Part 9

"Kara!" Lee screamed over the com. "Kara, what the frak do you think you're doing. You can't take them all on! Pull back now!"

He span his viper around towards their original position. There she was, blasting towards the oncoming raiders. Blasting towards death.

"Frak it Kara! Don't do this! Please!"

"I'm sorry Lee," he thought he heard her answer in a whisper. And she didn't say anything else.

Then his father's voice came over the headset. "Starbuck. What are you doing? Pull back to the alert fighters now. That's an order!"

But Kara didn't pull back. Thirty raiders were speeding towards her. And she was going to take them all head on.

As he sped towards her, Lee remembered the cylon's words. 'Please, stop wasting each other's lives before it's too late.' Too late. His copy had been right. What had he been waiting for? Their world had already ended. And here they were now, putting their lives on the line each and every day, never knowing when it would be their last. So what did his old insecurities matter? What else did he have to fear now except losing the woman he loved? Maybe he had left it too late. Maybe he never would get to apologise, or tell her that he loved her, or do any of those things that by rights he should have done a long, long time ago. But one thing was for sure. If Kara Thrace was going to die out here today, then Lee Adama was going to die right by her side. After all, it was the only place he belonged.

"Fine, then we take them on together," he told her determinedly. "Let's bring it on."

Kara's angry voice sounded over his headset as she realized what he was intending. "Lee, get the frak out of here right now! This is my fight!"

"Your fight?" Lee began, but there was no time to argue about that now. "No way Kara," he continued. "That isn't how this works. Either the two of us die right here right now or the two of us pull back and we take our chances with the rest of the vipers. One or the other. It's your call. But I am not leaving your side."

"Lee!"

"I'm not pulling back without you, Kara. We do this together." He stared ahead at the oncoming raiders. In a few seconds it wouldn't matter anyway.

"Then frak you!" he heard Kara yell as she span her viper around and retreated towards the approaching alert fighters. And Lee allowed himself a quick sigh of relief before following close on her tail.

He was never quite sure how he survived the ensuing dogfight, he had been so concerned about the possibility of Kara trying to get herself blown up again. Though getting blown up was not exactly difficult to achieve out there. They lost two vipers during the battle itself, and a third during their retreat to the Galactica after the order came for an immediate combat landing. But the cylons had lost more, not that that was any consolation. And Kara had landed safely.

Lee was the first out of his cockpit upon landing. He attended to the pilots, seeing if any needed medical attention. He provided words of comfort and support following the loss of their comrades and subdued congratulations on a fight well fought. All the while though he was aware of Kara and stole a glance towards her whenever he could. There she was now, still sat in her cockpit staring resolutely ahead. Unmoving. He also saw the frantic specialists nudging each other towards her, none of them brave or stupid enough to demand she come down so they could give her viper some much needed attention. Lee would have laughed at the sight had the circumstances been different.

Eventually he had only one pilot left to attend to. And he had left the most difficult to last. Slowly, he walked towards Kara's viper and looked up at where she sat. He had played this scene over and over in his head as he'd flown back to the ship. In his mind he would stride over to Kara's viper and yell at her as he demanded to know what the frak she'd been playing at. Then, before she got to answer, he would take the cylon's advice and grab her and kiss her and not let go. He would tell her he loved her. She would confess she still loved him too. And then would come the happily ever after part.

Lee placed the palms of his hands on her viper, arms outstretched, and closed his eyes as he let out a deep sigh. He should have known it could never be that simple.

"Kara," he called up to her quietly. "Please come down."

He looked up at where she sat. He thought he could see her tremble.

"Is that an order, sir?" she asked bitterly after a long pause. At least she had stopped staring ahead and was now looking straight at him.

"Of course it's not," he felt his voice break. "Kara, I just … I just really need you to come down and talk to me. Please." His last word sounded more like a plea. But it worked and Starbuck slowly climbed out of the cockpit, although she remained several feet away.

"Okay, well I've climbed down here just like you asked. But I really don't think that I've got anything else to say to you, sir." she bit, stressing the last word with particular venom.

Lee took a step towards her, then stopped as she noticeably shrank back.

"Well then, if you don't want to talk then I guess we're both just going to have to listen to me instead." He searched into her eyes as he continued gently. "Kara, you tried to kill yourself out there today. You tried to kill yourself!"

His voice trembled as he thought about her dying. He felt tears sting his eyes. Pinching the top of his nose, he squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to stay in control. When he opened them again he saw that Kara could no longer look at him, she was staring hard at the floor in her own struggle not to cry. And that was when Lee Adama finally broke.

"How did I let things go so far Kara?" he asked, no longer caring about the tears in his eyes. "How did I let things get so wrong between us? You tried to kill yourself today. And it was my fault. What would I have done if I'd lost you? I need you. I can't do this alone. It may be selfish but it's true." He stepped forward and took her shoulders in his hands. He could feel her trembling beneath his fingers.

"It wasn't bravado out there today," he sniffed. "Telling you I was going to die there right with you. It wasn't some ploy to blackmail you into pulling back. I meant it. If you were going to die out there then I wanted to die too."

Out of the corner of his eye, Lee could see the Chief ushering curious ground staff away from them. Blinking back the tears in his eyes, he was grateful for the privacy.

