Kara's head started pounding even before she realized she was waking up. When she finally managed to force her eyes open, it felt like the whole world was exploding all over again.

"Relax, Kara. You're fine."

Kara forced herself to focus as she recognized the voice. It wasn't who she thought would be by her side. "Anders?"

"Yeah, I'm here," he said, grasping her hand. Her eyes shifted to his other arm, which was locked in place by a rather intimidating sling. "You scared us for a while there. You hit your head pretty hard in that blast."

Her mind closed around what he was saying, and suddenly she remembered where she had last been. "Lee? Where's Lee?"

"I'm right here, Kara," Lee answered, stepping away from the wall on the other side of the room. He limped over to stand on the opposite side of her bed and gave her a smirk. "What? Were you expecting me to be in a coma again?"

Her scowl made him laugh. His laughter only made her scowl more.

Lee immediately picked up on her bad mood and compensated in the only way he knew how. "Did you forget? You were here to protect me this time," he reminded her in that insanely soothing voice that she couldn't seem to get from anyone else.

Kara's hand reached out blindly, and she could feel him wince as she connected with his body just above the waist of his pants. So she hadn't imagined him being shot. It had happened. Her hand lingered, and she could feel Anders tense beside her. Her eyes stayed locked with Lee's for a few moments before she realized she was no longer in a dirty Picon street.

Lee could see Kara begin to panic. Her mind was trying to process the situation too quickly, but there was too much that had happened while she was out. He needed to get her to focus. "Guys, could you give me a minute alone with Kara while I fill her in on what's happened?"

Kara looked around and realized that Anders and Lee weren't the only people left in the room. Helo and Boomer were hanging back by the door, and there was a young man standing beside them. Kara narrowed her eyes at the man. "Do I know you?"

"Yeah, you do, Starbuck," the stranger said, smiling before stepping out of sight.

She turned to look over at Anders and then Lee. "What the frak is going on?"

"Anders," Lee said as he set himself down on the edge of Kara's bed. "Please."

Anders stared at him a moment before releasing Kara's hand. "If you need me, I'll be right down the hall planning out our next move with Helo."

Kara nodded even though she really had no idea what any of that meant. Not to mention she wasn't sure why she would need him if Lee was going to be right there.

The room filled with silence for a moment, and she knew Lee was deciding if she was actually strong enough to handle whatever it was he had to say. "I'm fine," she insisted. "Just tell me what happened before the curiosity kills me."

"There's a resistance movement on Picon like we've seen on the other planets. The only difference is this one was a little more professional than the others. That man you saw before? His name is Tanner Hughes. He's a Lieutenant in the Colonial Fleet."

Kara's face lit up with recollection. "I taught him! Hughes… his call sign was Trigger!"

"That's right. He was in your last class of students when you were still teaching flight school. There are twenty-nine survivors here, and all of them were part of the Academy, Kara. All I keep thinking is if we can pull this off, it will be a huge victory for the Fleet."

"Pull what off?"

"We're going to try to load as many ships onto ours as we can. I want to bring back both pilots and equipment to give us a little bit of reinforcement. When the President and my father thought of this mission, I bet they never thought we could find the answer to our shortage problems."

She grabbed his hand and beamed. "That's brilliant, Lee! Do you really think we can do it?"

"If you ever get your ass out of bed, sure we can."

Even though Lee had been joking, the room filled with silence as the focus shifted to the reason why she was in that bed in the first place. Kara could feel Lee fighting the urge to pull his hand away from her, and she started to wonder if maybe more had happened while she had been unconscious than anyone was willing to admit. "Lee?" she asked hesitantly. "Why'd you really ask to talk to me alone?"

"You were freaking out," he said half-heartedly.

Kara could spot his defensiveness a mile away, and they both knew it. He really was worried about telling her what was weighing on his mind. "I know that I was a part of it, but why else did you clear the whole room?"

"It's not a big deal," he insisted.

"Lee, I'm not going to break if you tell me something I don't want to hear. What's going on?"

"It's just normal 'we're never going to make it out of this one alive' stuff. There isn't anything else."

She shook her head. "Lee, you said you couldn't do this mission without me. If you needed me by your side so much, you wouldn't shut me out."

"I do need you," he whispered.

