This will be a series of stand-alone stories which deal with the choices that the characters on Battlestar Galactica have made throughout the first half of the second season (I'll be posting in as much of the order of the season as I can). I want to explore what would have happened/changed if things had gone differently. Some of the stories will be angst, some will be shippy, some will be funny. There will be different pairings throughout. Don't feel like you have to check out each one to understand the others. All I ask is that if it intrigues you, then give it a try. Hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed writing them!

There are pivotal moments in one's life where if you take the wrong path everything may change. Those changes may be for the good or for the bad. The possibilities are endless.

He stared at the building in front of him. The Delphi Mental Institution had survived the nuclear holocaust with barely a scratch on it.

"Like a shiny fraking beacon calling out to me," he whispered, walking up the first step to the main entrance.

Lee Adama knew there was no way he would make it out of this one alive. At this point, he didn't care.

The Raptor touched down on the surface of Caprica, and Lee let out a deep breath. When he had first decided to steal a ship to go look for her, he hadn't actually thought he would make it back to his home world. He thought he'd change his mind at some point.

But then the sight of Kara's face when she apologized and he simply walked away would pop into his head. He would think about how she should have come home over two weeks ago, and he would hear her apology ringing in his ears. He would remember his hollow stare as he pushed whatever they had to the side and ignored her.

There was no way he could back out.

"Captain Adama."

The voice yelling his name made Lee pause halfway up the stairs to the Delphi Museum. He drew his gun and pointed it at a pilot he thought had died well over two months ago. Lee's eyes narrowed as he clicked the safety off. He would never have guessed that this man would turn out to be a Cylon. "Stop where you are."

Helo threw his hands up defensively. "I'm not what you think I am."

"Okay," Lee smirked. "What are you then?"

"A complete fraking moron if you want Kara's opinion." Helo smirked a little himself as Lee faltered upon hearing her name.

Lee' s focus shifted. Frankly, he didn't care if Helo was a Cylon at this point. He did not come back to his war-torn home for anything but her. "You know where she is?"

"She was with me up until about five days ago. The Cylons attacked, we retreated, and she wasn't with us."


"Who's we?"

"There's a resistance group of survivors who've been attacking the Cylons since they realized what was happening. Kara and I stumbled upon them when we were trying to find a ship out of here." Helo's eyes drifted down to focus on the gun still in Lee's hand. "Would you put that away, please, sir? I'm not a Cylon. Honestly, would Kara trust me if there was any chance I was?"

Lee stared at Helo for a moment before holstering his gun. "How am I to know that you're telling me the truth about being with her?"

He could see Helo thinking for a moment before he figured out how to convince Lee he was telling the truth. "The first few hours we spent together, Kara seemed preoccupied with something. Eventually she told me right before she jumped away from Galactica, she had ruined the only friendship she had left in this world. She wouldn't talk about it, but I could tell it never really stopped bothering her. Something makes me think she was wrong, though."

"And why is that?" Lee said, walking back down the stairs to stand beside Helo. He wasn't completely satisfied yet, but his gut was telling him that this was the Helo he had met briefly before the Cylons attacked.

"Well, I assume she was talking about you. Obviously she didn't ruin anything if you were willing to come all this way to look for her."

"You're right," Lee agreed. He had come to Caprica in order to apologize in the only way he knew how. He and Kara only related to one another in overly dramatic, grandiose gestures. "Do you have any idea where she is?"

"None." Helo shook his head. "We went back for her when we realized she wasn't with us, but there was no sign of her. Anders has been running himself into the ground, trying to figure it out."

"Anders?"

"Samuel T. Anders. He used to be the captain of the Caprica Buccaneers. They were in the mountains outside Delphi for some high altitude training when the Cylons attacked. Anders is leading the resistance movement we fell into."

"And he's searching for Kara?"

"She meant something to him."

Lee's face lit up in confusion. "How long have you been with this resistance?"

"Kara was with them for about a week before she was taken. She and Anders had a thing."


"Could you be a little more specific?"

"It was typical Kara," Helo replied, assuming the Captain would know what that meant.

Lee raised his eyebrows in surprise. He definitely hadn't expected this when imagining the trouble Kara was getting into on Caprica. "Frak buddy?"

"Yeah, but with the heightened emotions of the world ending, it got a little intense."

"Don't move!" yelled a voice from behind Helo, interrupting the two pilots' impromptu discussion of Starbuck's sex life. Lee craned his neck to see a man inching his way towards them, a rather intimidating Scorpion in his hands.

"It's okay, Anders," Helo called back. "I know him."

"That means shit," Anders said as he got closer to the pair. "You also know a Cylon rather intimately."

Lee glanced questioningly at Helo. "I'll explain later," Helo insisted. "Anders, would you put down the fraking gun before Apollo gets mad and shoots you dead?"

