forgiveness. That small glimmer of the old Lee had been bundled down deep inside of him. He might seem changed to every other person in the Fleet, but from that one comment, she knew better.

He was the same man.

She could feel the tears spring to her eyes as memories flashed through her head. "Frak," she hissed, rubbing desperately to keep them at bay. She had thought she had finally gotten past the spontaneous crying and feelings of guilt.

Another knock pulled her back to reality.

"Frak! Can't you people leave me alone?" she screamed. If this was even Wipeout coming back to tell her that the nuggets wouldn't be ready by the end of the month, let alone the week, she was going to hit something.

"Captain Thrace."

It wasn't Wipeout.

Kara smiled at Dee's quiet voice as she entered the office. She had gotten rather close with the young Petty Officer now that she was the CAG and had to do her rotations in CIC along with her normal flights.

"Is there a problem, Dee?"

"Um… the Commander sent me down here to get you. He wants you to report to his office as soon as possible."

"Couldn't you have just called to tell me?"

"He told me to come personally. It didn't sound like a request, sir."

Kara narrowed her eyes at the woman standing across from her. Dee appeared to be rather nervous, almost as if she expected a Cylon to jump out at any second to attack them. For a naturally calm person like Dualla Kaly'sel, this was completely out of the ordinary.

"The Commander said to tell you to drop everything even if you thought it couldn't wait to get done."

Kara slid the frustrating pilot schedule into a file and stood up. "All right. I get it. He doesn't want me screwing around. Fine. Let's go."

Dee nodded and opened the hatch for both of them to exit through. "He also said that you weren't to talk to anyone on our way to his office."

"This is just too weird," Kara said shaking her head. She watched as people turned to stare at the pair of them as they made their way through the ship. Stares were normal when it came to her, but the whispering and general looks of terror were new. She had been on her best behavior for weeks now so there was no reason for anyone to look at her in fear.

"Do you know what it's about, Dee?" The woman walking beside her paled slightly. "You do."

"The Old Man told me that I wasn't to say a word to you about what I knew. He said he wanted to keep this contained until we knew what it meant."

Contained? That was an odd choice of words. Kara shook her head. "Must be big if everyone seems to know about it. At least, that's what I take all the staring and whispering to mean. Makes me wonder why everyone can know about it but I'm not allowed to be told one little thing."

"Did you ever wonder if maybe having your office so far out of the way cuts you off from most of the ship?" Dee asked abruptly.

Kara glanced at her out of the corner of her eye in confusion. "I don't know what you mean."

"Well, you're pretty far from the hangar bay and from the CIC. Things go on that take a while to filter down to where you are. And lately you've been holing yourself up in that office every free moment you have. It cuts you off."

"Something happened," Kara whispered, her eyes going wide. "Something big happened, didn't it?"

Dee just gave her a look before stopping in front of a very familiar hatch. Before either one could knock, the door swung open. "Starbuck," Crashdown said with a leering smile. "Guess your pilot shortage problem is not going to be so bad now, huh?"

Kara glanced at Dee who just gave her another look before she turned to Crashdown to tell him he was wanted down in the hangar. Kara herself wasn't sure how to respond to his comment so she just smirked. Obviously that was the right decision because Crashdown just laughed and walked away, satisfied with the little exchange they had.

"What was that about?" Kara asked before realizing. "Oh. That's right. You're probably not allowed to tell me. It's super secret day in the Fleet."

"Crashdown was in the hangar bay when… well… he was in the hangar bay. I think I can tell you that without getting into trouble." Dee held her hand out to motion Kara into the room. "You should go inside. I have to get back to CIC."

Kara nodded and stepped into the Commander's office. "What the frak is going on?" she asked, staring at where Dee still stood in the hallway as the hatch closed.

"You haven't heard," William Adama said, standing up from behind his desk and walking over to where she stood.

"Well, no. I've been in my office, and it seems like Dee was bullied into only giving me shady glimpses into why I was so urgently needed to report here."

"I told her to not say a word on the off chance that you hadn't heard. I didn't want this to become traumatic if you still didn't know." He took a seat on the couch and motioned for her to join him. "In fact, I figured you hadn't heard since you didn't show up yourself in sickbay."

"Was there an accident?" Kara threw her hands up in the air. "Frak me! I don't have enough pilots as it is. I can't deal with losing any more."

"Kara. It's not that." The man she had considered like a father for as long as she could remember gave her a look that she couldn't read. It was full of hope and yet teaming with fear. It reminded her of Lee. He had always given her that look before she did something justifiably crazy in the air or on the ground. She had never seen it on William Adama's face before, though.

The commander gave her a small smile before taking a deep breath. "I wish I knew how to tell you this gently."

"Just spit it out. I've been through hell at least ten times in my life. Nothing you can say will take me by surprise."

"It's Lee. He's back."

The words made her whole body freeze in a sudden, overwhelming sense of dread combined with ecstatic happiness. Before she knew what was happening, she felt light-headed and her knees buckled out from under her. She heard Adama call her name as her body slid awkwardly to the floor.


Lee stared silently through the open hatch of his father's office. He had expected her to be here. He had even expected her to be in this current state of unconsciousness. After the ninth hour of testing was complete, his father had told him what had happened when Kara found out he had come back to the Fleet.

But still, the sight of her so vulnerable and, frankly, so accessible wasn't something he could have ever prepared for. Kara Thrace didn't do vulnerable and accessible.

He shut the hatch behind him, only wincing slightly when it clicked loudly. She hadn't woken up, though, by the looks of it. Silently, he took a seat in the chair next to her. He really didn't even know why he was here. They hadn't parted on good terms. Hell, their relationship had never really been on good terms in all the years they had known each other. They were way too frakked up for that.

Even though his eyes stayed trained intently on her peaceful face, he noted that he was still in position to occasionally glance at the mirror that was just visible behind her. He needed to watch the door in case those Marines he had so 'calmly' slipped away from actually had enough intelligence to figure out that this was where he went. They really hadn't appreciated when he physically took all of his guards out without any warning. Plus, he was pretty sure he had broken the nose of that one Marine who wouldn't let go of his arm.

It wasn't like he was hiding somewhere on the ship. If he knew the Fleet, gossip had been circulating about the way he and Kara parted company. People would either expect him to come here first or expect him to keep far, far away from where she was. Considering he had taken the option which made him easy to locate, he was pretty sure he didn't have much time.

It was a little of both and neither one at the same time, he decided finally. He didn't come here first. He had checked on the location of Dr. Gaius Baltar, the resident genius and traitor to the human race. Then he had made sure that the ship was up to date on all the Cylon models previously identified. Once he was sure the ship was secure, then he came here to Kara's side. So obviously, he wasn't staying far, far away either. That large amount of distance would only come in handy if she were to wake up. While she was sleeping, it didn't matter how close he got.

He remembered the words she had said to him when he finally returned from his imprisonment by the Cylons. He had been brutal to her, bordering on savage. He had screamed that his coldness was what she wanted and practically forced himself on her. And it disgusted him to know that he had been right. She had responded in a way she never would have if he hadn't treated her like an object.

But, in the end, something had made her pull back and point out that she had always thought he would be different than the others. She had said that when this mess of a world they lived in had finally calmed down, she wanted to hold nothing back when it came to him. She wanted to do that because he was different to her.

Gods. That had really thrown him.

It hurt him to even think about what she had been saying. Because if he didn't know better, it sounded an awful lot like an open admission of love. And Starbuck didn't do that kind of thing.

Her words stuck with him, though. All the way to Caprica, he found the emotional walls he had learned to build while being tortured by the Cylons slowly erode away. She had frakked with his mind and his life once more. It seemed to be her favorite hobby, even more so than triad.

She had been unknowingly controlling him for so long that it was hard to imagine what he would have done if he really had died on Caprica. Would he even be able to exist in the afterlife if she wasn't there to make his life hard?

Lee shook his head, trying to keep those unwelcome thoughts at bay, and reached out to take her hand. He worried about the fact that she hadn't woken up yet. It shouldn't have been that large of a shock even if she had decided to give him up for dead the second he left the Fleet. The way that they had left things between them, he wouldn't be surprised to hear that she had pleaded with his father and the President to get the Fleet away from Cylon-infested Kobol.

All that had led him to wonder why she was taking such a long, unscheduled nap. Ignoring the fact that it really wasn't his job to make sure that the pilots on Galactica were doing all right now that he wasn't the CAG, he still found himself trying to weed some information out of Doc Cottle earlier without the old man realizing that he was doing it. Turns out Kara had been running herself ragged, taking on the CAG position, teaching nuggets how to not die, and still leading her pilots in the sky as the best pilot humanity had.

A tiny voice in his head reminded him that he needed to get back to Medical because he was probably just as exhausted as the woman in front of him. And he didn't have the luxury of passing out and not waking up for days.

The med team wasn't done testing him in order to make the Fleet feel secure with his sudden reappearance. The transmitter he had had implanted at the base of his neck had proven accurate in signaling immediately that he was the real Lee Adama. They had still swarmed him with a squadron of Marines when he stepped out of the Cylon ship with Helo at his side. But that was really only precaution.

At least that's what President Roslin told him. Lee was pretty sure she was lying. He wasn't sure when she had started to pick up that nasty habit of withholding truth that his father seemed to excel in.

He wasn't sure when the schism between the President and her former military advisor had been created, either. But it was there. She either didn't trust him or felt guilty for some unknown reason.

He heard shuffling outside the door, but there was neither a knock nor a loud bang as the Marines busted down the hatch. Soon the noise went away.

Lee knew he was delaying the inevitable by being here. They would need him to start explaining what had happened on Caprica and how he had found Lieutenant Agathon. Colonel Tigh had made a joke that he was surprised that Lee hadn't already spouted out all the information considering how efficient and blunt he had become these days.

The XO was right. He had become rather cold when it came to most aspects of his life. Being tortured by Cylons in every way imaginable would do that to a person.

If he was really being honest, he liked the changes he saw in himself. He was a better pilot and a better officer because of his newfound ability to detach from the emotional side of his life. It was what everyone had always told him he needed to strive for.

Kara shifted lightly in her slip, and he felt her hand tighten around his. Holding his breath, he watched her face for a moment, but she didn't stir.

He knew that he should pull himself away from her side and do his job. The Fleet needed the information he had obtained on Caprica.

Still, he felt himself settle down into the chair. He wanted to indulge his emotional side just this once. After that he would let himself drift back to the reality of his life.

He smiled for the first time in months as he watched Kara nuzzle his hand against her cheek.


Kara opened her eyes slowly and tried to focus them as best she could. William Adama's words rang through her head. Lee was back. She didn't know what that was supposed to mean or what it was supposed to make her feel. Relieved. Guilty. Happy. Confused. All of those were options.

She felt a slight pressure on her left hand and without looking she realized that someone was sitting next to her holding it. Her mind ran through the options of who it could be. It only saddened her slightly when the answer was only one.

The Old Man must be worried sick if he was sitting by her bedside. She couldn't remember the last time she had fainted in his presence. In fact she was pretty sure she had never done it before.

Closing her eyes for a moment to steady herself, she smirked. "Sorry about that, sir."

"It's no problem. And you don't have to call me sir, Captain Starbuck, sir."

She bolted upright and wrenched her hand away from the man sitting next to her. "No. There's no way. You're supposed to be dead."

"Well, I'm not. But you can kill me if it would make your world a little more sound."

She hesitantly reached out to touch his cheek. When she felt the warmth of his skin against hers, she gasped. "Helo?"

"Yeah, Kara. It's me."

"They told me you died."

"So I hear. I didn't."

Her mind was racing, trying to process what was going on. Adama had told her that Lee was back, hadn't he? He had said 'Lee's back'. She remembered that clearly. But what if it had only been wishful thinking? Maybe he had said Helo was back and she just wanted it to be Lee. Gods. What did that say about her? She would rather have a man who hates her come back from the dead than one of her best friends on Galactica.

"Say something."

Her eyes darted back to stare at him. "I don't understand."

