Disclaimers- Not mine, only worn lightly, returned to owners in good condition.
Summary- Commander Adama is seeing things. Or maybe he isn't. For the yahoogroup ApolloStarbuckfic newbie challenge: 5-minute fic using the phrase "tell me I'm seeing things."

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We've all lost so much that I think we sometimes grasp at hope where there isn't any. I know this better than most. And that makes my delusions even more mystifying to you, doesn't it?

First, I'll just say that Kara is family. Zak's death notwithstanding, I've always regarded her as one of my own. She would be, even if I weren't seeing things.

Now, about these things, these delusions, these loose hopes tethered to my imagination: call them the wishes of an old man, the afterimages of seeing my life flash before my eyes. Call them whatever you want, but I know that Lee smiles more in her presence. Not the tight-lipped smile of a captain and leader, either. This smile, the one he reserves just for her, is the smile he wore as a child, when the universe was his for the taking. It is easy, joyous, playful. It is his mother's smile.

Kara smiles back more often than not, too eager and too tense. A brash patina hides her deeper feelings, but I've seen her weaknesses. She wants to be loved. Wants it more than anything.

So, you tell me that I'm seeing things. That I want these two people to be happy so much that I've imagined their attraction. That I want humans to survive so much I've invented this certain knowledge of Earth. That hope itself cannot be so true, so clear that it manifests at last into a thing you can see and touch.

Tell me all you want. I know what I saw.

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Fin.