Well.. here it is. The last chapter, which once again got so BIG for its britches, that I had to divide it into two"last" chapters, LOL.

But both chapters are here, along with a brief epilogue/author's note.

Thank you all for reading! To each of you who have reviewed so far,--thank you! Your comments really meant a lot to me.

Finally—last warning—Spoilers for the season 2.5!

Chapter Six

Lee was alone in quarters, lying on his rack, his hands laced under his head, his eyes staring at the ceiling. He turned his head as Kara entered, clanging the door shut behind her. His gaze fixed on her warily, annoyance clouding his face.

She folded her arms over her chest and frowned at him. "Look, Lee, I'm sorry, okay? I've been …insensitive."

Frak it. Despite her good intentions, the words had come out sounding belligerent instead of contrite.

She took a deep breath and consciously softened her tone. "But I was wondering if, well...if you'd like to…you know…. talk."

Lee raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn't move. "Talk?"

Kara looked at him. "Yeah. Talk."

"You want to talk." It was a statement, not a question.

Kara blew out her breath in a sigh, then reached up to tug at her ear self-consciously. "Well…it seemed like the right thing to say," she mumbled.

Lee looked back up at the ceiling, and perhaps despite himself, a smile touched his lips. "Wow. Kara Thrace wants to talk to me. Dredge up feelings, discuss deep stuff, maybe analyze some dreams together?"

"Lee," Kara said warningly, but her mouth quirked upward as well, relieved to hear the teasing note in his voice.

"No, really," protested Lee. "This is very sweet. You want to talk to me."

Kara gave an exaggerated sigh. "You're not making this easy on me, are you?"

He swung around now into a sitting position on his bunk. "Actually I'm just savoring the moment, here." His eyes were mischievous.

She smiled, relieved at the warmth they seemed to have regained. She crossed the room and parked herself next to him on his rack, then leaned over to dispose of her boots, tossing them towards her locker. "Okay," she said, business-like as she sat up again. "I'm here, and I'm listening. Go ahead. Talk."

Lee was silent for a moment, then shrugged and said nonchalantly. "Well, I don't really have anything I want to talk about. How about you?"

Kara made a face and smacked his arm. Hard

"Ow!" he protested, rubbing it. "You're gonna hurt me."

The words stirred a memory in Kara, and her face suddenly grew serious.

"You know, actually, there is something I want to talk to you about, Lee. And it's been bothering me ever since the Prometheus."

She turned to him, her eyebrows lowered now, her voice tense. "You should know, Lee, that you never, ever tell someone who's pointing a gun at you to pull the trigger. Because you know what?" her finger jabbed toward him. "They will! And that's a quick—and stupid—way to get yourself killed. You scared the shit out of me when you did that. Don't ever do that again."

Lee was staring at her, confused, uneasy. His eyes narrowed.

"How did you know about that?" he asked very quietly.

She stared back, her eyes wide, her brain frozen. Oh, frak.

There was a long, tense silence between them. She gnawed the corner of her lip, desperately searching for any plausible explanation she could give. Besides, of course, the truth.

He was still staring at her, his blue eyes looking almost betrayed.

Her mind drew a blank. She closed her eyes and sighed. "Lee, I'm sorry I haven't told you this yet. But, when I came looking for you, I saw you being taken into Phelan's quarters. I… well, I was worried, damn it! And I wanted to make sure they didn't do anything to you, so…so I got into an airvent that let me see into his quarters."

He was staring at her, and she flinched at the emotions that played over his face at her words. Confusion, amazement, anger, shame. He let out a long, slow breath, and looked down. "How much did you hear?" he asked quietly.

"Not much," she lied quickly. He looked up at her, fixing her with a disbelieving look. She sighed. "All of it," she admitted with an apologetic look on her face. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

He nodded slowly, looking back down.

"And here I was worried about telling you the whole story," he said softly, with a self-mocking grimace.

"Lee, I didn't mean to hear any of it…." But he put up his hand to stop her.