Helo smiled and moved to sit down next to her on the couch. "You never really did."

"You're alive?"

"I'm alive."

"And on Galactica?"

"And on Galactica."

"How?"

"The Commander's son rescued me."

Kara's eyes went wide. She hadn't misheard. The Old Man had said Lee was back.

Helo wondered for a moment if maybe he should mention to Starbuck that when he entered the Commander's quarters to see her, Apollo had been sitting by her side, holding her hand and staring at her intently. If he didn't know any better, Helo would have guessed the Captain was wishing that Kara would wake up and find him there. There was a whole lot of history floating around that one little moment, and he had immediately felt like he was intruding on something he shouldn't be privy to. He contemplated if telling her might help ease the pain he could see in her eyes.

Knowing Starbuck, that wouldn't be an easy task. She had a lot of pain bottled up inside. And now probably was not the time to cross that conversational hurdle either. It would be better just to stick to the simple facts of what had happened. "He found us on Caprica."

"Us?"

"I…" Helo cleared his throat and bit his lip in a sign of nervousness. "Gods. I didn't want to get into this right away."

"You're going to have to tell me sooner or later."

"I was with Sharon."

Kara's face went hard. "Sharon doesn't exist anymore, Karl."

"I know."

"Did Lee shoot her?"

"No. Somehow she knew he was coming even before he got to us. She simply said that she had taken me as far as she could and then I got a killer left hook to the jaw. The next thing I know, Apollo is trying to get me to wake up." Helo gave her a funny look. "Why would you think he would shoot her?"

"He shot the Cylon that was on board Galactica five times point blank." She saw Helo pale and realized that no one must have told him how Sharon had died. "Didn't he tell you?"

"Attention, Galactica. Prepare for FTL jump in five, four, three, two, one. Jump."

The room shifted violently for a few seconds before the pressure evened out. "We just left Kobol behind," Kara said, completely in shock.

"The orders came in from the President a few minutes ago. Seems like you and the Old Man didn't do such a good job convincing her that the Fleet needed to stay. Roslin saw right through that."

Kara nodded. "Apollo's back on board so what reason is there to stay, right?"

"Personally, I think that she was waiting for him to return as much as you two were. I mean, we were only in sickbay for a few minutes when she came running in, demanding to see Captain Apollo. Captain Apollo! Can you believe she actually calls him that?"

"She thinks it makes him sound like a hero." When Helo gave her a strange look, she shrugged. "Lee told me that once."

"He is a hero. The President was telling me all he's done for the Fleet in the past year."

"Including ridding the whole Fleet of Cylon moles. Speaking of which, you never explained why you were with that Cylon when he found you. And you seem really well adjusted to the idea that Sharon Valerii is actually a toaster. Makes me wonder how long you've known."

"Gods, Kara. Why don't you just accuse me of being in league with the toasters while we're having an inquisition?"

She looked at him sheepishly. "Sorry. I didn't mean it that way."

"I know. Which is why I'm going to answer your accusation and not deck you." He sighed, letting out his breath in one long burst. "I figured it out within the first six weeks of being stranded on Caprica. It took me a while because there were things… situations… events… whatever… blinding me to her true nature. And by the time I put two and two together, it was too late."

"Too late?"

"She was pregnant with my child. Still is."

"I don't understand."

"Neither do I most of the time."

They sat in silence, both lost in their thoughts, while sounds of the frantic activity in the corridors filtered into the room. Kara knew she should be focusing on the idea of a Cylon who could get pregnant and was in fact pregnant with the child of the man sitting in front of her. But she couldn't focus on that. Instead, she found herself wondering why Helo was the one at her bedside when she woke up and not either one of the Adamas. Not that she wasn't happy to see him. He had always been the only one on board Galactica besides Adama himself who understood her.

"You're wondering where they are."

"Huh?" she said, turning to look at him.

"You want to know why I'm here and they're not. I can understand that. Commander Adama is still trying to sift through all the information that Apollo and I brought back to the Fleet. He's down in the CIC."

"And Lee?"

"He…" Helo's eyes drifted from hers to a point just above her head. The truth wasn't going to help her. Knowing that Lee had been here and left before she had time to wake up wouldn't make her feel any better. And telling her that Lee's last words that he had whispered as he paused at the hatch without turning around to face him or Kara? Not a good idea. Lee had practically begged Helo to watch out for her as if Lee himself wouldn't be around to do so.

Telling her that would definitely not do any good.

But not telling her? That was still going to hurt at least a little bit. So much for trying to ease her pain. "He didn't want to see you, Kara."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry. I don't really know why."

"I do," she said, sliding off the couch and onto her feet. "You've missed a lot while you've been on your little Caprican holiday."

"Yeah. I guess I did." Helo stood up and grabbed her arm as she wavered a little. "Are you sure you should be moving around this soon?"

She glared at him and ripped her arm away. "I just fainted. It's not like someone shot me."

"You're really frakked up if you can't even let someone help you when you need it."

"So everyone seems to tell me. But you know what? It's been working out just fine for me all my life. And at least I don't make stupid mistakes by offering my help when it's not needed."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Dr. Baltar." She crossed her arms in front of her chest and stared at him. "Was giving up your seat on that Raptor worth it? Your life for the life of the man who took away humanity's right to live. Not that good of a bargain in retrospect."

"Why do you do that?"

"What?"

"At the first sign of weakness, you're pushing me away. Why do you do that?"

"I don't need to lean on anyone. I can take care of myself."

"Sure you can, Thrace. Tell you what. You can just take care of yourself all the way down to the CIC. The Commander wants to see the flight schedule for the coming week."

"Frak. It's not finished."

"I would offer to help, but I think you'd kill me."

She sent a cool glare his way while brushing past him to step out into the corridor. She had missed almost everything about him, but this uncanny ability to see past her defenses? It had been refreshing to not have that around. She felt her heart freeze for a second. That thought was frakked up even by her own standards. Of course she hadn't felt refreshed to have him gone.

"Oh, Starbuck!"

"What?" she said, turning around to glare at him some more. She was silently happy he had called out to her, though. It kept her from having to figure out where her frakked up thoughts came from.

"The Commander wanted me to tell you that Apollo and I should be flight ready in a few days so you can add us to that schedule."

"Gods. You're already that close to being free from medical? How long was I passed out?"

"Only thirteen hours. Have you even slept at all in the past few days?"

"Try the past few weeks. Things aren't as fun as they used to be."

Helo walked over to stand in front of her. "They rushed us through the tests, Kara. It seems like you're not the only one worried about the pilot shortage."

"What tests did they put you through?"

"The usual physical from Doc Cottle. And they're currently running our blood samples through that Cylon detection machine Dr. Baltar created for a second time." Helo smirked at her. "Looks like there was at least one good thing resulting from my noble sacrifice."

"Cute."

"We passed the first test, in case you wanted to know. I'm one hundred percent toaster free."

"Yeah. You left the little missus behind with your bun in--"

Kara's words were choked back as Helo shot forward and clamped her mouth tightly with his hand. "Gods, Starbuck! Would you keep your mouth shut for once?"

She bit his hand lightly and he pulled it away in pain. "Don't come near my mouth unless you want to be bit."

Helo glared at her and started backing away. "Just keep your mouth shut."

"Yeah, yeah."

She made it halfway down the corridor before she heard him calling her name. Twisting so that she was walking backwards, she threw up her hands. "Have to get in one last dig?"

"You're a really good CAG, Kara." He gave her a small smile before turning and walking away.

She was left, staring at the spot he had been standing in. What the frak was that supposed to mean?

Shaking her head, she tried to desperately kill her sudden desire to faint again and waste away another thirteen hours. Avoidance was always her defense mechanism

Hot Dog breezed past her at a full-on run, killing all thoughts of avoidance.

"Slow down," she yelled.

"Can't!" he yelled back at her as he continued to race down the corridor. "I'm late for my CAP, and the CAG will have my ass if she finds out. Though she should probably thank me considering I'm pulling a double without even being asked or warned!"

His CAP? That made no sense. Hot Dog wasn't schedule to fly until after she had returned from her own assigned flight. And flying a double? She definitely hadn't scheduled that.

Suddenly it occurred to her what passing out for over half a day really meant.

"Frak!" she yelled and started to run down to the hangar bay.

She had missed her patrol, and Hot Dog must have flown it for her. She couldn't let him do two shifts in a row without a wingman, though. She would just have to shove her guilt and dark thoughts to the side until she got back.

Fraking pilot shortage.


"CAG to the Hangar Bay. Repeat, Captain Thrace to the Hangar Bay."

"Frak you! I'm coming," Kara yelled as she ran down the stairs that led to the back entrance of the main hangar. She had been summoned out of the first good sleep she had gotten in as long as she could remember. The past few weeks had been hell, what with the ever present pilot shortage and the fact that she still wasn't clear what had gone down on Caprica since the Cylons destroyed its beauty. One could say she was passively avoiding both issues.

Bursting onto the mass chaos that was the hangar bay, her eyes landed on Cally. "Specialist! What the frak is going on?"

"Sir, the CAP ran into a squadron of Cylon Raiders. The alert fighters were launched, but the Raiders were decimated by the time they got to the scene."

"Then, what's the problem?"

"It's Apollo, sir. He took them all on himself without any back-up besides the Raptor he was flying with. And he had no orders from Galactica to do so. In fact, the Commander repeatedly told him to stand down to no avail."

Kara's eyes suddenly landed on the Mark VII that had always been assigned to Lee. It was a charred mess with smoke erupting from multiple areas. The cockpit window was cracked down the front, and the left wing had a definite bend to it that would keep any pilot from flying the ship in anything more than an erratic line.

She turned to look at Cally. The young girl looked like she could see right through Kara's brave front as the worry for Lee hit her like a brick wall. Doing her best to keep up the act regardless, Kara turned away from Cally's gaze and asked nonchalantly, "Apollo landed that thing?"

"He scorched up most of the deck, sir."

"Where is he now?" Kara asked. It was her duty as CAG to reprimand any pilot who caused such unnecessary damage to the structure of Galactica. It also happened to be one of her favorite things to do. And it was an excuse for her to see how banged up Lee was considering his Viper had seen better days.

"They took him down to medical bay. He seemed pretty banged up." Cally paled and corrected herself. "Pretty banged up but very much still alive, sir."

Yelling at Lee would have to wait then, Kara decided. Giving Cally a small nod of dismissal, she stepped into the chaos and took a good look at what was going on around her. "Someone put out those fires, now! We need to save that ship! We can't just go and ask the toasters if they can spare some parts so we can build a new one, now can we? "


Kara spent the next two hours in which she should have been resting cooling off the wreckage and beginning the repairs on the Mark VII. It was the best Viper they have, and the Fleet desperately needed it to be in the air. Plus, it kept her mind off why exactly Lee would do something as stupid as taking on a full squadron of Cylons by himself.

"Captain Thrace."

Her hand stopped in mid-air as Helo's voice rang right through the ship and straight into her ear. She really hated the way all the metal amplified sound. "I'm busy. What do you need?"

"I need you to get out from underneath that Viper and talk to me, Kara," he hissed.

She wheeled herself out and stood up, ignoring the hand he offered. "I do not have time."

"You assigned Apollo to the CAP by himself."

"Yes, I did. In case you haven't noticed, we don't have the personnel to insure wingmen are present on every launch."

"I thought you knew better than that."

Kara stared at Helo before motioning for him to follow her. She led him to a vacant equipment locker and waited until the hatch clicked closed before laying into him. "Listen up, Lieutenant. I am the CAG now. You cannot talk to me like that in the middle of the hangar bay. I am your superior. Get it in your head."

"I know you're my superior, Captain, sir, but you're also my friend."

"I am no longer your friend. I am your CAG."

"All business when it comes to me, aren't we?"

She glared at him. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. It's just you seem to have your head on straight when it comes to me. But when it comes to Apollo, you've completely blinded yourself."

"Explain yourself before I throw you into the brig for subordination."

"You have a job to do that you're not getting done. You are in charge of all the pilots left in the world."