A look of surprise came over Anders as he lowered his gun. "Apollo, huh? It's nice to finally meet you."

"You know me?" Lee couldn't understand how Anders would have any idea who he was. He had been stationed mostly on the Atlantia before the attacks, and while there, he had done nothing to bring himself special attention. His feats on the Galactica were more momentous, but they had all occurred after the world had ended. Kara was so fraking angry at him most of the time, and Helo barely knew him. There was no way this Anders person could know him.

"Kara talked about you all the time," Anders explained, noticeably relaxing now that he knew who the mystery stranger was. "She said you were the only person she could ever trust in the air."

Helo watched as Apollo's face went white. The words obviously took him by surprise. Obviously, Apollo really had no clue how much Starbuck valued him. Funny how it was always the ones you cared for the most that you couldn't be honest with.

After a moment of tense silence between the three men, Helo stepped forward to stand in front of Anders. "Any new developments?"

Anders motioned for them to start moving as they made their way to where a line of trucks stood. "My people think they have a lead on where Kara and Sue-Shaun were taken, but they're still not sure. I don't want to risk anyone's lives until the information is confirmed."

"Tell me where it is and I'll go," Lee suggested. "You don't need to worry about losing my life. I'm only here to get Kara back. I'm no help to whatever resistance movement you've formed."

Helo jumped in before Anders could answer. "Give Anders a day, Apollo. He'll know if this lead is going to pan out by then."

"If the intel is correct, we'll all go and get Kara," Anders insisted.

"You want me to just sit around this fraking ghost planet while she's out there somewhere, probably in a great deal of pain? No way." Lee shook his head. "Obviously there's a few things Kara left out when she was telling you about me. I've risked my life to save Kara more times than I can count, and she's done the same to me. I will not just stare into space while she's out there in trouble."

"I have somewhere I can take you," Helo insisted. "It'll pass the time until we have something to go on." Not waiting for Lee to agree, he turned to Anders. "I have the keys to Kara's Tank. I'm going to take Apollo to somewhere quiet so I can tell him about what's happening on Caprica. We'll be back early tomorrow to find out if there's anything to go on."

Anders stared at Lee for a few moments before giving Helo a terse nod. The two Galactica pilots watched in silence as Anders pulled his gun out and walked back in the direction they had been heading.

"He's going back to Delphi Union. That's where the group is camped out." Helo turned to look at Lee. "I'm not sure I trust him."

"What?" Lee exclaimed.

"There's something off about him. He's a good guy with good intentions, but everything he does is just not quite right. He claims to love Kara." Helo ignored the way Lee tensed at that information. "And yet he isn't going crazy trying to find her like I've been. In the past few minutes since you landed, you've shown a lot more urgency to find her than he has."

"He doesn't know her like you and I do," Lee said as they began walking towards where the Tank was parked. "She might have taken him into her bed, but we both know that's the easy part. It's getting Kara to let you into her life that takes time."

Helo laughed in agreement. "It's part of her charm."

"So, seriously, Helo, what the frak are we doing? You just said that we both love Kara enough to tear this whole planet apart. So why aren't we doing that right now?"

Helo opened the driver's side door and slid into the front seat. "I need you to see something. Two weeks ago, Kara took me to her apartment to get this car so we could stop walking."

"Her apartment," Lee said, nodding his head. "I assume you got to see the post-Zak fallout then."

Helo shifted the car into drive and started steering his way through the deserted streets. "You know about it?"

"Who do you think helped her through that time?"

"I vaguely remember her mentioning not seeing you for two years in the days before you showed up on Galactica for the decommissioning ceremony," Helo pointed out.

"Kara was messed up after my brother's death," Lee explained. "She completely lost touch with reality. At the time, I had no idea why. Needless to say, she walked around in a guilt-ridden haze, barely eating and barely sleeping. I don't think she even realizes I spent those first few months with her in that apartment. It was hell to get military leave for that long a time, but Admiral Nagala seemed to have a soft spot for me. It was a good thing, too. She needed someone to watch over her."

"You spent months with her and she doesn't remember?"

Lee shook his head. "She thought I was Zak. She talked to me, cried to me, screamed at me." Lee paused for a moment before continuing, "She touched me like I was him."

Something suddenly occurred to Helo. "She picked up a jacket when we were there."

"It was mine, the official graduation gift from flight school for all of its Viper pilots. I let her paint in it. It helped to calm her when the feelings pressed down too hard." Lee looked over at Helo. "She thinks the jacket is Zak's. I never had the heart to tell her it wasn't."

"There's a lot that no one knows about you two, isn't there?"

"Yeah," Lee said, turning to stare at the buildings passing by. "I don't know what it was, but when Zak introduced me to Kara, something just clicked. She was the friend I had been searching my whole life to find."

"Friend?" Helo said, shaking his head in disbelief.