"No, Kara, stop. It's not your fault. You were trying to help me. Hell, I'd be dead if you hadn't been there. It's just that, I need to wrap my head around the fact that…that you know about all this crap already, all this crap I wanted to talk to you about…"

"There's a lot I don't know, actually. And…" She drew a deep breath. "If you still want to talk about it, I want to listen."

His head was bent, his thumb tracing his lips.

"Why did you tell that guy to shoot you?" Kara asked him quietly. "It was a pretty risky bluff."

Lee sighed and slid himself back on his rack, so that his legs stretched out, and his back leaned against the wall.

"Maybe it wasn't a bluff," he said quietly.

Kara opened her mouth to speak, then immediately shut it again. She slid back next to him, shifting so that her right leg pressed warmly against his left. Then she reached out her hand and laid it gently on his arm. "Go ahead," she said.

He leaned his head back. "I was feeling pretty reckless, and angry, and disgusted with myself for…well, everything. I almost didn't care if he shot me at that point. Maybe I did it because I wanted to find out… just how much I wanted to live."

Kara swallowed. "You weren't sure?"

"Not right then," he mused, remembering. "But when that gun was pressed in my chest, when that guy could have killed me with one twitch of his finger, I suddenly thought of what you said to me."

"Me?"

He smiled at her surprise. "Yeah, you. You told me we had to focus on the people we have left, not the ways we frakked up the lives of people who are dead. So, I thought about my father." He shot her a sideways glance. "I thought about you. And…I grabbed the gun."

"You had me pretty scared."

"Yeah. Me too."

They were silent for a minute, then he sighed and said, "The story actually starts a couple of years ago." He looked over, as if gauging how much she wanted to hear.

She nodded at him. "Go ahead."

"There was a woman I dated, named Gianne. You met her, actually," he shot her another glance.

"I remember," Kara said.

"We had been together for about six months. I enjoyed being with her, but…" he shrugged. "I could tell she might be feeling more for me than I was for her. And I felt guilty about that, wondered if I might be stringing her along.

"But it was comfortable, and I didn't want to hurt her, so I let it keep going.

But then…" Lee winced at the memory. "Then she got pregnant. And when she told me, I just… panicked. I felt trapped. I tried not to show it, I tried to look happy, say the right things, but …she could tell. She asked me point black if I was ready to marry her, and I…didn't say anything. And then she started to cry…" Lee's voice was tight.

"I said something stupid, like we needed to talk about a lot of things still; that we just couldn't decide anything yet. But she knew. She knew I didn't want to marry her. She went into our room and just starting grabbing her things and throwing them in a suitcase. And then she ran out the door. And…" He stopped, swallowing.

"And I didn't go after her." He paused for a long moment.

"It was two days before I even tried to reach her. And it's that, Kara, that I hate myself for." His voice was low, filled with self-loathing. "That I waited that long. That I couldn't get past my own fears to try to be there for her. To try to understand what she was going through. I owed her that. And I let her down."

Kara moved her hand to his shoulder and pressed it comfortingly. He was silent for a long time, until she whispered, "What happened, then?"

"By then she had disappeared, and I couldn't find her." Lee took a deep breath and slowly shook his head. "Her family lived on a different colony, and I had never met them, so I didn't know how to reach them. And her friends weren't talking to me. I left a lot of messages with them, even wrote her some letters and sent them to her friends, pleading with them to send them on to her. I don't know if she ever got them, but if she did, she didn't answer.

"I kept this up for about three weeks, until the day I got the call from my mom telling me that Zak had just been killed."

Kara hadn't expected this sudden turn to the story, and drew in a pained, startled breath..

"For a while all I could think about was Zak's death." Lee's voice was hoarse now. "I kept wondering if there was something I could have done or said to have kept him from even going to the Academy in the first place. Whether I should have tried harder to convince him that it was not the life for him. I kept thinking…that there had to have been something…something I could have done…to keep him from dying."

Kara looked down at that, feeling the tears pricking her eyes, but she blinked them back furiously to keep herself focused on Lee. He was still talking, almost oblivious to her.