"I think that I'm getting my job done just fine, Helo." She was tempted to remind him that there hadn't been one complaint filed against her. Lee had had two complaints on his record in the first week, and the previous CAG before Apollo had averaged five complaints a week. She was doing good.

"Have you even spoken to Apollo since he came back on board?"

She felt her face blush as she realized she hadn't been as subtle in her avoidance as she had hoped. Plus, the fact that she knew this conversation was less about her effectiveness as CAG and more about her ineffectiveness at dealing with her issues didn't help. "There hasn't been time. I've been fielding the gossip and rumors about your return. There's a pilot shortage to deal with. And he's been on opposite shifts than me."

"You create the pilot schedule yourself. Face it. You're avoiding him, and no one really knows why."

She inched in close to him and glared up at where he stood. "I am only going to say this once. I am not having this conversation with you."

"You need to do your job," he repeated, staring her down.

"I am doing my job."

"You're in denial. Because there's a major problem with one of your top pilots that you seem to be blinded to."

"There's no problem with Apollo. I would know."

"Don't play the 'I've-known-him-for-years' card. You don't avoid a man you've known for years if there's no problem there." Helo sighed and backed up a step, holding his hands up in a kind of surrender. "I was in that Raptor out there. And I was alone with him on Caprica for a week. I saw it with my own eyes. It's clear how strange he's acting even to me, someone who hasn't known him for years."

"He's fine. We all have issues we have to work through."

"Issues like that can't just be worked out on your own."

"This conversation is over, Lieutenant."

Kara moved to walk past him. Before she could even register it, she felt him physically grab her shoulders and pushed her back into one of the storage lockers. "You're the CAG and you have a fraking suicidal pilot. It is your job to discover these things. So shut the frak up and deal with it, Thrace!" Turning on heel, he left her by herself in the empty equipment locker.

His words rang through her head. Lee wasn't suicidal. He had done everything in his power to keep the Fleet safe by taking on those Raiders before they could cause any sort of permanent damage.

A voice in the back of her head pointed out that he didn't have to engage them. The alert fighters would have been with him in a matter of minutes, and together they could have easily eliminated the threat. He had chosen to take them on himself for some important reason that she wasn't privy to.

And therein lay the problem. She wasn't privy to it because she didn't want to be. She had closed off almost all signs that Lee mattered to her. In her head, she knew that there was a problem somewhere festered deep inside of him, but she couldn't find the courage to face it. She was too afraid he would cut her to the core like he had done the day before he ran away to Caprica.

Fear wasn't something she was used to. Therefore, it was really never something she had mastered. Every time fear had come up in her heart, she just drew her arm back and gave it one of her famous punches. Metaphorically, of course.

"But I've never been one to turn down some good, old-fashioned ass-kicking," she muttered to herself as she stepped outside the equipment locker. "And if this is going to go how I think it will, it won't just be metaphorical."

She stormed through the corridors as she made her way from the hangar area to the sickbay. People practically ran to avoid the path of destructive looks and muttered cusses that she left behind. In more than one case, she heard them whisper something about the CAG and Apollo's little stunt. She even thought she heard Crashdown mention that he was pretty sure that Starbuck would kill a man who was already injured and lying in sickbay if her temper got the better of her.

"Damn right I'll kill him if he's actually stupid enough to want to die," she hissed at no one in particular as she entered the small cramped quarters of sickbay. She picked up the usual mound of paperwork that the XO had left for her with the Doc. It would have to wait until she fixed this problem with Lee.

So maybe she'd get to it in twenty years. Ten if she was lucky and Lee decided not to play the guilt card.

There was the gentle flow of activity throughout the medical area which was common during the downtime between Cylon attacks. Starbuck grabbed the first medic she could get her hands on, even though he looked all of five years old, and demanded to know where Apollo had been taken. The medic's sputtered answer led her to a curtained-in area.

"Apollo, you and I have to talk," she said firmly as she whipped the piece of canvas back.

The bed was empty.

"He died."

Kara turned to stare at the man who had addressed her in shock. "What did you just say?"

"The man they brought in. He had some pretty bad internal injuries. He died about half an hour ago." The man stared at her intently before beginning to laugh. "I'm sorry. Your face! It's priceless."

"Who the frak are you?"

"I'm Conner McMurray. The Fleet wants me to train to be a Viper pilot. Is he your boyfriend or husband or something?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, choosing to ignore his question for the moment. "And what are you doing in sickbay?"

"Nasty little mishap on the shuttle over here to start my Viper training. Got my ankle twisted pretty bad."

Suddenly realizing taking down this little shit was definitely in her jurisdiction, Kara continued to stare at him as she walked over to stand next to his bed. "So, they sent you over here to be a nugget?"

"I know. Not everyone can be a Viper pilot. You have to be the best of the best." He placed his hands behind his head while giving her a quick once over. It took all of Kara's control not to hit him on the spot. "It must be hard, being a woman on this ship, surrounded by so many pilots who keep your life safe. I bet you wish you could have a larger part in keeping humanity free."

Kara found herself already growing tired of playing with this kid. If she wasn't putting off talking with Lee, she would have left the second she realized he wasn't there. "I heard there's one female pilot who could knock the pants off of any male pilot around."

"You talking about Starbuck? I don't think she really exists. Urban legend mostly to give the woman of the Fleet hope that they too could someday amount to something. A healthy lie to keep them happy."

Kara's eyes fell onto the stack of papers she still clutched in her hand. She ripped one page in half, hoping it wasn't too important, and scrawled something on it quickly. "Take this to the first shuttle you can find. Go back to whatever ship you came from because you're not getting into my training program. I wrote down a few names of the crew on board if you wanted to enlist that way, but you're not going to be a pilot for me."

Conner read the name on the paper. "Captain Kara Thrace. Who do you think you are to treat me like this?"

"I'm the CAG, and I have certain standards. And I don't take people like you into my Fleet." She rolled her eyes as she stood up. "And you can call me Starbuck."

"She exists?"

"Frak yeah, I do," she said with a wink. But she quickly sobered from her sarcastic smirk. She hadn't forgotten what this kid had done to her nerves when she first pulled back the curtain. No one got away with that. "And just in case you have some plaguing guilt that your male chauvinist bullshit got you rejected from my program, I just want you to know that I had already decided to get you the frak off my ship way before that. The man you told me was dead-" She paused as she felt her voice falter slightly. "He was the previous CAG and the best damn Viper pilot the Fleet has right now. He also happens to be my best friend. And today while you were busy spraining your ankle, he took down a whole squadron of Cylons so that your ship wasn't blown out of the air. And that is why he made Viper and you never will."

Kara turned on heel, smirking, slightly and went up to the first medic she could find. "That kid in that room? I want him off of Galactica now."

The medic nodded. The people in medical had gotten used to her requests and commends since becoming CAG. She seemed to command a certain air of authority without even trying. She thanked her standoffishly tough demeanor for that little gift.

"Will you please tell me where they've taken Captain Lee Adama?" she asked, figuring that one command was enough for the day. Sometimes being polite Kara got better results than being obstinate Starbuck.

"He was pretty banged up, sir," the medic explained. "We needed him to go clean up a little before we could stitch up some of the more severe abrasions."

Okay, so he was in the head and he really wasn't that badly hurt. Maybe she could come back later when it was more convenient.

She immediately scolded herself from trying to avoid her responsibilities and left sickbay, stopping for a few moments to leer once more at the stupid young kid trying to deal with his sudden rejection.

She slowly pushed open the door to the head that was across the hall from sickbay and looked around. If he wasn't here, then she wouldn't feel guilty for not having the talk Helo seemed to think was desperately needed. "Anyone here?"

No one answered. It made sense. For as long as she knew him, Lee took quick showers. He said there was something better he could be doing than standing around under the spray of the water. She, on the other hand, would kill to have the luxury of a shower longer than five minutes. It had been almost two years.

Her heart stung at the distant recollection of a time where the length of a shower was among her worries. She really missed being that innocent and naïve.

Wandering over to one of the mirrors absentmindedly, she checked her reflection. It seemed looking like the latest piece of sky road kill was a requirement when you were the CAG. Her memory went back to all the times that she had teasingly asked Lee if he had forgotten how to use a razor.

Gods, she really wished that Lee hadn't made her miss her nap by killing all those Cylons.

"Now that's warped logic," she whispered, rubbing her temples.

A movement in the mirror caught her eye, and she squinted to see what it was.

What it was caused her eyes to open wide as she realized that she had been wrong. She wasn't alone in the head. And now she couldn't tear her eyes away from the scene reflecting back at her. Usually stuff like this only happened in the wild recesses of her mind.

Her mind shifted back to memories of old times like it had been doing from practically the first day he stepped foot on Galactica.

Damn. She really missed the constant satisfaction given to her from teasing Lee continually about his scrawny body throughout Academy and therefore labeling him with a rather ironic call sign. That little branding had caused him to turn into the fine male specimen currently showering away the dried blood under her watchful eye.

She wished she could just scream a big 'you're welcome' at all the ladies in the Fleet and take in their eternal gratitude for what she had done to help create this piece of visual eye candy.

"You're staring, Thrace," she whispered to herself as she took in the way the water seemed to bead against his skin as the shower poured down. She had seen Lee showering too many times to count, but each time it had always taken all her strength to keep from staring. There weren't many pretty sights left in the world, but this was definitely one of them.

She found herself wondering why he never took his dogtags off as she continued to take in the sight of him. Everyone else did it for fear that these precious pieces of metal would rust if they were exposed to water too much. Well, everyone else except for her. She never took her dogtags off, either, but that was for a good reason. A reason involving a lot of guilt and not too much self-pity.

The tags rattled slightly as he punched the dial that stopped the water from raining down, pulling her out of her little daydream. She couldn't get herself to stop staring, though, as he pulled a towel off a nearby shelf and threw it around his waist, tying it loosely. "How long have you been here?" he asked without hesitation as he stepped outside the showers.

He hadn't even looked her way once. How the frak did he know she was there?

"Just got here," she said.

"Liar. You came in over five minutes ago. Been at that mirror the whole time. Must have been something mighty interesting in it." He pulled a towel off the sink and ran it through his hair. It wiped off a lot of the leftover wetness but did nothing to get rid of the know-it-all smirk on his face.

"And you knew I was here for all that time, and yet you kept right on showering without saying a word," she said with a slight smirk and a raise of the eyebrow. "What does that mean?"

"It means that you and I only enjoy each other's company when we think the other person isn't watching. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to the Doc so he can stitch me up."

Any sign of emotion drifted off Lee's face. The same was true for Kara. This wasn't the time for them to start talking about what was going on between them. She had a job to do.

His words of excuse had reminded her why she was here in the first place. It also reminded her how much she had lost in the past few months when it came to him. They had just had a moment where things felt like they could be back to normal someday if only they just kept talking. But she knew that things couldn't go back to normal. Not if Helo was right about Lee. And not if Lee still blamed her for the way his life had taken a turn for the worse.

"I wanted to talk to you about what happened today."

"A little heart-to-heart between friends? How nice of you to think of it, Starbuck."

"This is more like a fist-to-jaw between a CAG and her frustrating Viper pilot. So put some pants on and come see me in my office. We're going to do this properly, Adama."

"Doc Cottle says I need to report back to medical. My father wouldn't like it to hear his CAG made an injured pilot skip out on important medical attention required of him."

"When has anyone adhered so strictly to the Doc's instructions? You just have a few cuts on your body. I've seen you work through a hell of a lot worse. So I think you could hold off the stitches for a little bit. This is important."

Lee shook his head and made his way out the door. "A real CAG wouldn't let her pilot skip out on important medical attention. Sometimes I wonder why everyone seems to think you're the best CAG in the history of CAGs."

And Kara suddenly felt her last little bit of patience go out the window. These digging insults were starting to really make her life hard. And she was getting tired of the constant guilt and sadness trying to talk to him caused. It was time to put a stop to it.

Because if it didn't stop, she was pretty sure she would be the next person Helo would suspect of contemplating death over life in this frakked up world.