"What?"

"You two don't seem to fit into the normal definition of friendship."

Lee let out a small laugh. "She always liked the unconventional. Kara couldn't have anything in her life that might be interpreted as normal. She was the best flight instructor they had on Picon, and she chose to date one of the pilots who in all probability was going to wash out. She was the most stubborn, hot-headed pilot the Academy had ever turned out, and she chose to be friends with the clear-minded, by-the-book older brother of the man she loved."

"I think it's time you cut the crap, Apollo," Helo insisted. "A man doesn't jump back into a Cylon stronghold just for a friend and the woman his brother loved once upon a time."

Lee didn't answer.

The rest of the ride was spent in silence, and Helo wondered if maybe he had overstepped his bounds. There were probably things better left to denial when it came to Kara.

Helo let Lee enter the apartment first, watching as Galactica's CAG slowly stepped down into the personification of Kara's pain. The wall of the stairwell still made Helo's breath catch. The fact that a woman he had known so well could hide away this amazing artistic skill was astounding.

Helo watched Lee mouth the words of the poem splashed across the wall in jagged black letters. "Do you know anything about that?" he asked.

"I was there the day she painted it," Lee said simply. He shut his eyes as the memory came back to him.

Kara had woken up with the early morning light and painted well into the day to create this statement. Lee had laid in her bed, watching her pain furiously in nothing but his jacket and her underwear, tears falling down her face. The words of the poem called to mind what had happened the night before. That was the moment he knew it was time to move on. His presence wasn't helping her anymore.

Oblivious to Helo's presence behind him, Lee's eyes rested on the words that stung the most. 'Stroking my hair to the beat of his heart, watching a boy turn into a man'. He could still remember the feeling of her hair against his chest as he held her close in the mess of covers.

The day before she painted this, Kara had been going on about how it was her fault that he was dead. She never seemed to tire of blaming herself for Zak's death. Lee had lost track of how many times she had apologized to him.

Then that night, something shifted. She had woken up from a nightmare, screaming and crying. Lee had moved to sit beside her on the bed and gathered her into his arms. Physical comfort was the only thing that got through to her when she remembered the horrible mess of fire and Viper metal. Kara's hands had reached up to rest at the back of his neck and, still murmuring apologies, she touched her lips softly to his.

Lee had pulled back immediately, knowing that this was crossing the line, but Kara didn't even notice the rejection. She just kept on apologizing for killing him for a few seconds before a look of confusion mixed with recognition came across her face. Her hands tightened around him and with one whisper of his name, he was lost.

The next morning, he woke up in her bed and turned to see her flinging black paint at the wall. When he whispered her name, she turned and smiled at him for a moment. His stomach dropped out at the sight of her. She was writing about what had happened between them the night before. He wondered if Kara had been aware it was him she was with the night before or if she thought it was Zak coming back to love her one last time.

Lee knew he was going to have to leave for his own sake before he could figure out the answer. Either way, it would hurt too much to know.

"Apollo?"

Helo's hesitant voice pulled Lee back into the present, and he walked down the rest of the stairs. "I'm sorry. I was just remembering." Lee took a quick glance around the apartment before turning to look at Helo. "We have to find her."

"We will," Helo said with a sad nod.

"Were you the only one to see this place?" Lee asked, taking a seat on the couch at the base of the stairs.

"We came here before we met up with anyone else."

"And she never came back here? Never brought anyone else to see this place?"

"If you're asking if she brought Anders here, then no. I let it slip one day that she had an apartment in Delphi and he asked to see it, but she said no. She told him they didn't have time to be trivial."


"Good." Lee kicked up his feet and shut his eyes, letting himself relax for a brief moment.

"What's the supposed to mean?"

"This place, every paint stroke, every discarded piece of clothing, every speck of dirt, it's all part of the pain she's had to live with. It's upfront and in your face. You can't avoid it." Lee paused for a second. "That's not the kind of thing that should be shared with just anyone."

"She showed it to me," Helo pointed out. "But I'm sure you think that was just a necessary move because she needed the weapons she had stored here."

Lee shook his head. "No, she meant to show you this place. She wouldn't have let you inside if she didn't want you to see. I'm not stupid, Helo. You're one of the people she trusted on Galactica. When she heard the news that her squadron was gunned down, it was the loss of you that hurt her the most. You meant a lot to her."

"Okay," Helo sighed. "You should get some rest. I'm going to scavenge around for anything we could use to get Kara back. She has to have more weapons stashed somewhere around here. We can head back to the high school in the morning."

Lee waited until Helo had made his way out of the apartment before opening his eyes and standing up. Silently he made his way over to the bed and ran his hands over the sheets. He could still feel the heat left behind from his past. Shrugging his jacket off, Lee stretched out along the bed and breathed the memories of Kara in deep.