"But pretty soon, all the crap I was feeling got rolled up and focused on one target. It all got turned into an absolute, raging fury at my father. In my head, he became responsible for all of it—Zak dying, even the way I hurt Gianne. Somehow I made that his fault too. Because he hadn't been a good father to Zak and me, and that was the whole reason, I told myself, that I was scared to become one.

"So I blamed him. It was all his fault." Lee let out a sound of self-disgust. "Easier than to take responsibility myself." He reached one hand up to rub his eyes.

"So I hated him. Oh, gods, I hated him. For all his sins, real and imagined. For Zak. For the ways he had hurt my mother. For Gianne. For the baby. Hell…" Lee exhaled sharply. "I was even mad at him for taking you away."

"Me?" Kara's voice was startled. "What do you mean?"

"You transferred here right after Zak's funeral. It was like you were on his side."

"Lee," Kara breathed. "I wasn't picking sides."

"I know that, now. But that was how I felt." He looked down, and his voice softened. "I missed you. I wanted to see you, talk to you. But I couldn't, because you were here. On his ship."

Kara sighed. "Did you ever find Gianne?"

Lee didn't answer for a long time, then he shook his head. "No. Though I didn't try too hard after Zak died. Too wrapped up in my own anger."

"But one day, about eight months after she left, I woke up and thought, 'I wonder if I'm a father?'"

"And then I couldn't stop thinking about it. For some reason, I imagined it was a girl, and I kept wondering what she looked like, and if she was happy.

"It's weird, I had never paid much attention to babies before, but suddenly I seemed to notice them everywhere. And as the months went by, I kept looking for babies who would be the same age as my baby.

"After a year or so, I was looking into the face of every toddler I saw, trying to see an echo of myself."

He was breathing heavier now, the words coming from him faster.

"Every time, I saw a little girl that age, it felt like I had been punched. I'd just get overwhelmed, sick almost, with the regret, and the guilt. Guilt for Gianne, yeah, but even more, guilt for what I had done to this kid. I was haunted by the idea that somewhere I had a child that I would never know, because I had been an idiot. I had done something to her far worse that anything my father had ever done to me. I had denied her the right to ever know her own father."

He took a long shuddering breath, Kara's hand was on the nape of his neck, gently stroking it. She felt him struggling to control his emotions. "It got so painful I finally started avoiding being around any kids."

Another long silence. "She'd be close to two, now." Lee finally said, in a voice close to a whisper.

Then he exhaled sharply. "Listen to me," he said fiercely. "I'm a frakkin' idiot.

"If Gianne didn't have an abortion. If the kid was a girl. And if that girl miraculously survived the Cylon Attack. Then…. she'd be about two."

Kara heard the raw pain in his voice and sensed that he was close to losing it. Feeling him trembling, she reached her arms around him and laid her cheek against his shoulder. He stayed silent, but his body continued shaking. Then she heard a small sniff. She shifted her head a fraction, peeking up under her lashes to see his face.

He was staring straight ahead, and tears were slowly sliding down his face. Her heart ached for him, but she sensed it was better to say nothing, and let his grief run its course. She shifted her eyes away, not wanting to intrude on his naked pain.

But she tightened her hold on him, and let him weep.

After five minutes or so, he reached up and dragged his palms roughly across his eyes, while letting out a long breath.

"Thanks," he said quietly. Kara released him, rolled her neck to unkink it, and leaned back against the wall.

"It's okay," she said with a little smile.

He took another deep breath, and resumed his story.

"I met Shevon on Cloud Nine, the day I was supposed to meet you and the others in the bar."

Kara tensed up at the woman's name, but fixed her eyes straight ahead and tried to focus on being Lee's friend, on letting him talk, on listening.

"Looking back," Lee continued, and his voice was filled with self-disgust. "I don't know how I let myself think that Paya was actually my child. I mean, Shevon was right. I was stupid."

He shook his head, frowning at the memory. "That day had been an annoying one. I was dealing with lots of officials from different ships, everyone wanting to bitch about one thing or another. I was fed up, and tired, and dying to just go to the bar and relax.

