Kara, Lee, and Helo were all in silent agreement that Picon was going to be the hardest planet for them to face. It was a place they had all called home once, some more than others. Picon was Helo's sure bet when it came to pyramid games. It was the first place in a long string of military bases that Kara found herself calling home. It was the Academy on Picon that she chose to enter when she hurt her knee. Picon was where Lee kept an apartment for all those times he couldn't face going home to see his mother. There was a hole on Caprica that Lee was desperately to ignore, and Picon had stood for that avoidance.

Therefore, all three of them weren't too surprised when Boomer found it difficult to pinpoint where any survivors might be holed up. On every other planet, she had had some sort of intuition or opinion, but on Picon, she was clueless. This planet held nothing for her except memories of a life she did not live. The team was forced to randomly chose areas to search in hopes that their own intuition would lead them right.

That was the sole reason that Kara found herself trudging through her old stomping grounds in the military sector of Picon. Memories were hitting her left and right of days that were so simple and carefree. Her years working through the ranks of the Academy had probably been the only time she had lived without guilt.

"Something on your mind?"

Kara turned to look at Anders. She hadn't even noticed he had walked up beside her. "This place used to be my home," she explained.

"I understand. My team had bunkers back on Caprica. We stopped there the day we came down from the mountains. It was hard to see what had become of it."

Kara gave him a weak smile. He had been trying to get her to relate to him for several missions now, but she still found herself pulling away. She had given him a chance when she brought him to the Fleet, and he had blown it. Not to mention the fact that her giving him a chance had kept her from preventing some crazy Cylon virus's attack on her best friend.

She chuckled to herself. Calling Lee her best friend was a huge understatement. Slowly as they made their way across the other eleven colonies, Kara had come to realize that he was a hell of a lot more. She just hadn't been willing to admit that before now. Staring death in the face and giving it a big frak you could break a person's walls down rather quickly.

"There's movement up ahead," Lee yelled to the four people behind him. "Everybody at attention!"

Kara unholstered her gun as she made her way to stand beside Lee. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"Bad feeling that we're going to be shot by the Cylons or bad feeling we're going to be shot by the survivors we find?"

"A little of both," she smirked.

"I could do without being shot at for once."

Kara lowered her gun and turned to look at Lee. "Come on. I put up a lot of cover fire for you. You haven't even come close to getting hurt again."

"There's still been a few close calls."

"No way," she hissed. "I made sure you were safe."

Lee grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop, letting the others surge in front of them. "You know, you've seemed pretty fraking determined to keep me safe the whole time we've been on this mission. It makes a man wonder why he's so important?"

"Come on, Lee," she said, pulling away from his grasp. "You know why."

"Sometimes it's nice to hear you say it," he replied.

The honesty in his voice made it hard for her to lie, but Kara wasn't sure she could tell him the truth. Wouldn't he just laugh in her face to know how much she depended on him? She raised her eyes to look at him and the smile dancing across his face made her cringe. Frak! She did a lot more than just depend on him. If he kept looking at her like that, she just might admit it, too.

"How many days did I spend with you while you were in that coma?" she said, hoping this was a safe route to take. Everything she said to Lee always seemed to balance two steps away from dangerous.

"A lot, but I think it was mostly out of guilt."

"It was out of concern, you fraking moron," Boomer said as she walked up to them. "Now if you two clueless frakheads will get your head in the game, Helo thinks we're coming upon a hot zone."

Lee saw Kara holding back a laugh and realized that they may have lost a little bit of focus. After all, the Cylon had just scolded them. "Boomer, hang back," Lee said as he worked his way up to the front. "The survivors we find might recognize you."

That was the only warning given before the Cylons' cry rang through the air in the form of gunfire. Kara jumped into action, returning the fire as she ran up to cover Lee. She hadn't been lying. On all eleven of the planets they had jumped to, she had spent most of her time making sure Lee was safe. He had already gotten hurt once when she let down her guard and left him to fend for himself. She wasn't about to let that happen again.

She felt a bullet graze her shoulder, and the impact forced her to turn. Her eyes locked with Anders and Helo as the two men sought cover, and she felt herself wondering if maybe they should just leave Picon behind. These missions were starting to wear them down. She wasn't sure if any of them were up to convincing another group of holocaust survivors to leave the planet they called home for some distant promise of freedom.

"Kara, get your ass down on the ground!" Lee screamed over the gunfire.

Kara laughed at the naked concern in his voice as she threw herself down behind the same crumbling wall he was crouched behind. "Stop acting like you're responsible for me."

Lee paused in reloading his gun and gave her a funny look. "Aren't I?"

Kara didn't have time to figure out what the frak that meant as the wall exploded under a barrage of exploding rounds. She felt Lee's hand close around her arm as he dragged her off the ground and pulled her towards the building shell Helo and Boomer were crouched in. Kara glanced to the side and saw Anders throwing down cover fire for them. Her eyes continued to scan and saw the cause of all the commotion, a handful of Centurions.

It took Kara a few moments to realize Lee had let go of her arm at some point. When she turned to glance back at him, her heart dropped out. He had stopped running and was clutching his abdomen. Kara's eyes couldn't pull themselves away from how his hands were suddenly coated in red.

Kara heard someone call her name and tell her to hit the ground, and she obeyed mainly on instinct. She looked back up at where Lee still stood clutching his wound, his skin getting paler by the second, before she turned to see where the warning had come from. That was when she saw Anders bracing himself up against the wall, his arm hanging useless at his side with probably three bullets in the shoulder.

She shook the hair out of her face and her eyes locked with Helo's as he stood in the building across from her. "Go," he mouthed as both he and Boomer began to throw down more cover fire.

Kara didn't hesitate. Later, she would have time to wonder why she chose to go the way she did. Later she would wonder if it had to do with the severity of the wound or if it was just because she knew she couldn't live if he died. Later, she would have to figure out when she had realized she loved him.

For now, all she knew was she had to get to him.

Kara's arms came around Lee just as his knees buckled, and she managed to pull him to cover before they fell to the ground. Her hands went down to add more pressure to his wound.

"Where's your gun?" he whispered.

She looked up at his eyes which were already beginning to droop, and her anger seethed through her calm demeanor. "What the frak do I care?" she yelled. "It's out there somewhere. I don't know. I don't care."

"You should care," he scolded.

"You've been shot, Lee," she replied, pushing the hair out of her eyes with her shoulder.

Lee began to cough, and Kara did her best to ignore the way his body tensed in pain from the movement. His hand turned over to wrap itself around hers. "Kara, you need to let go. Get everyone back to the ship and get out of here. Picon doesn't matter that much. You need to get back to the Fleet."

"I should have known you'd try that brave crap with me." She glared down at him. "Well, it's not going to work. You're not going to be able to reason with my rational side or piss me off enough to make me leave you. We're doing this the way we were always supposed to."

She saw Lee's eyes glisten with some sort of recognition, and it brought a smile to her face. She hadn't been wrong. Neither one of them could bear to see the other one go before they did. She pulled her hand out of his to reach up and brush the side of his face.

It was right there on the tip of her tongue. Oblivious to the continuing gunshots and the sounds of Helo and Boomer screaming at her, Kara knew that this was the moment she had been holding herself back from since Lee first stepped foot on Galactica. It was going to happen now.

"Lee, I lo-"

And then the world around them exploded.