Ignoring the fact that Lee was probably bruised pretty badly along with being cut up, she grabbed his left wrist, twisted it behind his back, and shoved him up against the metal corridor wall as hard as she could. She pushed their combined hands into his kidneys and hissed, "I will not tolerate your disrespect."

"You realize if you break my arm, I really will have to go to see the Doc." Lee was struggling against her, but it was obvious to both of them that he wasn't really trying to get free.

"And you realize that if I wanted to break your arm, it would be broken by now."

"Let me go, Captain, before my towel falls and the whole hall gets a show."

She debated it a minute before releasing his arm slowly and watched as he turned around to face her. The unconscious rubbing of his reddened wrist didn't go unnoticed. She hoped it left a mark. "My office. Ten minutes. They should give you plenty of time to be sewn up."

He just stared at her as she walked down the corridor, presumably to her office to wait. He didn't know what was so important that she hadn't wanted to wait until he was done with medical. The debriefing on his little stunt in the air had given the Fleet all the basic facts of the incident. She wouldn't want to know anymore than that.

And there was no way she was concerned for what he had done, what he had risked. There had been a massive gap between the two of them from the moment he had escaped from the Cylons. She didn't seem willing to work to cross it.

Then again, he hadn't been giving her much to work with lately.

"Nice towel," Racetrack said with a wink as she passed where he still stood in the middle of the hall. "My vote is definitely for that as the new pilot uniform."

"Come on!" Lee yelled back with a laugh. "Can you really imagine Hot Dog in this?"

He watched her shake her head and laugh off the joke as she kept on walking. It felt good to be joking and not constantly caring about the job he had to do. He had lost most of his responsibilities on Galactica when he went missing and was presumed dead. He never realized how burdened with that he had been. A simple joke wasn't a luxury he indulged in most of the time.

He tried to ignore the fact that he didn't really want to joke most of the time. The memories of what the Cylons had done to him, the things they had said to him, the solid reasoning behind why they wanted him. It still brought a chill to his bones.

But he didn't have time to deal with the pain he had been caused right now. In the world he lived in, there was never enough time. And at the moment, he now only had eight minutes to get stitches and pain killers and clothes before going to meet Kara in her out of the way office.

Maybe this time he would be able to keep control of his temper. Maybe he wouldn't make the shift into someone that he knew scared Kara Thrace to death. It seemed like every time he saw her, his whole persona tended to become rather dark and accusatory.

"Frak," he muttered, stepping into sickbay and ignoring the secretive glances of most of the female staff.

He was nervous to talk to Kara for the first time in months. There were things he knew that he didn't want to tell her. And if she figured that out and demanded he do just that, it wouldn't be pretty. There was a reason why they hadn't interacted with one another since he had returned.

Sometimes it was just too hard to look at her and remember.


Kara was staring out the window of her office when there was a soft knock on the door. She didn't even break her concentration as she watched Colonial One get refueled. The process was fascinating. Plus only certain things could break her focus when she didn't want them to. And she knew for a fact this wasn't Lee at the door so there was no need to turn her attention away from the sight in front of her.

No. It definitely wasn't him she decided as there was a second knock. There was no way he would follow her demand and show up within ten minutes. Even if he did, he would just burst in after the required first polite knock.

"Captain?"

Kara smiled at the sound of Specialist Cally's voice and turned to look at her. "Did you need something? Or maybe you're just here to yell at me again about how I treat my bird?"

Cally blushed. "I told you that I just got caught up in the moment. It's a great honor for the Chief to give me sole control over keeping the CAG's Viper in top flying condition, especially now that they're letting you fly the Mark VII."

"Yeah. I have to talk to someone about that. It's Apollo's ship, Cally. We're going to have to give it up now that he's back."

"Well considering he almost destroyed it today because you let him have his little walk down memory lane, I don't think that will be a problem. But if it's repairable, I want to take that responsibility I was given as seriously as I can."

"I understand that completely. How are you doing by the way?"

The young Specialist unconsciously held her right arm in the exact place it had been broken when her shuttle crashed down on Caprica. That little injury had kept Cally out of the repair pits for weeks. It hadn't helped the strain placed on the pilots when one of the best mechanics couldn't help them keep their ships in the air.

"Good. My arm is fine now. I mean, sometimes it hurts, but most of the time I can just work through it."

"If it gets too much, you just take a break. Everyone will understand. You're still adjusting to what happened to you on Kobol."

"It wasn't all bad," Cally said defensively.

"A little unintended vacation with a few of the Fleet's eligible bachelors?" Kara teased. She had always figured that Cally had had a crush on the Chief, but the young woman would never admit to it. When Cally had been carted to sickbay via a gurney after being rescued from the crash site on Kobol, it was plan to see that the girl was infatuated with the Chief. She kept asking him if he had checked to make sure everyone else was all right. Obviously she was concerned that the Chief might take the whole situation a little hard because he had asked for her to be assigned to the mission. She didn't want him focusing only on what happened to her.

Kara was pretty sure he was the one who requested Cally's presence on the mission in the first place. Otherwise, why would she have been on a Raptor headed to the birthplace of the gods?

"All right. If you're not here to scold me, what brings you to my office?"

"Well, I know that technically I shouldn't be coming to you for advice and that you really aren't obligated to hear my problem but I really don't think the Chief would appreciate what I'm asking, all things considered. He's still trying to deal with what happened."

Cally looked at Kara expectantly, almost as if she had asked a question and expected an answer. Kara had no clue what to say. "Okay. You're going to have to be a little less round-about on this one, Specialist. I have an appointment in a few minutes that's really important, but I don't want to leave you hanging." Not that Lee was actually going to show up without her dragging him down here by the scruff of his neck.

"Well, it's about the fraternization policies the Twelve Colonies already had."

"Which one?"

"The main peacetime one. No fraternization between pilots and crew. And I guess the main wartime one, too. No fraternization between anyone that could distract you enough to get people killed."

"You want to know my take on them?" Kara guessed.

Cally nodded shyly, obviously doing her best to keep from having to look the CAG in the eye.

"Well, I think that every single person alive has the right to give the policies a big frak you."

"Sir? I don't understand."

"We're all that is left of our world supposedly. If we find someone that makes us happy and we find that we actually like being happy in contrast to the constant suffering that has been going around lately, then no stupid law should keep that for happening."

"So, you think that it would be all right if people knowingly broke colonial law?"

"I think there's not much anyone could do. I mean, if I broke the fraternization policy, what would they do?"

"Ground you, sir. Everyone knows that's what happens to pilots."

"And what would grounding me do except add to the pressure put on the small number of pilots and crew we have and potentially cause unnecessary death. The Old Man isn't stupid. He knows that the law doesn't hold up in the world we live in right now."

"Oh."

Kara smiled at the young girl in front of her. It was weird having such a normal conversation in the middle of chaos. And it seemed whatever she was saying was making Cally very, very happy. It made her curious as to why. "Can I ask what necessitated your seeking my opinion?"

"Crashdown wanted to take me on a real date instead of sneaking around in the corridors between shifts."

She had thought that she couldn't be surprised now that she was the CAG and it was her job to stay informed about every little thing concerning her pilots. Gossip around the triad tables usually kept her informed enough. Turns out she wasn't as informed as she thought.

"Crashdown?" She shook her head. "I don't understand."

"He saved my life at least three times when we were stranded on Kobol. Made me wonder if maybe he wasn't the cocky asshole I always thought he was."

"And?"

"And turns out I was right the first time around," Cally said with a smirk as she stood up. "But he is the most attractive asshole I've ever met. And he makes me laugh." Her face broke out in a huge smile. "And he brought me flowers everyday I was in sickbay. I have no idea where the frak he got flowers from, but they were there by my bedside every day I woke up."

"You know as CAG, I am required to report you to the Commander even if I don't support the fraternization policy that's still in place," she pointed out.

"But you're not going to."

"I'm not?" Kara leaned back in her chair and smiled. "Do enlighten me as to why."

"Because you're not the type of person to do things because they are expected of you. And because knowing Crashdown is actually dating me will provide you with years of material to ridicule and tease him about. I mean, come on! Who would have thought? Me and Crash? That's ridiculous."

Kara smiled. "You know me so well."

"You know, I don't think the fraternization policy holds up concerning CAGs and their pilots either, Captain."

"What are you suggesting, Specialist?"

"I'm just saying that there might be a certain someone in the Fleet who you wouldn't mind going a few rounds in the sheets with. And if we were going to go through with your 'Frak You, Fraternization' theory, it wouldn't be so ridiculous to give him a shot."

She was tempted to tell Cally that he didn't even want a shot anymore. In fact, he probably wished she had taken that mission to Caprica instead of him. "I'm not reckless enough to just casually align myself with someone because I can. Just because I desire them does not mean I give them a free pass into my pants."

"All I'm saying is I see how you watch him when you think no one is looking. And, in my humble opinion, there's no way that anyone would even think of grounding both the CAG and the best pilot left in this universe. That could be construed as serving up our collective asses to the Cylons on a platter."

Kara didn't know what to say. She could yell at Cally that her relationship with Lee was really no one's business but her own. Or she could admit that the young Specialist was right. She really wouldn't mind a few rounds in the sheets with him, so to speak. But the one thing she knew she couldn't do was properly explain why as tempting as the thought of being with Lee was, it was only that. A thought. It would never be a reality. Things were too complicated.

And he hated her. There was always that to fall back on.

"Am I interrupting?"

Kara's eyes darted from Cally's position at the open hatch to the man now standing next to her. "No, you're not, Apollo. Thanks for stopping by, Specialist."

"Thanks for talking with me," Cally shot back. "I'll let you know if Crashdown does anything stupid."

"Please do. I owe him one for what he did to me last Friday."

Lee watched Cally leave the office, a big smile on her face. "What was that all about?"

"I was just being the CAG, listening to the complaints of the world."

"I never talked to any deck crew when I was CAG. It wasn't part of the job description if I remember correctly."

"That's why you did a half-ass job. No commitment. No dedication to the task."

"What do you want from me, Captain?" he asked point blank.

Gods. She thought she would have at least a few minutes of pointless banter before having to ease into the question of whether he wanted to die. Good thing she had a backup plan. "The President mentioned in her last meeting with the command officers that you failed to bring back the Arrow of Apollo from Caprica. I admit that I didn't even think to ask you if you had gotten it. I just assumed you did if you decided to return to the Fleet."

"It was satisfying to not finish something I started," he answered ominously.

"Okay. It's shit like that which is why you're in here."

"Sounds like this is going to take awhile." He sat down in the chair in front of her desk and kicked his feet up.

"Lee. We were friends once, weren't we?"

"I'm not sure. It's a hard thing to define."

"What is?"

He pulled his feet down off the desk with a loud sigh. "You and me. And what we once were and currently are to each other. One of life's big mysteries. Can you really be friends when all you do is cause each other pain? When the sight of each other makes your stomach twist up with guilt and regret? When you're afraid to admit how glad you are when you get assigned opposite shifts and don't have to see the other person?"

"Stop with the philosophical bullshit. I'm talking about the here and now."

"So was I. But you never really got that, did you?"

"I don't have time to deal with your crap. And I definitely don't have time to let you feed me another round of guilt. I don't think I can take any more than I already have." Her eyes widened as he stared at her incredulously. She hadn't meant to admit how much he had hurt her. Keeping her pain a secret had been the only thing that kept her fighting his harsh words and unfeeling glances.

"Fine. You resent me for finally telling the truth for once. I can understand that. You can feel as guilty as you want on your own from now on. Just let me just apologize for whatever it seems I'm doing wrong and we can move on."

She stared at his face, trying to understand why things had turned out the way they did. She hadn't meant to frak with his life and his happiness. Somewhere along the way, she had done just that though and it tore this wide, jagged rift between them that she couldn't ever repair. All she could do was push the pain to the side and do her job.

"Lee. I need to know if that stunt you pulled today was part of your desire to not have to feel the pain of living anymore."