"And that's when I saw Shevon. She was just… standing there, smiling at me a little, as if she knew me. And there was…this little girl… next to her. And I couldn't stop staring at the girl. 'That's how old my daughter would be right now,' I thought. And then this little girl looked up at me, and…she had blue eyes."

Lee stopped there, and swallowed. "And it came again, really sudden, and hard, this… wave of regret and guilt. I hadn't seen any small kids since the Cylon Attack, actually, and I had forgotten that sick feeling I always got."

He drew another deep breath. "So there was the little girl playing, and I just couldn't tear my eyes from her. Then Shevon said hello. She must have picked up immediately that the way to get to me was through Paya." He gave a sharp, self-derisive laugh.

"She called me by my name. She said she knew who I was, had heard good things about me, and that she needed some medicine for Paya. And could I help?

"I gave her the name of the person on Cloud Nine responsible for medical supplies, then tried to excuse myself. She must have gotten nervous that I was leaving, so she said there was something else she needed to talk with me about. She said that she had known someone—a friend of mine—on Caprica.

"When she said that, she had this look on her face… like she knew something about me, but felt sympathetic. Like she felt sorry for me." He sighed in disgust, and shook his head. "She was good."

"So I asked her--who? And she just looked at me. And all I could think was—Gianne, it had to be Gianne. So I said her name, and Shevon hesitated, and then said something noncommittal.

"But seeing the little girl—Paya—somehow I convinced myself that Shevon had to be referring to Gianne.

"I remember feeling stunned. We went up to her room and talked. And I started telling her about Gianne, and asking Shevon questions. But in hindsight, I did most of the talking. At one point, I probably asked something about Paya, and she hinted… she hinted that Paya was Gianne's." Lee ran an agitated hand through his hair.

"It was only hints, she never came out and said it. But I looked into Paya's blue eyes, and I believed it. Oh gods, I believed it. I told myself that maybe Shevon didn't want to come out and say it because she was afraid. Afraid I'd take Paya from her if she told me the truth….

"After a while, Paya fell asleep, and I tried to leave. I told Shevon it was late, I had friends waiting for me. But then she started crying, acting desperate and needy. She talked about everyone she loved having died, and that Paya was all she had left, and that she couldn't lose her. And she was crying, and holding on to me…."

"Yeah, that's okay," Kara cut in suddenly. The hand she had placed comfortingly on Lee was now tensely held up to stop him. "I don't need all the details, Lee." Although she tried to keep her voice light, there was a definite edge to it.

Lee shook his head. "Nothing happened. My head was spinning, and I needed to get away, and just think through this. I wanted to talk about it with… someone."

Kara winced at that, recalling her reaction to him in the bar.

"But as I was leaving, she asked me again for help. She said she couldn't stay on Cloud Nine anymore, but wasn't sure how to transfer to a different ship. And she said she needed help with special medicines that Paya needed, medicines that couldn't be gotten through normal channels. But that someone named Phelan on the Prometheus might have a way to get what Paya needed. And would I please help Paya?"

Lee shook his head, remembering. "I told her I'd get back to her, and then I left, finally, to meet you at the bar." He exhaled sharply. "I must have acted pretty strange when I met up with you guys."

"Yeah, you did," Kara said. "But...I didn't help matters, I guess."

He shrugged, "Well…no." She was grateful that he refrained from pointing out that she had, in fact, been an absolute bitch.

"I think what bothered me the most about what you did," Lee said. "Was the way you talked about how I was so perfect, and didn't make mistakes. It felt like you knew, somehow, and you were throwing it in my face."

Kara made another pained face, remembering.

"When we got back to the Galactica," Lee continued. "I thought about talking to my Dad about it all, but….how would I have done that, exactly?"

He put on a mock-sincere voice: 'You know, Dad, you might have had a grandchild by now, but I drove her mother away because I am so frakked up.'"

Kara reached out again to rub his shoulder sympathetically. Lee clenched his jaw. "We had gotten to the point where I thought I had earned some respect from him. And I really, really didn't want to lose that.