Kara could still feel him trying to pull away. "Then tell me what has you so worried."

She could see Lee hesitate before he pulled back from her and stepped to his feet. "Anders doesn't know you chose me, Kara. He thinks that he and I both got shot and pulled to safety right before the Picon resistance saved us. He doesn't know that you were trying to save me yourself." Lee's chin tightened in determination. "I'm starting to think that maybe it's better that way."

"You make it sound so horrible that I tried to save your life," she objected. She was doing her best not to let him see how much his words hurt. She had let her instincts take over when she made the decision to put pressure on Lee's wound instead of Anders. It was the first time she had checked all rational thought at the door, and she couldn't see anything wrong with that in retrospect.

"You have to realize that Anders doesn't really have a lot in his life right now. He's lost his home from before the Cylon attacks and any semblance of normalcy he had with the resistance after the Cylon attacks. Unlike him, you and I are still heavily rooted in a world that's completely familiar. We're used to combat situations and knowing we might die at any second. This is all new to him."

"Anders isn't some little child. He's learning how to handle it."

"You're missing my point. Anders doesn't have anyone else to live for except you, Kara. You're the only person he loves who's still alive."

"That's why you wanted to talk to me alone? You want me to pretend like I'm not completely disgusted with him?" she cried.

"Why are you so disgusted with him?" Lee asked. "You never really explained what he did to you. All you've said was that he isn't the guy you thought he was. I'm starting to get the feeling that revelation had something to do with me."

Kara could feel her whole body tense. She had been avoiding telling Lee what happened between her and Anders for weeks now. She knew that he would feel guilty for what he had unintentionally caused, and she dreaded having to convince him that no matter what, it wasn't his fault. She just wanted things to stay the way they were right now. The memory of the harsh words he had said to her before her first jump to Caprica and after her return home had finally faded away. Having Lee so close to death had made it easy to give up the grudges they both had against one another.

"Kara, you can tell me."

Lee's insistent voice broke into her thoughts, and she couldn't help but smile at the way he looked so concerned for her. Lee had been constantly looking out from her ever since the Cylons' first attacked. In truth, though, it had always been that way for him when it came to her. Since the first moment they met, he had never really changed.

He deserved to know how much she appreciated that.

"Anders couldn't understand why I wouldn't leave you when I got back from my rescue mission," she finally whispered.

"That's all?"

"Yeah, that's all," she said, glaring at him. Obviously, Lee wasn't seeing the severity of what Anders had done. "He couldn't let me spend some time with my best friend who got attacked by the Cylons and ended up in a coma without getting jealous."

"To be fair, Kara, you were spending all of your time with me."

"You are not defending him!" she hissed. "Unbe-fraking-lievable!"

"Look at it from his perspective. The woman he loves risks everything to come back and save him just like she promised only to abandon him the first chance she gets."

"It didn't happen like that."

"Does he know that?"

Kara understood what Lee was trying to get at. She had come to the same realization after her original overreaction. She would have forgiven Anders weeks ago if her whole mind and body hadn't been focused on Lee. Now it was too late to go back.

Besides, no matter what Anders had said or how many times he tried to apologize, she knew that he still didn't understand. He would always be jealous of Lee, and she didn't want to have to build a relationship knowing that.

Things would have been easier if Kara had been the kind of person who could just compartmentalize the pain in order to keep her life normal. On many things, she probably could have ignored the pain of having someone she cared about hanging on to life by a thread in order to keep things in her life from changing. Not with Lee, though. She could never ignore the pain when it came to Lee.

"I couldn't just leave you," she whispered.

"Why?"

The question hung between them, and they both knew that she wasn't going to answer it. It was the one area that both of them were afraid to touch.

Lee's words broke the silence. "Give Anders another shot."

"You really want me to?" she asked, trying to gauge his reaction.

Something flashed across his eyes, but he quickly tucked it back from where it came. "I think you owe it to yourself to be sure you're not making a mistake by shutting him out."

"You want to talk to me about having regrets?" she said, laughing. If Lee only knew how many of the regrets in her life revolved around him, he wouldn't have brought up this topic as a rationale to get her to take back Anders.

"I think you shouldn't shut out the possibility that you might be overreacting a little."