He narrowed his eyes at her abrupt request. "Are you asking me if I was trying to get shot down out there?"

She stared at him intently for one more moment before the calm before the storm would end. His face, usually so expressive, gave nothing away. He wasn't surprised at her question, but it was obvious he had not been expecting it.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?" she finally asked, dropping her eyes to the floor. She couldn't make herself look at him. If he said yes, she would think it was her fault. And if he said no, well, she would think it was her fault. She didn't really understand the logic to it, but there it was.

"Saying yes would be the easy route for you, wouldn't it? You could just suggest I go see the Doc for some drug to fix the problem, and then you could go back to trying to fix the problems of the Fleet."

She shook her head. "Telling me I was right to ask you would be the hard route. I can deal with you hating me, Lee. I can't deal with you hating life."

He raised himself slowly out of his seat and glared. Obviously something in what she said to him had rubbed the wrong way. "You're wasting your time."

"Because you're not trying to kill yourself or because there's no use in trying to stop you?"

She could see him thinking it over as he stared out the small window to the outside world. He stayed that way for a few minutes before turning to look at her directly. "Don't you ever wonder if maybe this situation would be a lot better if you weren't around? Maybe the pain of waking up in the morning would be less if people knew you weren't going to be there."

"Is that a specific you or a general you? Because that little detail makes a whole lot of difference."

He thought it over for a moment before replying. "At the moment, that was a general you encompassing anyone to which I am speaking. Was that the answer you wanted?"

"Doesn't matter. And anyway, that is such a morbid thought. And a rather shitty piece of logic." She shook her head. "I wish you would just tell me."

"Tell you what? How I got this way? I thought I made that clear to you before I left." He leaned down and whispered in her ear, "You did this to me."

He expected her to lash out at him physically. Her body was positioned for probably the best punch she had ever thrown. He could see her grinding her teeth together as she fought to hold back whatever temperamental words she had been thinking up that were currently on the tip of her tongue. He could see her balling her hands into fists and braced himself for the inevitable.

It never came.

Instead, she reached up to brush a tear he hadn't noticed away from her eye and gave him a hopeless smile. "I know."

He had never expected her to admit that he was right. He wasn't even sure he was right to blame her.

"I did everything possible to make your life hard and keep you from living. It's slightly ironic that now I'm the one in charge of making sure you do just that."

"You honestly think I'm trying to kill myself?"

"Aren't you? I mean, you might not be holding a gun to your head or a knife to your throat, but you're acting reckless. And reckless gets you dead these days."

"You're more of an expert on that topic."

"Lee, you're turning into a real frak-up and a straight-up asshole. As a CAG, I'm telling you to stop it. As a friend, I want to know why."

"We're not friends."

"You've made that clear. I happen to disagree. Only a true friend can find a way to ruin your life." She would let him decide for himself which one of the two of them had ruined the other's life.

Lee stared at her for a minute, obviously fishing for some kind of indication of something. After a moment, he took a deep breath and gave a small shrug of his shoulders. "What do you want to know, Kara?"

There it was again. He had held her name back again for so long that she hadn't been prepared when he used it again. She knew the omission was his attempt at distancing himself in a way that was probably only noticeable to her. It dug away at her slowly, every time he called her 'Starbuck' or 'Captain'. It didn't help that no matter how hard she tried, she could only refer to him as 'Lee' most of the time.

She had already called him by name at least four or five times during this current conversation. It wouldn't hurt one more time. "I want to know what the Cylons did to you, Lee."

"You were there on the day I escaped. I told the three of you everything."

"Yes. You told us what horrible things the Cylon did to you and the reasons they told you why. It was informative and completely unemotional. I want to hear the part you left out. I want to know what you felt when they were breaking and rebreaking your leg. I want to know if you wondered if you would ever fly again when you go out."

"I never wondered that," he said, cutting her off. "I never wondered about what it would be like to get out of their hands. It was never an option."

"You resigned yourself to dying."

He shrugged slightly as he walked away from the window. "There was nothing else I could do."

"What made you so willing to give up?"

"I had nothing."

The silence hung between them. Kara knew that she had to keep going, to keep pressing him to tell her more. Because Helo was right. There was something wrong with Lee, and if she didn't figure out what, there was a chance she would lose him for a fourth time. And this time the grief would be real. It would be real and it would be permanent.

"Did you fight?"

"I didn't want to."

"Why?"

"They made it easy on me to not want to."

Kara sighed and stood up out of the chair behind her desk. She walked over and sat on the edge of the desk right in front of him. "I'm going to lay it all out for you. I don't have anywhere to be, Lee. I'm off shift for the next twenty hours in order to catch up on paperwork. The paperwork can wait. So you can keep answering my questions with barely enough words to constitute a sentence or you can actually start giving me something to work with. And maybe we can both get a little rest before the night is over."

"I told you once that the Cylons were intrigued by me because I felt so much more than others they had studied and yet I could still find it in myself to kill them without hesitation."

"Like every other pilot in the Fleet."

"No," Lee said, shaking his head. "Not every pilot is like me. They hesitate when faced with shooting down one of the twelve Cylon models. It is the face of a human staring back at them, not a machine. Even if it's for a few seconds, they hesitate."

"And you don't?"

"I didn't hesitate to kill a woman that I know meant so much to you."

"Sharon."

"I shot her point blank because I knew she was a machine. I was her CAG for the months we struggled to stay alive from second to second. I turned a blind eye to her relationship with the Chief because it made her happy when happiness was not easy to come by. She was the first pilot who ever came to me with a problem. I didn't know her for seven years like you did, but she did mean something to me. And I shot her without thinking of any of that. I had a job to do."

"Anyone would have done it."

"Sure. But everyone else would have hesitated. I didn't."

"All right," she said, kicking her feet up to rest on the arms of the chair he was sitting in. "Your lack of hesitation intrigued the Cylons. Got it."

"It got their attention. But it wasn't why they kept me for so long."

"Don't tell me they developed a crush on you," she joked. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew it was a mistake. His expression immediately hardened, and she was suddenly staring at the Lee who didn't seem to want to communicate with anyone. "Sorry. Why did they keep you so long?"

"I was important."

"So we're back to the simple sentences, are we?"

He just raised an eyebrow at her and continued to stare.

"Fine. Why were you so important?"

"Because of my vulnerability."

"You intrigued them because you were hardened to any kind of sympathy or hesitation, but you were important to them because of your vulnerability? That makes no sense."

"It makes perfect sense."

"That's because you got the information straight from the source. You don't have to sift through all the bullshit to get to the parts that are important."

"I'm tired of this," Lee said, burying his head in his hands. She had to admit that he had looked rather tired when he had walked into her office. It made her start to worry all over again that he was losing his hold on reality. She didn't know how to deal with the idea that Lee could be stupid enough to give up on life. He had always been the strong pilot she could rely on to do the right thing and to keep them all alive. Pilots like that didn't think about suicide.

In the back of her mind, though, she felt her temper flaring regardless of how lost he looked, sitting in front of her. She hated the fact that he didn't know how tired she was. Being the CAG wasn't easy, and having a whatever-the-frak-he-was making her constantly wish she hadn't made such stupid choices all her life didn't ease the burden. She had given up sleep at least every other night to pull an extra flight rotation out of nowhere, and no one seemed to care that she had picked up the nasty habit of popping a low dose of stimulants when things got too hard. She hated stims, but there was no other way.

She stared at him for a moment. No, the man sitting in front of her had no idea how far her guilt had pushed her over the years. He didn't even seem to care. "If you're so damn tired, then maybe you should start fraking talking so we can go our own ways before the shift changes."

Lee shook his head, which was still resting gently in his hands. "No. Not that. I'm not physically tired, Captain. I'm tired of having to deal with you."

"Oh. Well, that's nice to hear." She pushed her feet down from the sides of his chair.

"You claim you want to understand what happened to me, but all you can do is joke and tease. I do not need that right now. I promised myself that I wouldn't get into the specifics of my time away from the Fleet with anyone. Even if it was a matter of the security of the Fleet, I do not want to relive what they did to me. It's for the good of all."

"They really worked you over, didn't they?"

"No. They barely touched me. I mean, they did all the tests on my healing capabilities and pain thresholds. They tested whether I would crack under excessive strain. It was all things the Academy had taught us to expect if we were ever taken prisoner by an enemy force. They never prepared us for the destruction of the psyche, though."

"They tried to break your mind?" Kara reached out to take Lee's hand, but he pulled back before she could even try. For a second, she had forgotten the changes that had occurred between them. Only months earlier, he would have been reaching out for her and she would have been the one pulling away.

Actually, that wasn't really true towards the end. If he had offered her the physical comfort of his touch, she wouldn't pull away. She wouldn't want to. Because the few times she had let him touch her had been the only moments where she felt safe. Where the terror of being humanity's last stand died away and she could imagine that she was just living a normal life.

"It was my fault," Lee whispered. "They wouldn't have gotten to me, but I fraked up."

"What did you do?" She waited a moment before asking him again. "Lee. What did you do?" When he still didn't move to look at her, let alone answer her question, she screamed forcefully, "What the frak did you do?"

He shook his head in a refusal to answer her question. He was still avoiding looking at her. She wasn't sure what to think of his stubbornness at first. But then she saw his eyes flicker up to meet hers for just one split second before resuming their previous focus on the ground. The look in his eyes shook her to the bone.

"Oh gods, Lee," she whispered, reaching out for his hand once more. This time he let her have it. "What did you do?"

"I let them see my weakness." His eyes shown with tears as he finally focused on her intently. "I let them know my vulnerability. I let them see why I was the way I am and who was responsible for making me that way. And in that moment, they knew they had me."

"I don't understand." Kara slid off the desk and sat down on the arm of the chair, her hand still tightly intertwined with his. The fact that he was so obviously suffering over what he had to say and yet hadn't pulled away from her made her feel a little satisfied. But the satisfaction wasn't something she could appreciate right now. Concern was the only thing she had room to feel.

"Sharon asked me-" His words caught in his throat for a moment. "She wanted to know why I was so intent to protect the people in the Fleet. According to her, there was only one person there I had known for longer than the few months I had been stranded with Galactica, and the Cylons already knew about my strained relationship with my father. They figured that I was just a floating loner in the remnants of humanity and that they could easily manipulate me."

"That's not true, though."

He glanced over at her. "It seems like the Cylons hadn't been able to link up with the Galactica copy of Sharon Valerii. They didn't have any further information she may have gathered. And that was why they only thought there was one person on the ship that was ingrained in my life." He gave her a small smile which made her heart selfishly leap just a little bit. The gesture was so out of place, but she wasn't about to turn down a little moment of reprieve from the emotional turmoil. "I guess my efforts to stay professional with you and ignore our past worked better than I thought. The Cylons didn't pick up on it until I was stupid enough to hand them that information without thinking."

"You said Sharon asked you something."

"She wanted to know if I was scared to imagine the idea that I would never rejoin humanity. That they might perish because I wasn't there to protect them."

"They appealed to your penchant for subtle heroics. Smart."

"I wasn't thinking that way. I should have been, but they had cut up the right side of my body pretty heavily earlier that day. The pain made me a little delirious. So I just let it slip."

"What?"

"That I wasn't worried about the Fleet because you were there." Lee shrugged at her. "I let the machines know how much faith I put in you."

He paused as the weight of his words sunk in. They both remembered with startling clarity the way she had cut him down before he flew out on his mission to secure tylium for the Fleet. She had told him she had no faith in him, and he didn't come back from that flight in order for her to apologize for the stupid mistake. He might have forgiven her for doing that, but she had not even come close to forgiving herself.

"My faith makes me vulnerable in their eyes. That was the part that I never wanted to tell anyone. They wanted me for my vulnerability." He gave her a small smile. "And my vulnerability is you."

"You blamed me for what happened," she whispered quietly, beginning to put things together.

"If I had never met you, then the Cylons wouldn't have considered me to be so important."

"No, they would have just killed you when you stopped intriguing them."

"I would have gladly accepted death over the alternative."

"What did they do to you?"