"I don't think I slept that night. But at some point during the next day, I thought I had worked out what I should do. That if Paya were mine, then I needed to take responsibility for her, maybe even bring her here. And that maybe…maybe that meant taking responsibility for Shevon, too."

Unseen by Lee, Kara raised her eyebrows.

But Lee was continuing, "She seemed like she needed someone, and she was the only mother that Paya knew. How could I take her away from the kid?

"And somehow it seemed to offer a weird sense of justice. That if I did this, then I would have paid for what I had done to Gianne. That accepting the responsibility for these two, really committing myself to them, would be the way I could make it up to her.

"But something in me was panicking at the thought of it, of committing myself to some kind of relationship to Shevon. And that's probably why I got drunk. Which is how you found me."

He feel silent, as they both remembered their aborted passion in this very room. The tension between them grew suddenly thick. Self-conscious, Kara stilled her hand on Lee's shoulder. All her nerves were suddenly focused on her leg, still pressed up against Lee's.

His voice was soft, and a little hoarse when he began talking again. "When we were interrupted and I left, it wasn't because I didn't want …"

"Stop, Lee," Kara said, embarrassed and a little angry. She shifted slightly so that neither her leg nor her hand were touching him. "It's fine. I understand why you acted that way that night. Just…forget it."

Lee looked down at his hands in his lap. "No," he said finally. "I'm not going to forget it, because we do need to talk about it. It's not what you think, but…."

He glanced at her, and stopped, noticing the tension in her face. "Okay," he said softly. "Maybe we should wait to talk about that part." He reached out to touch, but she flinched, so he drew his hand back, and sighed.

"When I got up the next day," he continued after a moment. "I realized I had to go to Shevon and try to figure all this out. So I asked my Dad for a short leave, just for a day or two. I should have told him why, but… I don't know. I couldn't.

"But I could tell he was worried, and it made me uncomfortable. So I said something about a woman on Cloud Nine that I needed to talk to. He looked a little surprised, but I figured it would keep him from worrying about me.

"Shevon told me to meet her at the Prometheus. She said some friends there had found quarters for her and Paya.

"It was a weird couple of days with her. I wanted to do what I could to help her and Paya. Shevon acted like she really needed me, and I felt responsible for them. And it felt …right, I guess, to act like a provider for Paya. Act like a father.

"So, I got the medicine Shevon said Paya needed. There was a waiting list for it through official channels, so I did it illegally, through Phelan's black market. I didn't like doing it, but I told myself that that's what a father would do.

"I realize now that their idea was to get me so sucked in, that I'd keep my mouth shut for fear of being implicated. I could tell the people on the ship were sleazy, but Shevon said they were her friends, so I let it go.

"I talked to her about Paya and her maybe coming to the Galactica, but she seemed reluctant, so I didn't press it."

Kara inwardly flinched. She had been tense ever since Lee's story had shifted to his time with Shevon. She knew she could not listen if Lee began discussing the various ways he had fraked the whore who had betrayed him.

She bit the corner of her lip, then threw out what she hoped would be a diversion. "How did you find out about Fisk?"

He glanced at her, as if realizing where she didn't want the conversation to go. He nodded, and followed her lead. "I saw Fisk the day I arrived on the Prometheus. He had just arrived in an Raptor as well, and was talking to the man I learned later was Phelan.

"I didn't think anything of it, until the news hit the fleet a few hours later that Fisk had been found dead.

"Something just seemed strange about it, so I started asking questions—of crewmembers, residents. Trying to find out if anyone had seen anything suspicious. I stayed on the Prometheus longer than I had intended because I felt compelled to find out what had happened.

"The more I probed, the more I realized that the ship was essentially Phelan's own little kingdom, and he had his own private army doing his dirty work.

"But I didn't have anything solid to tie him to Fisk's murder. Until late the second day, when I found a mechanic who begged me to get him off the ship. He told me he had seen Phelan's men throw Fisk's body out the airlock, and he was terrified that if they knew what he had seen, that they'd kill him too.

"So I promised him I'd get him off the ship. That's when I started trying to get a call through to the Galactica, and couldn't. And then, someone jumped me when I tried to get back to my Raptor.