Kara's mind flashed back to that Picon street. She was on the verge of saying something to Lee when she thought death loomed over them. She had been about to admit how much she loved him, and here he was trying to get her to agree to love another man. Obviously she had been wrong to think he might feel the same way about her. "Fine. I'll give Anders another shot."

Lee seemed satisfied that she was telling the truth and walked towards the door. Kara knew she should leave it alone, but she found she had to say one last thing. Even after everything he said, she couldn't let Lee walk off thinking that this was something she was doing for anyone but him. "I'll give Anders a chance but only because you asked me to."

He turned to look at her, and Kara suddenly recognized what had flashed across his face only seconds before. He was holding something back from her, something he desperately wanted to keep from picking up on, and it was hurting him to do so. She narrowed her eyes. "Lee?"

"What is that supposed to mean?" he said, stalking back over to the side of her bed and crossing his arms. His eyes bore into her.

Kara suddenly felt uncomfortable and turned to look down at her hands. "Nothing."

"It meant something or else you wouldn't have said it," he insisted.

She thought that over for a second until her mind finally rested on why she had decided to give Anders another change. The real reason actually took her by surprise. She hadn't even known she was still holding on to that mistake.

"Kara?" Lee said, taking a step closer.

She looked up at him for a second before turning her attention back to her hands. "I'm just trying to fix a mistake I made before. Like you said, it's not a good thing to have regrets. I let you believe once that I didn't value your opinion. I let you think that you weren't good enough in my eyes. I regret that."

"Are you talking about that tylium mission, Kara? That was ages ago!"

"I know," she said quietly. "I can't get it out of my head, though. It was such a cruel thing to do to you before a big mission like that. I just want you to know that I never meant it."

"I knew that the second I stepped off my ship and saw you waiting for me," Lee said, reaching out to hold her hand again.

The small movement finally made Kara look up at him, and it was hard to say which one of them looked more ashamed. " I don't see why you're pushing me towards Anders," she said bluntly. "I mean, if you're not still mad at me, why are you so determined to push me off onto someone else?"

Kara's eyes searched his, and Lee felt himself grow uncomfortable. He turned his head to stare vacantly at the wall. "That's not what I'm doing," he quietly objected. "I just don't want to see you have regrets and know I was the cause of them."

"I don't have regrets about any of that. The choices I made came from the heart, Lee. If I choose to let this thing with Anders go, then that's it. That's my choice."

"It's not that simple, Kara. I care about you. I want you to be happy."

His words made the anger swell up inside of her. Kara was so damn tired of fighting to understand Lee, and she was tired of struggling to make him understand her. It was too damn hard. "Obviously you don't care. Otherwise you might see that I have good reasons for what I did!" Her mind flashed back to all the misunderstandings they had gone through since the day Zak had introduced them. Everything really did go back to that point. "But then how could you really understand my choice when you still see me as only the woman your brother once loved?"

"That's not true," he protested. "You're a hell of a lot more than that."

"Oh really? What have you ever done to prove that?" she asked. "You protect me out of duty to him. You keep watch over me because he can't. People in the Fleet consider us friends, but are we really?"

"Of course we are," Lee said, moving to take a seat beside her. He kept his eyes focused on the wall. "And I don't just protect you out of duty to my brother. I do it because I want to."

'But why do you do it, Lee? Why do you feel like it's your job to keep me safe?"

"The same could be asked of you," he pointed out. Lee waited for Kara to object, but she stayed silent. It was odd. Kara always had a joke or some sort of mocking taunt whenever their conversation got serious. He bit down on his bottom lip as the worry started to rise up in him again.

Her quiet voice broke into his thoughts. "You're worried about something again."

"It's nothing." Instead of insisting that it was something, Kara simply moved her hand to brush against the side of his leg. That small show of comfort was too much for Lee. "You don't understand what it's like to see the changes that have happened to you, Kara. I tried to tell myself that they were just because of what happened to you on Caprica, but that's not the truth. I saw the look on your face that day on the Astral Queen. You smiled at me in a way I had never seen before. It hurt me when I realized it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the man you met on Caprica."

Kara's eyes went wide. Lee had it all wrong. At the time, she had no idea, but now she knew the happiness she felt in that moment had nothing to do with Anders. All thoughts of Anders had been cast from her mind the second she saw him. Lee was the reason she smiled and the reason that what happened to her on Caprica finally stopped hurting.