Her question seemed to snap him out of the small haze he had been in. The same mask of hardened expression came onto his face. "I've already told you."

"Please don't keep lying to me," she begged, surprised at how easy this humbling act came to her. Begging wasn't something that came easy for her, but she would do anything to keep Lee from slipping right back into that horrible place he had been for longer than she cared to imagine. "I want to know what I'm responsible for."

"The Cylons ran me through the emotional ringer. They told me things. Things that weren't easy to hear. It was like they took a look into my brain and found a way to verbalize my worst fears. They broke me down so quickly I didn't have time to fight it."

"What did they say to you?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. What matters is they knew how to hurt me and they didn't hesitate. The Cylon supermodel explained to me that what the machines were planning had nothing to do with defeating humanity. They simply wanted to follow the plan of their God and create a happier world. They wanted to make a mixed race of machines and humans."

"I know all this, Lee. When you brought Helo back and he casually let slip that there was a Cylon running around pregnant with his child, the whole hybrid plan became pretty public."

"Helo was just their first try. They realized their mistake as soon as it was made."

"What was that?"

"The child was made out of love. They couldn't find a way to eliminate the father from the pregnant Cylon's mind. In fulfilling her mission, she became a little too human for their liking. They wanted the creation of a new race to be secret. They wanted the child to have no ties."

"All those things, we could have guessed on our own."

Lee shook his head vigorously. He was obviously getting upset with her inability to see what he was getting at. "They weren't testing me to learn about the idiosyncrasies of humanity. They had selected me as the father of their second attempt."

Kara shook her head in disbelief. "There's no way that's possible. The only reason they got Helo was because they used the woman he was in love with. He would never have been so stupid if it hadn't been Sharon."

He didn't respond to her at first. Kara wasn't sure if that because he didn't want to answer her or because he didn't know how to answer her. Well, fine. If he didn't want to talk, she would just keep asking questions until that changed. "I mean since they obviously didn't have that option to fall back on, what tactic did they have to make you father a child?"

"In the end, I think they found me a lot less resistant than they imagined. I wanted so badly to be away from their constant half-truths and their nasty habit of shining light on places I would rather have left in the dark." He wasn't looking at her anymore. Instead, his eyes seemed to be focused on some random piece of the air around them.

It was making her uneasy. But the uneasiness wasn't outshining this new wave of guilt over what she had caused to be done to him.

"It really is my fault," she said sadly as his eyes darted up to look at hers. "I beat you down and beat you down until you had nothing."

"I never said that."

"You didn't have to. The Cylons wanted you for your vulnerability. I made you vulnerable. You wanted me to admit how much we meant to one another. I couldn't do that until it was too late. I wanted you to just sit around and wait until I ironed out all the issues in my life. That wasn't fair to you. I pulled you one way and then pushed you the other." She could feel the tear roll down her cheek before she even realized that she was crying. "I destroyed every single part of you that I love until there was nothing left. That's why you and I can't seem to even look at each other without screaming."

The slow truth of her words sank in, and he felt himself suddenly willing to lay a little more on the line. "I tried to be the kind of man that I saw you with all the time. The kind of man that you would want. You made me want to change everything about myself, but none of it worked. You never looked twice at me. Something snapped when I was with the Cylons. They pointed out how ironic it was that through my whole damn life I had gotten everything that I never asked for. Then comes the day when I finally find something that I desire, something that I have to work at to get. It slips right through my fingers. Slides right by me and into the hands of my baby brother."

"Lee…"

"Don't," he hissed at her. "Don't say anything. I'm tired of having to listen to people telling me how sympathetic they are. How they understand what I'm going through. Because no one does. They try to make things better. But no one can. I was beaten to within an inch of my life and then brought back slowly. The last little bit of hope I had left in this world was ripped from me by a bunch of machines. Every time I allowed myself to think I could get out or to imagine what it would be like to get back home, they were there. Reminding me that I wasn't good enough for you. That you would never want a frak up like me who could hurt you so much without even trying. We've never really been good together, Kara. It's always been obvious, but I chose to ignore it. I blindly loved you. And I'm tired. I'm so fraking tired of being the one to suffer. "

"You don't think I suffer?"

"That's the point. We both suffer."

"And you're tired of it?"

"Aren't you?"

It didn't even take her a split second to decide. She got tired of the guilt and the anger every single day. It hurt her to see him in passing and not be able to just say or do whatever she wanted to. It was so confining that she was starting to feel the pressures of claustrophobia coming down on her every minute they were on board together. Most times, it was too much even for a person like her to handle.

But in the end, she felt she was a stronger person because of it. The knowledge that those feelings would be there for her every morning when she woke up should have made her feel desolate. Instead it gave her hope. If she could love this man even when he was making her life hell, then there really was something to keep fighting for.

"I'm tired of it every single day," he said before she could give him the answer to his question.

The hopelessness in his voice caused her mind to circle back to the real reason she had forced him down to her office. Every time she had asked him before she didn't want to hear the answer. But now she didn't think she could go on without knowing the answer. "Lee. Were you trying to kill yourself today?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes. On so many levels, yes."

Lee's eyes searched hers and finally must have found the something he was looking for. He leaned up slowly and brushed his lips against hers softly. "I was," he whispered, resting his forehead against hers.

"And now?"

The question hung over both their heads. Those two words were loaded down with such importance that it wasn't hard to imagine the answer becoming the turning point in their relationship. It was time to either learn to forgive or finally let go completely.

A loud siren broke through the impatient silence between them as they waited for the anticipated moment to happen. A voice rang through the ship announcing that alert fighter pilots and all others were to report to the hangar bay. Lee shot Kara a quick look before they both went sprinting down the hall to the hangar. It sounded like the world was ending for the second time.

Just as they reached the stairs leading down to the main floor of the bay, Lee grabbed her elbow and pulled her to the side. "This has nothing to do with the Fleet. They don't want to hurt anyone. They want me back."

Kara narrowed her eyes and studied him a moment before shaking her head. "Nope."

"Nope?"

"They can't have you," she said softly before turning to enter the chaos that was every single person on the deck crew rushing to make all the ships flight ready at the same time.

He watched as she began barking orders, pairing up wingmen, checking on the status of the ships, and making sure each pilot knew what was expected of them. She was his weak spot and the source of his strength wrapped up in one hell of a package. Pain personified in a faint smirk and the slight bite of a lip.

The whole ship suddenly paused as a countdown to FTL jump came out of nowhere. The deck shifted and Lee saw several people fall to their knees from the severe jolt. Why had they made a jump? In all his years, he had never heard of a ship making a FTL jump in order to launch their Viper fighters. That was an offensive move.

He pushed the idea that they might actually be attacking out of his head, trying to ready himself for whatever was about to be thrown his way in the air. But his mind couldn't clear completely. Kara's words echoed through his head as he made his way over to the charred wreckage of his Mark VII. She had said the Cylons couldn't have him. He didn't know what that meant, but somehow it made him happy. And happiness made him vulnerable. It always went back to that.

Kara wasn't going to let him into a cockpit for this fight. After what he had finally admitted to her, she would deem it too risky. If he was truly what the Cylons wanted, she wasn't just going to hand him to them. Plus there just weren't enough birds to let a suicidal pilot have a chance to wreck another.

"Apollo."

He looked up to see her yelling at him from across the hangar. She sprinted over and shoved his helmet into his outstretched hands "Get your helmet on. I'm grounding Wipeout. He's too important to the Fleet now that he's taken on instructing the nuggets. I can't risk losing him if I don't come back from this one. You'll be flying his Mark II."

"Wipeout's your-"

"Wingman," she finished. "I'm aware. He's not the one I want by my side today. I mean, as a CAG, I have a duty to watch out for my pilots. Especially the one dying to frak his life up."

Her words hung over him as she rushed away from him as quickly as she came. There was more to what she was saying than he cared to think about right now. He was still so incredibly angry with how weak she had made him. But somewhere deep inside him, he knew like always he would forgive her.

Because this time it had been different. She hadn't run from her problems. She hadn't done something irrational and stupid to keep the troubles at a distance so that she didn't have to feel. She had stuck it out.

Somewhere deep inside, that meant something.

"Apollo! Get in your fraking Viper right now!"

He gave Cally a smile as her command rang through the hangar bay. Far be it for him to make that little spitfire mad. He gave her a mock salute and stepped into the cockpit. Knocking his comm channel on as soon as he was settled, he asked, "So, can the CAG please enlighten me as to why we're going launching into the air?"

"The Commander picked up some chatter from a reconnaissance Raptor that had jumped back to Kobol to monitor the Cylons' movements. The toasters had called two basestars to the system. They're gearing up for something."

"But why the activation call to all the fighters? Shouldn't it have just been the alerts called?"

"The Old Man was concerned that they knew our position and would attack. He wanted everyone on alert to launch."

"On alert does not explain why we're actually being launched."

The comm channel was cut into by the voice of the CIC launch desk. "Tubes 2 and 4 ready for launch. Good hunting, Starbuck and Apollo."

Lee prepared himself for the jolt as his Viper went from a stand-still to cutting through the air of space in seconds. The few moments before the thrusters kicked in… when Galactica disappeared from beneath him and it was only air… that brief feeling of being completely free… it was the best thing he had ever felt.

"All right, Vipers. Galactica wants us to hover in space to protect the Fleet. Make the Cylons come to us. We'll have at least two minutes once they release their Raiders. Until then, get a feel for the air."

When all Vipers appeared to be stably positioned, Kara picked right up with their interrupted conversation. "I told the Commander what you said when he called the hangar to let me know what was happening. We both agreed that this was the wisest decision to make."

He took a moment to collect himself and tried his best not to scream. As the anger settled, he managed to respond through clenched teeth. "You told my father what I said."

He could hear Kara gasp slightly as she realized the mistake she had made.

Gods. How could she have been so stupid? Lee had always been resentful of the way she related to his father so easily. He had hated that she knew things he didn't because William Adama had forgotten his son was even present on the ship. It was no one's fault. The two of them had just gotten used to relying on each other during her first two years stationed on Galactica. It was harder than they both thought to adjust to Lee's presence and how it would change them.

"I'm sorry, Lee. I didn't think."

"No, you didn't," he hissed before cutting off the channel.

There was that frak-up she had been waiting for since she first called Lee into her office hours earlier. Things had been going too smoothly between them. Flipping the channel to a direct line to CIC, she asked, "Dee, would you do me a favor and give me a private channel with Apollo?"

Dee didn't respond in the affirmative, but Lee could hear the slight click as the channel on his comm clicked back on without him pushing the button. "You have something you wanted to say."

"I didn't tell him anything you wouldn't want him to know." She desperately wanted to let him know that she hadn't told a soul that he had been willing to die only hours earlier. If it were up to her, she would never let anyone know he had fallen so low. It would be between the two of them only.

"But you told him something."

"I told him why you thought the Cylons were attacking because I think you're right. The Cylons want you back. And they want us out of this system."

"Then let's go. Let's get all the Vipers and ships back on Galactica and let's leave this behind. My father will not object to another jump to FTL."

"Where are we supposed to go? Everywhere we try, they just find us. We can't get away."

"We have to keep trying." Kara let out a smile. He didn't sound so suicidal anymore. Maybe she was as good of a CAG as Helo had said. "If we don't keep running, they will catch up to us. And we do not have what it takes to win."

"A pessimist to the end."

Lee sighed as he saw the distant basestars begin to get closer. "People are going to die if we do this."

"I know," she whispered, the weight of the next few hours to come suddenly bearing down on her. Some of her pilots wouldn't make it. It hurt to know that and still know this was the right thing to do.

"Why don't you just let them have me?" Lee asked abruptly.

"What the frak are you talking about?"

"The Cylons want me. Let them have me. I'm just one pilot."

"My ass you're just one pilot. You never could see your importance, could you?"

"I'm just a pilot now. I'm not the CAG. I'm not an officer. I'm just another one of the troops. If I get shot down, it will just add a little more burden to the pilot shortage. You'll have to stretch some CAPs longer and add a few more double shifts. It would make things harder, but no one would have to die if I'm gone."