"By that point I knew I had to get Shevon and Paya off the ship. I was terrified that Phelan would go after them to get to me. I was grabbing Shevon's stuff in her quarters when the door burst in, and three of Phelan's men jumped me. I could hear Paya crying, and I tried…I really tried to help her, but the bastards just…" His hoarse voice tailed off. "I couldn't protect her."

"It looked like you tried pretty hard," Kara said. "You were awfully battered when I saw you later."

He shook his head, as if rejecting her sympathy. "They knocked me out, and I woke up in the pitch black, and realized I was in some sort of makeshift cell. I was there for probably an entire day. Felt that long anyway. No one came in. It was just me, alone in the dark."

He got silent again. "It was a long night," he finally said, in a voice close to a whisper. "All I could think of was that Paya and Shevon might both be dead, and that it was my fault. And then…well, it was a good night for revisiting all my sins.

"By the time Phelan's men came, and brought me to see him, I was ready to kill somebody. Or ready to get killed. Maybe both.

"And then…I found out Shevon had used me, and that she had lied about Paya being mine." Lee's voice became hard, and Kara knew his anger was directed as much at himself as it was Shevon.

"I hope someone shoots the bitch," Kara said fiercely. "At least she's on her way to the Astral Queen."

Lee was silent for a minute, then he shook his head. "I didn't mention her name to either my father or the investigating officer."

Kara's mouth dropped open, and her eyes blazed as she turned to him. "Why the hell not?"

Lee hesitated. "Because she's Paya's mother. And despite being a bitch to me, Shevon is a good mom to Paya. I saw that. And she's all Paya has. I can't take that away from her. I'm not her father. But I owe Paya that much."

A memory nudged Kara, but she hesitated. She hadn't a shred of sympathy for Shevon, but maybe it would help Lee to know what she had suddenly remembered. And it was Lee who was important, here. She turned to him.

"Shevon didn't want you killed, you know." Lee turned his head toward her. Kara bit her lip. "It was Phelan's men who decided on it, not her. She seemed kind of upset by it."

Lee nodded reflectively. Then he leaned back and sighed. A lot of his earlier tension seemed to have left him, now that he had related his long tale. He turned his head to give her a half smile, and reached out to entwine his hand in hers.

"Thanks for listening," he said softly.

Kara nodded, and squeezed his hand. They were quiet for a few minutes. The dim room was peaceful, with just the ticking sound of a clock, and the distant sounds of people conversing in nearby corridors.

Kara finally broke the silence. "So, this is 'talking,' huh? And you like doing this?" A smile tugged at her lips.

Almost against his will, Lee began to laugh softly.

"No, no, I can see us doing this often," she continued, moving her hand out of his and turning to him with a wide grin. "You know, maybe once a week, we can meet right here and we can 'talk.' It's good for me."

"Ah, don't kid yourself," Lee said with an answering smile. "We'll be back to our old selves tomorrow. You'll be giving me shit. I'll be yelling at you. We'll both be as repressed as ever."

Kara chuckled, then they grew quiet again, and she looked down, reaching for something profound to say to him.

"We've all frakked up in our lives, Lee," she finally said, with a sigh. "We've all done awful things to other people. It doesn't make you an evil person. In fact," she looked at him. "Since you've been on this ship, you've been a pretty outstanding person, actually. You put your life on the line for other people all the time. Every one of your pilots would go through hell and back for you. The president…" Kara snorted and gave the faintest suggestion of an eye-roll. "Well, you're her hero. And as for your father…you may not see it, but your father doesn't just love you. He respects you, as well. A lot."

Lee was looking down at his hands. After a moment he nodded slowly. "Thanks," he said quietly. "It's been really …good to talk with you about all this crap."

Kara gave a soft sigh of relief. It was good knowing she hadn't screwed this up. That simply by being here, by listening, she had helped him.

I'm calling the last bit 'chapter seven,' but it's an arbitrary chapter break since the file was so big. Six and Seven are really just one loooooong chapter, lol.