Kara Thrace stared out the small side window of the Raptor she was on. She had dreamed about this moment every hour of every day since she had been gone from Galactica. And now that it had come, she found herself scared to death of what it meant.

Things had happened while she was gone. It was supposed to be a standard transfer of water from one ship to the other. The typical thing that Marines oversaw if only they had enough people to properly do those kinds of things. So she had taken the small downtime that this assignment offered and suited up to be a Marine for the day.

No one knew there was a Cylon agent on board the Aerilon Sacrifice. No one knew that the thing would make a small slip-up in something he said and that she would be the one to pick up on it. No one knew that for the first time in her life, Kara would hesitate. No one knew that for the first time in her life she had something good enough to keep her from acting recklessly and without thought.

The hangar deck clicked into place as the Raptor finished raising up out of the flight tunnel. This was it.

Show time.

"How are you feeling, Starbuck?"

Kara turned to look at Racetrack and gave her a smile. "Happy to be home." She prayed that Racetrack wouldn't ask her anything else. She didn't know how long she could keep this ruse up.

People came into focus as the exit ramp slowly began to lower. Kara didn't notice any of them. She only had eyes for the one man standing front and center. He looked nervous. She had no idea why. There was no reason for him to be nervous.

Just her. She should be nervous.

Cursing, she realized her hand had gone down to unconsciously hold her stomach. She would need to stop that once she set foot off this Raptor. Someone would notice.

The ramp connected with the hangar deck with a loud bang, and Kara urged her feet to take the first step back to normality. This was what she had wanted. She wanted to return to this.

Lee didn't waste time in waiting for her to come to him. Before she could take more than that first hard step, he was up the ramp and to her side. Sliding his hands around her waist, he pulled her into his embrace. Her name fell like a whisper off his lips as he slid his face into her hair.

"Lee," she said, sensing the first glimmers of that old familiar feeling coming back. She let her hands wrap around him. "Oh gods. Lee."

He pulled back to hold her head in his hands. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said, sniffling slightly to hold the tears back. "I've been through worse."

"You don't have to be brave, Kara. It's only me that can hear you."

"We are surrounded by half the deck crew," she said with a smirk.

"I didn't notice." He rested his forehead against hers and let out a small sigh. "Gods. I wish that I could kiss you right now."

"You can't. Not while the Fleet is still pretending the fraternization policy is in place. We've already gone too far." She tried to pull back from him, but his grip only tightened.

"I don't give two fraks about some stupid, out-dated policy. I'm not letting you go."

His hands moved down to hold her sides roughly in a fight to stop her from squirming away. There was a sharp shooting pain in her left side as his hand got a little too close to the fresh wound. She felt herself wince before she could realize what she was doing.

"Kara? Are you hurt?" Lee made a move to pull up her tanks, but she quickly batted his hand away.

Kara took a step back and placed her hands on her hips to prevent him from trying to take a look again. She couldn't let him take another look. "Don't. It's just the normal battle wounds. I was held hostage by a Cylon on a broken-down ship for seventy days, you know."

She saw him flinch at the harshness of her words before his jaw hardened and he gave her a rather intense look. It made her want to both take a step back and to go running into his arms. Instead she just stood in place and ducked her head down, ready for the harsh words to start flowing.

"Actually you were gone for seventy-one days if you count today. And if you want to be extremely precise, you've been gone seventy-one days, nine hours, and fifty-two minutes."

"You were counting?" she whispered. She balled her hands into fists as she continued to fight the urge to close the distance between them.

His eyes lowered for a moment before he took a breath and looked back up at her. "Of course I was."

Kara could feel her eyes begin to well up with tears again. This was what she thought she couldn't handle.

The shooting pains in her stomach that came and went without rhyme or reason. Those she could handle. The trauma of being holed up in a small cell for weeks on end. That she could handle. The knowledge that she could never truly let anyone know what had gone down on the Aerilon Sacrifice. She could handle. The looks, the stares, the silent questions. Could handle. The need to constantly act like nothing is wrong. The desire to just go back to the way things were even though she knew she couldn't. The emotional upheaval. The physical pain. The constant confusion. The complete lack of understanding.

Kara could handle it all.

But there was the one thing that she could not.

It hurt so much to admit it, but it was Lee that she wouldn't be able to handle now that she was back. It was his gentleness, his unconditional caring. It was the core of his very being that she had grown to need so much. It was the way he looked at her like he had died a little each day that they had been apart. The way he had cradled her head in his hands and smiled. The knowledge she had only had to take one step off the Raider and he was there to support her. The simple fact that she could see his eyes were as full of tears as hers were.

His love was the only thing that she couldn't handle.

Pulling that thought to the front of her mind in order to make herself strong enough to do what had to be done, she turned from him and took her second hesitant step back out onto Galactica. Her eyes met with the rest of the people who had come down to see her return to the ship she called home as she shuffled past them. Cally was there with Crashdown standing next to her. Boomer was standing next to the Chief and shaking her head with a laugh. Her nuggets were all smiling at her proudly. Dee was standing at the back of the hangar, talking on the wireless headset she had been given. She spared a moment to give Kara a supportive smile.

Kara's eyes caught on the Commander's for a moment, and he gave her a small nod of recognition from where he stood talking to Gaeta. She was about to shuffle out the hangar door and down the corridor to the bunkroom where she knew that the pilots would leave her alone for a few minutes when she heard someone calling her name.

Turning back, she saw that Lee was only a few steps behind her.

"Before you go anywhere, I want you to go see Doc Cottle, Starbuck. Normal battle wounds or not, you need to be checked out."

"I'm not going to medical."

Lee gritted his teeth as he stopped in front of her. "Excuse me for not being clear. It was not a request, Lieutenant. It was an order from your CAG."

She narrowed her eyes and gave him a short salute. "Yes, sir."

His eyes flickered with what she immediately recognized as pain before he gave her a small nod and stepped back. Turning she pushed back the tears once again and began to limp her way to a place she did not want to be.