"I thought I had gotten through to you," she said, shaking her head even though he couldn't see her from his position. "For a second there, I thought you had given up the idiotic notion that death would be better than living."

"It's a thought every single one of us has had stuck in our heads since day one. Death is easier than life."

"I don't believe that."

"Then you're kidding yourself."

She had no idea what had happened to make all the progress they had had disappear so quickly. "I didn't mean to hurt you by telling your father. He loves you, Lee. He would want to know what you're feeling."

"Kara. He left me behind. My father promised me that if I was ever the pilot stranded out there on some planet, he would never leave me." She heard his voice cut off but knew he was not finished. "Do you know what my first thought was when I took the Raider off of Kobol and saw the Fleet in the air above me? I should have been elated to know that I didn't have to search the cosmos for my home. That I didn't have an impossible task of locating a group of ships in endless space. But that wasn't it. The first thing I thought of was he had left me behind. My own father had promised to never abandon me, but he had."

"I never thought of it that way."

"My second thought was that you had abandoned me, too. You were the reason I had suffered so much under the Cylons' care, and you had left me behind and gone on with your life."

"Wouldn't you have wanted me to?"

"That's not the point."

"I know," she said sadly. "I'm sorry for letting them give up. Somehow I knew in my gut that you weren't gone, but I didn't listen to what I felt. I was too…"

"You were too what?"

She thought about telling him about how wrecked she had been by his death. How much guilt she had felt, knowing she pushed him into doing that mission with no confidence. She could remember the day she begged William Adama with all her might not to let them flush the coffin out of the airlock. She had said she wasn't ready to let him go, but it had been done anyway. Later the Old Man told her that she would never be able to let it go if something hadn't been done. "It doesn't matter. That was in the past."

"Our past is our present and our future. Everything we have done will circle back again."

"Straight out of the Cylon user's manual."

"They have certain points which we can't ignore."

She was getting a little fed up with the round-about way they always talked with one another. It was hard not being able to just come out and say things to him because she was scared to death how he might take it. She stared out as one of the Cylon basestars let lose what appeared to be all the Raiders they had on board.

A feeling of desolation washed over her. It wasn't long before it mixed with the anger and frustration already deep inside of her.

"What I said before was the truth. I just want you to know that before the chaos begins. I will not let them have you without a fight. They want to pray on your vulnerability, on your weakness. Well, I invite them to try to do that when your weakness is shoving torpedoes up their asses."

Lee's eyes widened with that colorful image. She had always been the toughest mother frakker he had ever met. Maybe he was the only one who could really tell that toughness was rooted in an immense fear. This was the first time he had ever felt that fear directly tied to him. She was afraid that the Cylons were going to get to him. She was afraid they were going to take him away.

And finally, for the first time, she had let him know.

"We never finished our conversation."

"It's because we waste too much time fighting," she said with a laugh.

"Kara--"

He didn't have time to respond as the Raiders got within firing range and Kara started screaming out orders to the rest of the pilots. They were quickly engaged in a fire fight. The Cylons weren't pulling their punches. They desperately wanted something, and Kara knew exactly what it was.

"They can't have it," she hissed to herself. "No fraking way."

It took all her concentration just to keep her bird in the air those first few minutes. After every other shot she connected with, she chanced a glance at Apollo and where his Viper was in relation to hers. She knew he was flying on instinct alone. There wasn't enough time to think out the moves to make. They worked off of one another and managed to hold the protective line around the Fleet.

In the back of her mind, she let herself dwell on the way he was moving and how it reminded her of the way they used to fly before the world had gotten so tough to live in. Things had changed since then. There was a hardness in his voice that life had put there. It wasn't going to go away, but she had a hunch that if she just kept pushing, she could make him understand that there were times when he didn't have to be so hardened and strong. If the Cylons wanted to prey on his soft spot for her, then she was just going to be strong enough for the both of them. No one used her as a means to hurt the people she loved.

"Starbuck, watch your port side," Apollo said through the general comm now that their private channel had been closed.

"I don't see anything," she said, squinting out at the dark sky. They had earned a few seconds reprieve as the first way of Raiders fell back to wait for replacements. She had never been so thankful to get a moment to catch her breath.

"There are remnants of the Raiders we've already caught in their line of fire floating everywhere. Some of them could really frak up a plane."

He was right. Usually the Vipers went in, did their job, and landed on Galactica. They hardly ever were required to stay in the battle-torn airspace. But there was still another basestar with Raiders out there near Kobol. They couldn't leave so they would have to be extra alert.

"I know you've been spoiled with flying your Mark VII and you may have forgotten. There's nothing out there that could take out a Mark II. These things are as tough as they come."

Her eyes caught on a large piece of metal floating on her port side just as the words left her mind. Frak. Why did she always have to be so damn cocky and sure that her opinion was the right one? Lee had been right this time, and now the piece was too close for her to avoid completely.

"All right, Apollo. Looks like I'm taking a dinger to the side of my plane."

"I don't think you should," Lee insisted as he looped his Viper in closer to hers. "It's too dangerous. Any little piece of outside material can clog up engines. The Fleet needs you in this fight."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, but frak you, Lee. I'm the CAG now and it is my job to keep things safe. No more jumping out of trouble because it's the easy thing to do."

Somehow, Lee was pretty sure she wasn't solely talking about taking that piece of metal to the side of her plane.

"If you'll excuse me."

A slight bang echoed through the comms, and Starbuck's ship bounced a few minutes through space before she got control back. "Frak," he heard her mutter.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Does the nothing explain why the left side of your Viper has a big gash down it?"

"The metal was a bit sharper than I thought. But I think I'm still flight- FRAK! Incoming, Vipers! The second basestar just launched another round of Raiders."

Kat's voice echoed across the comms. "How the frak could they have more?"

"I don't know, Kat, but they won't have more for long," Apollo said as he let lose a round of shots. They must have been aimed well because the Cylons were suddenly down two fighters. He tried to concentrate on the task at hand as the Raiders came rushing in.

Almost as quickly as it began, the attack was over.

"Starbuck, are you with me?" There was no answer. He had lost her at some point in the quick engagement they had just gone through.

"Where the frak is the CAG?" he yelled to no one in particular while trying to pinpoint her both on his consul and visually.

"She went in hard when the Cylons showed up, sir. I lost her about twenty seconds into it," Hot Dog replied.

Apollo didn't respond. They probably only had a few minutes reprieve before the next round of Raiders came through. He still didn't understand why they were doing this besides the simple matter of principle that the Fleet wasn't just going to hand over one of their pilots to the Cylons. He found himself wondering whether the President had had a say in their decision to take on the machines. There was a nagging feeling inside him that she had. When had he managed to win the whole Fleet's heart and completely blind their heads?

And why the frak was he thinking about that now?

"Come on, Kara. Where the frak did you go?"

His eyes suddenly caught on a flash of metal as it slid down across the sky. He wouldn't have even given it a second glance if he hadn't noticed a gash through the side of metal facing him. "Frak," he whispered and knocked on his comm. "Straightshooter, watch out for the next wave. I think our CAG's gotten herself into a tight spot."

"And it's time for you to play savior to her once more," the young Lieutenant said with a laugh as he swooped in to take up the positioning previously occupied by Starbuck and her wingman.

Apollo kicked in his thrusters and sped over to where Kara's Viper lay dormant. "Galactica, Apollo. I'm diverting the power of my general comm to talk to Starbuck. I think there might be a short in her system. A concentrated burst might be able to reach her." He shook his head as soon as the words came out of his mouth. That made absolutely no sense, but it was the only thing he could come up with at the moment.

"No need. I can hear you, Apollo."

He rolled his eyes. "Then why the frak didn't you answer before?"

"I have this situation under control."

"And what situation would that be?"

There were a few sparks as something in the tail of her Viper suddenly ignited. "My inevitable crash landing."

"Frak, Starbuck! What the hell happened?"

"The damage of hitting that piece of shrapnel must have affected my thrusters. I couldn't get out of the way of a few shots by the toasters. They took out my direction control."

"So you have power but you just can't control it?"

"Yes."

"All right. We need to get you back."

"Um, in case you haven't noticed, my Viper is currently smoking and I think my port thru--"

Kara's voice cut off as there was another explosion and her Viper started dropping at a rapid pace.

"Starbuck, what happened?" There was no answer. "Starbuck!" he yelled even though he knew getting louder wouldn't make her hear him any better. He didn't think she was faking a comm failure this time.

He kicked his ship into burn and followed her down, hating the fact that he had to continue accelerating to keep up with her ship. His borrowed Viper started to knock around as he entered the atmosphere. He could only imagine how hard of a time Kara was having controlling her entry without any directional control at her disposal.

The sight of her Viper spinning was lost as the air became foggy closer to the planet's surface. All he could do was pray that Kara was as good a pilot as she had always bragged she was and hold on tight as he did his best to stay alive on his own entry. In the back of his head, he wondered if maybe he should have told Galactica he was going after her. That got him to wondering why he was going after her. Kara had always been very capable of taking care of herself.

That's when it suddenly hit him. This was why the Cylons selected him. Kara didn't want him to save her. She didn't need him to save her. And yet here he was, risking his life to make sure at the end of the day she still had hers.

She was making him vulnerable. If he was really what the Cylons wanted, then they'd have a much better chance of getting him if they were planetside. After all, he knew firsthand how large a stronghold the machines had on this planet. He was playing right into their hands by getting out of the air. And he didn't care.

He kicked his thrusters back as the ground started getting close to his ship. He couldn't see Kara, but he knew she was out there somewhere.

A thought suddenly occurred to him. If Kobol truly was the birthplace of the gods, maybe it would be easier to get prayers answered.

"Galactica, Apollo. I'm landing on the planet to see if I can do some damage control on however bad a crash the CAG just took." He only got static in return. He must be out of comm range.

"Okay, Lee. This isn't as bad as you think. So your ship has no idea that you followed Starbuck planetside because she had no direction control and her bird was on fire. So they don't know that the atmosphere seems to be so bad that only the best pilot could keep themselves in one piece. You told Straightshooter where you were going. Once the Cylons realize you're gone, the attacks will cease and 'Shooter will put it all together. Granted, once that happens, the Cylons will start coming for you down on the ground. But you can hold them off for the few minutes it takes to get a pick-up flight launched." He shook his head. "And you are now having a conversation with yourself. How-"

His voice clogged in his throat as he got close enough to the ground to see a charred piece of metal that looked like it had gone through a trash compactor after being systematically beaten to within an inch of its life. This particular piece of metal bore the crest of Galactica and the label of Starbuck.

"No," he whispered, staring at the smoldering ship.

Within one minute, he had his Viper on the ground, his helmet flung into his empty pilot seat, and his feet pounding the dirt as he ran to see how bad it really was. The only thing he took time to do was flip the switch that sent out a distress signal to Galactica as a last ditch effort to get some help.

"Shit," he hissed, noticing as he got closer that the cockpit window was cracked in too many places for him to see into it properly. "Starbuck! Can you hear me?"

There was no answer.

Reaching out, he tried to knock the latch open. His hand immediately started to burn from the heat of the ship. It would take at least five minutes for it to cool down enough to get the hatch open. He didn't have time for that.

This was Kara inside that cockpit. There was a high chance that his best friend in the world wasn't conscious in a small confined space that was rapidly filling up with smoke. He didn't care if a squadron of Cylons suddenly swarmed on him. She needed him. That was all he had to know.

Letting out a scream, he tried to push the pain to the side as he punched the latch hard with his hand and pulled it until it let out a satisfying pop. Smoke filtered into the open air, and Lee did his best to push it out of the way.

"Starbuck!" he yelled as he grabbed onto the hot metal of her mauled starboard wing and pulled himself up until his feet rested on the ridge of the open cockpit hatch. The smoke cleared for him to make out her unconscious body still latched into the pilot seat. There was a faint smell of burning rubber from where his boots were planted on the wing, but he ignored it, focusing instead on the task at hand.