"You left the Fleet as quickly as you got here, Kara. You were hell bent on returning to Caprica, and when you first told me about Anders, I finally understood why. It made me angry that my father had to be the one to tell me the whole story about who Anders was. I still don't understand why you couldn't tell me about that yourself."

"So I thought I loved Anders? That doesn't mean anything. People make quick attachments when they're thrown into high-tension situations."

"It's not about that. It's about the way you've been since you brought Anders back." Lee couldn't bring himself to look up at her. He didn't think he could say what he had to if he had to see the reaction on her face. "I used to marvel at the fact that you stayed so brave and strong when the Cylons attacked. You never lost your determination to hold fast to life. Then the Cylons attacked me personally and I ended up in a coma. When I woke up, that bravery was no longer in your eyes. There was only sadness."

Lee waited for her reaction and was surprised when a few minutes had passed by and she still hadn't said a word. "I can't help but think I did that to you," he whispered before finally forcing himself to look up at her. Kara's eyes were brimming with tears as she looked at him, her gaze locked with his in a desperate search for something. What that something might be scared him to death.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were my big brother, Lee," she whispered. "You're so determined to protect me from being hurt that you're pretty blind to everything else." She shut her eyes and let out a soft sigh. "I'm tired of being the one you use to fill the hole that Zak left behind."

Lee's face lit up in confusion. Kara honestly couldn't think he was just using her as a substitute for Zak. Hadn't she been listening to what he was trying to say?

Then again, he had been holding a few things back from her, mostly for his own sake. He couldn't say everything he felt and still expect their friendship to be there in the morning. There were things in his past he was sure that she couldn't handle right now. He didn't want to be the one to give her even more weight to bear.

Seeing her almost on the brink of tears because of him was the final straw, though. He had to prove to her that she was more than just Zak's fiancée. She wasn't just one of a handful of people who could help him remember his brother. She meant more to him than any other person. It had been like that since practically the first moment he met her.

He took a deep breath, knowing he had no other choice. He couldn't let her go on thinking she was just a painful reminder of things he had lost. "There's something I didn't tell you before, Kara. I thought it might upset you, but you've made it clear that it's not my job to protect you."

"I can handle it," she said as she pushed the tears away with the back of her hand.

"I don't think you can," he said quietly, "but I guess you deserve to know anyway. You asked me a question about a month ago. I didn't want to answer it at the time because I was still ashamed of what I had done. You wanted to know who I fell in love with when I was dating Gianne, right?"

Kara's eyes went wide. She hadn't expected him to bring that back up, especially not now. It made no sense. "I don't see what that has to do with this."

"It has everything to do with this, and I think you know why. I think you've always known the answer to why I stopped seeing Gianne."

"You told me that you fell in love with someone else. I figured as much, but I could never knew who it was. I never met another girlfriend of yours after you broke up with Gianne so abruptly."

"You know who it was," he insisted.

"No, I don't, Lee."

Lee dropped his eyes to the floor. He should have known she would make this hard on him. Kara Thrace and the easy way did not go together. "Think about it. What changed in my life around that time?"

Kara tried to recall the past, but she couldn't come up with anything. "I don't know, Lee. You were stationed under Admiral Nagala the whole time on Picon. Your whole fraking life was one big routine. You were on Atlantia almost every day. The days you had free were spent visiting Zak and me down at the Academy. It was like clockwork. There wasn't any shift in the routine."

"Come on, Kara. You've already said it. What was different in my life those last few months I was with Gianne?"

"I don't know. I barely knew you at the time. Zak and I had just started dating-" Her eyes lit up with recognition.

"Exactly. The only change in my life was my baby brother falling in love with his flight instructor and insisting I become friends with her," he whispered. He waited until his words had sunk in before continuing, "Gianne was a nice girl. I couldn't let her waste her time and energy on some scum ball who could fall in love with his brother's girlfriend."

Lee sighed and got to his feet. "Give Anders a chance, Kara. Take it from someone who knows. Sometimes it's better to have taken a risk and let yourself be vulnerable than to spend years wondering what might have been."

Kara was left completely stunned while the door clicked behind Lee with a resounding snap. Her heart was even more confused than ever.