He grabbed the belt release and pulled as hard as he could until the thing snapped open. Her flight suit felt cool against his hand compared to the hot metal of the ruined ship. The momentary relief from pain let him start to think of his next move. There was no smooth way to get down from the cockpit without the standard rolling stairs that every deck crew had ready when a ship landed.

"I really wish you would wake up," he whispered as he pulled her up again his body. He felt the hot metal of the control panel touch his back and jumped slightly. With Kara's added weight to his body, he lost all sense of balance immediately. Before he could right himself, the back of his knee banged against the stick and he found himself twisting right over the cockpit edge.

The first thing he felt through the pain was the ground hitting his back. As soon as his head cleared, he realized it probably made more sense the other way around. The next thing he felt was an overwhelming gratefulness that he had twisted in time to put his body between that hard ground and the pilot in his arms.

She groaned slightly as if on cue, and he pushed himself up off his back. Turning her, he tried his best to support her head with his hands as her eyes slowly blinked open.

"Kara."

"What the frak happened?"

"I don't know."

Her hand reached up and touched her temple, coming away with blood on her fingertips. She held it out for him to see. "I'm bleeding."

"I noticed. I think you hit your head on the side of your cockpit hatch."

"It hurts."

"I'm sure it does." His eyes darted up to the wreckage that was still smoking from somewhere deep inside. "We need to move."

"I'm too tired," she whispered as her eyes slid shut.

He groaned and pulled her with him as he stood. "You better not be getting a concussion on me. I don't have that kind of patience."

"I don't have a concussion. I'm just tired. Life sucks."

"Okay," he said shaking his head. "I'll keep that in mind. We need to get walking."

She pulled her head back and frowned at him. "Where are we going?"

"Somewhere where we can hide until Galactica sends someone down to get us."

He made an attempt to move forward, but the weight of her kept him from going more than a step. "You have to move your legs in order for this to happen."

"My knee hurts, Lee. And I really want to sleep."

"Okay." Sighing, he tried to forget how much his hands hurt from the burns he had gotten in his efforts to get her free of the cockpit. Bending slightly, he slid his left hand in under her knees and lifted her up into his arms. He pulled her in tight.

"Where are we?" she asked, resting her head against his chest and closing her eyes.

"We're on Kobol."

"Ah. The birthplace of the gods."

"I know. I'm very familiar with it."

"Aren't there Cylons all over this place?"

"Yeah."

"Just checking," she said, sighing.

He felt her slump against his body as she began to relax in the comfort of his arms. He didn't think she had a concussion considering she was keeping up a coherent string of dialogue with him, but still sleeping might not be the best option for her in his humble opinion. He squeezed her shoulder. "Kara. Don't you have any other questions for me? You seem filled to the brim with them today."

"No. I'm perfectly content right now with the information I have."

"Then, do me a favor and just keep talking."

"I don't want to," she said, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck.

"Come on. Tell me something I don't know. I'm going to need you to keep my mind off how fraking heavy you are."

"Bite me, flyboy."

Jokes and threats were good. He jostled her body slightly as he tried to get a better grip on her. "There are some trees we can seek cover under about a mile away. Just keep talking until we get there and then you can rest."

"I don't have anything to say."

"I highly doubt that," he said with a laugh. "Tell me about how much your knee smarts and how you're going to hate the rehab Doc Cottle will put you through when we're back on Galactica."

She groaned. "I do not want to talk about that."

"It won't be so bad."

"Not if you're there."

"My being there won't help you."

"It helped the first time."

"I don't understand. I wasn't there when you got out of your bed in sick bay after hurting your knee."

"You were there the first time I tried."

"And you gave up almost immediately. I hate to admit it, but I always figured it was because I was taunting you. It must have been hard to work through the pain when I just kept causing more."

He glanced down to look at her. She was no longer resting her head against him with her eyes shut. Instead, she was staring at him with the corners of her mouth turned up in a small smile. "You had to keep up appearances."

"You picked up on that?"

"I heard the comfort in your tone before Doc Cottle gave you that look. If he hadn't silently reprimanded you, though, I would have done it. You were being too nice to me." She closed her eyes again and rested her head again, though the smile didn't leave her face. "I think that was the first moment I realized how much you cared for me."

"Really?"

"You were supposed to be taking your turn at CAP, but you got Horn to cover for you so that you could be down in medical with me."

"I didn't realize you knew that."

"I asked around."

He could feel her nuzzle his neck lightly. "What are you doing down there?"

"Smelling you."

He let out a small laugh. "Okay."

"You smell nice. Sweaty but nice."

"Thank you, I think." Lee found himself reassessing his decision that she did not have a concussion. After all, she was sniffing him.

"I think you gave me strength that day," she said quietly.

"What day?"

"The one where you went on a one-man mission to get me to walk. I can still feel your hand on my back as I took those first steps. It was reassuring."

"I think you're just a little confused. My hand is on your back now, not then." He tightened his grip on her to prove the point. "I'm thinking you have a concussion, Captain."

"I don't have a concussion. I'm just tired from all the fraking work you left me on Galactica."

He rolled his eyes, though he was secretly glad that she was coherent enough to argue. "As if I forced you into taking the CAG position on purpose."

"I'm convinced you did."

"You don't have a concussion but you think I tricked you into being the CAG and you remember the feeling of my hand on your back all those months ago?"

"Yes," she said, scowling at him.

"I don't know, Kara. Helping you along with my hand wasn't really something I should have been doing. You were a strong pilot who needed to make herself walk on her own. I couldn't coddle you if I wanted you to get back on your feet."

"Your hand wasn't on my back then like it is now," she corrected. "You were just barely brushing me with your fingertips, but I could still feel it. And I could imagine the worried look you had on your face even while you were taunting me into walking. You were always there for me."

They lapsed into silence as he kept walking them away from the crash site. Holding her tightly, he hoped that the slight jostling wasn't causing her pain. She didn't look that banged up on the outside, but he wasn't sure if even the mighty Starbuck could have come out of that crash so unhurt.

"Lee?" she asked quietly, pulling him away from his worrying. "Why are you here?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"On Kobol. Why are you down here with me? I didn't send out a distress call. I didn't ask someone to follow me down to the planet. But you were here to pull me from the cockpit. Why?"

"You were in trouble, and the Fleet needs you to be safe. You're important."

"No more than the next person."

"Not true and you know it."

"But why didn't you send someone else down to get me? Why did you come yourself?"

He hesitated a moment. "Because I couldn't trust anyone else."

"Lee."

"Don't ask me, Kara. Please."

"Lee." He stopped walking and looked down at her. "Why am I so important to you?"

"I don't know." He shook his head and starting walking them towards the trees again. "You just are."

"I'm going to be the death of you," she said as her eyes slid shut.

"I don't really mind that much anymore."

He waited a few moments for her to tell him how stupid he was being, but it never came. He looked down at her. Her breathing had evened out and it seemed like she was sleeping peacefully in his arms. He suddenly felt something slid back into place deep inside of him.

"You know, I was looking at your ship as we floated in space and something occurred to me, Kara. You were so adamant that the Cylons couldn't have me. I have torn your life to shreds both times I came back to the Fleet, and yet you still refuse to give me up. You just kept trying to apologize. Don't think I didn't notice."

He heard her murmur lightly in her sleep, but the idea that she might wake up to hear what he was actually saying didn't alarm him. Maybe it would be easier if she understood how she had been slowly fixing the wounds the Cylons had inflicted upon him throughout the past few months. He hadn't been with her for more than a few weeks, but everything she did and everything she said seemed to make it a little bit better.

"So I had this thought when I was making my way to you earlier. It occurred to me that there was only one thing that I'm sure about these days. That if the Cylons wanted to have me for whatever crazy reason they could come up with, that was fine. I know what they're capable of now, and they don't scare me anymore. They are just machines searching for some way to be human. But they'll never get it from me. They can't seem to understand that what makes me human can never be understood."

He smiled at her sleeping face as he walked a few feet into the foliage and stopped. "That's why I was so upset that you and my father decided so adamantly that they couldn't have me. Because it wasn't what I wanted. The Cylons could have me. I didn't care. As long as it kept you safe, I didn't care. You make me weak, but you keep me strong, too. I would have known that the Fleet was safe now. You were safe now."

He set her down gently on the soft grass underneath one of the tree trunks. Taking a step back, he smiled down at her. The woman in front of his eyes was the whole reason the Cylons had held him for so long. She was the one part of his life that made no sense. He couldn't understand it so it was no wonder that the machines couldn't comprehend why she was there in his heart.

The anger had welled up inside of him when he first came back to the Fleet. He tore her apart for the pain she had caused him without really realizing. While he was trying to survive on Caprica, the guilt over what he had done to her finally kicked in. He had vowed that if he managed to get back to the Fleet, he would apologize.

He hadn't found time to do that yet. There had been a million opportunities when she talked about the guilt he had made her feel for him to say how wrong he was. But each time the opening presented himself, he just got angry and hurt her some more.

Which was why he was determined to let her go. He had come into her office that day, knowing that when he left she would never want to talk to him again. He was going to cut her down until there was nothing left between them but hatred. Then she might stand a chance of being safe from the Cylons.

Things hadn't gone as he planned.

When the alarms rang out signaling the Cylons were preparing for attack, he knew immediately what they were there for. It had been quite easy to lie to her and say that the Cylons were there to get him. He was surprised she had accepted it so quickly, but then she really hadn't had time to fully understand how the Cylons thought process worked like he did. If they had still wanted him, he never would have made it off Caprica.

No, it was definitely not him.

He bent down and brushed a piece of hair off her face. "The Cylons can take away everything else I have. I don't care about any of that. But they can't have you."

Kara shifted and squinted up at him. "What did you say? I think I fell asleep."

"You've had a rough day. It's understandable."

"I missed something important, didn't I?"

"Nothing that I can't say again when the time's right."

"Whatever that means," she said with a light laugh. She struggled to sit up, and he felt his hands unconsciously reach out to help her. "Thanks. So how long do you think we'll be down here before anyone notices we're missing?"

He sat down beside her with a laugh. "Come on! Two important people like us. They should have been here ten minutes ago."

"You can't trust them to get anything done if we're not around though."

"Good point."

They lapsed into a sort of comfortable calm as the sounds of birds echoed through the trees around them and the sun beat down onto their shoulders. Lee started wondering if the distress signal was actually working. He didn't know how long it would take Galactica to get them help. And yet he wasn't really that worried or scared. It was odd.

"How's your head feeling?"

"It's been better and it's been worse."

He reached over to touch the scrape on her temple. She let out a small hiss of pain but didn't pull away from his touch as he inspected the wound closer. "That looks pretty bad."

"It doesn't matter." He could feel her mind thinking something over for a moment before she looked up at him. "I'm really sorry for everything, Lee," she whispered.

He took in the nervous look on her face as she chewed on her bottom lip. Here she was again with one of her unneeded apologies. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. "I know, Kara. I know."

They sat together in silence, and he could feel the moment begin to pass. And finally, he understood that he couldn't let it. "I'm sorry, too."

She rested her hand on top of the one he was holding her close with. "I know, Lee. I've always known."

He stared at her as she closed her eyes and let herself fall back to sleep. And there it was again. The sudden understanding.

His vulnerability was what kept him alive, and as long as he lived, the Cylons couldn't take that away from him.

They might be stranded on the birthplace of the gods, but he didn't need to pray to know they would make it through this. They were together. And they were both determined not to let the machines win.

The Cylons would not take her away from him. He would die before he let that happen.

"Life is going to get better for us from now on," he said, placing a small kiss on the top of her head. "I promise."

The sounds of some distant explosion didn't make him flinch.

Sure, there were hard times ahead for him. But for now he was just going to sit here and enjoy the one moment of peace the gods had seen fit to give him. It might be the last he had. Smiling at the woman in his arms, he was suddenly glad that he still had her to share this with.

He let out a deep breath, pulling Kara close to him, and stared around at the hopelessness of their situation as the birds continued to sing.