"I'm sorry for the way I've treated you lately," he continued softly. "I'm sorry for the way I've let things get so bad. And I'm so sorry I let you down Kara."

Finally she looked up from the ground and met his eyes. "I let you down first," she whispered.

"What do you mean?"

"I should have know it wasn't you Lee. I should have known all along. I let you down. I should have been out there looking for you, instead of…" her voice trailed off.

"Instead of what?" Lee asked gently. "Instead of letting yourself be happy for once? Come here." He pulled her to him and felt her resist before finally relaxing into his embrace. He rocked her from side to side like a baby as he whispered into her ear. "You couldn't have known."

But it seemed it had been the wrong thing to say. Kara pushed herself away from him and quickly wiped her eyes to hide her emotion.

"That's where you're wrong Lee," she told him bitterly. "I should have known it wasn't you."

And suddenly Lee thought he understood. "Because he was in love with you?" he asked. "You think you should have known it wasn't me because the cylon was in love with you, because he made you so happy?"

Kara stared fixedly at the floor again and did not answer, but Lee didn't need a response. It had all become clear to him. Of course Kara didn't realise that Lee had been in love with her all along. Hadn't he denied it even to himself? She probably assumed that the cylon had been programmed to love her just to frak with her mind even more. She had no idea that it was all because of him.

Lee drew in a deep breath. It was time for his long overdue confession. "Kara," he began nervously, fidgeting like school boy. "Kara, the cylon never told you why he was programmed to be in love with you, did he?"

"No," she replied, looking hesitantly in his eyes as if waiting for another blow.

"Well, then here it goes," he took another deep breath as he tried to calm down his racing heart. This was almost more terrifying than those thirty raiders. "Kara, you could never have known that the cylon wasn't me. Nobody could. He was programmed to be like me. Exactly like me. Down to every last thought, every memory. Even every feeling."

He studied Kara's eyes to see if she was beginning to understand where he was leading, but was met with the same confused look, so he took the plunge and continued. "He loved you because I love you Kara. He didn't mean to do it. It wasn't a cylon game. He just loved you because I do."

There. He'd said it. He'd finally said it. And their world hadn't ended - again. He stood transfixed, waiting for her response and finally it came.

"You love me?" she asked uncertainly. "You love me as in 'you love me' love me?"

Lee let out the breath he'd been holding and chuckled despite himself at her absurd sounding sentence.

"Yes," he answered, a nervous smile playing on his lips. "I love you as in 'I love you' love you." He tentatively stepped closer and took her by the arms once more, his expression serious again as he continued. "I know how much I must have hurt you. The things I said in the sickbay. The way I've been behaving since. And I understand now that there's no way you or anyone else could have known that cylon wasn't me. I met him, we talked and he helped me realize that. But the thing is Kara, I've been so jealous. And I guess I've always had all these insecurities when it came to you. Because of Zak. Because you were closer to my father than I was. Because you're the one who's the hot shot pilot."

"What?" Kara interrupted incredulously.

"I couldn't help it. And then on top of that this cylon came along and took everything I ever wanted. He took my life and lived it so much better than I'd ever done. With his relationship with you. Even with my father. And it made me so jealous. It just ate me up. Can you understand? Can you forgive me?"

"Yes," Kara answered slowly. "Yes, I think I can."

"Thank you," he murmured, then pressed on, "But there's something else. One thing in particular that the cylon said that's really helped me." Lee pressed on.

"What was that?"

He took another deep breath. "He said you were in love with me too. With me, the real me. Before he ever came along. That you said so in your cockpit when you thought you were about to die."

Kara looked away in embarrassment and Lee had to smile. He felt a strange pride in being possibly the only person who could make the legendary Starbuck blush.

"Well, I might have said that." she responded, still avoiding his gaze. But when she turned back, Lee saw the sight he had yearned for. Kara was smiling.

"But you know," she continued, a grin widening on her lips. "You should never take what a cylon says for granted, Lee. You should really know better than that."

"I'm just going to take that as a 'yes' then." Lee laughed. He pulled her closer to him so they were just inches apart. They stared into each other's eyes and suddenly the laughter was gone. Suddenly it felt deadly serious again.

Starbuck eventually broke the silence.

"Where do we go from here, Lee?" she whispered. "It's all got so frakked up. How do we fix it? I don't know where to start."

"Well, I've been doing a lot of thinking about that," Lee began, but he was interrupted by Kara's unexpected laughter.

"Lee Adama's been doing a lot of thinking? No, I can't believe it. Can it really be you? Are you sure you're not a cylon again?" she pressed her hand against his forehead as if checking for a fever, an infuriating grin on her face.

Lee gave her a friendly swipe. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that your sense of humour is in really, really bad taste?" he responded. But he was joyous. How he had missed this banter, her teasing, their friendship. He looked down at that frustrating smile of hers and decided there was only one way to wipe it from her face. Slowly he leant towards her and brushed his lips against hers in the slightest whisper of a kiss. He wouldn't rush this. He wouldn't push too soon, too much had happened to both of them. And he wasn't going to frak things up again.

Gently he pulled away and smiled slightly smugly at the stunned look on her face.

"As I was saying," he continued, pulling back a loose strand of hair from her eyes and allowing his fingers to stroke her temple. "I've done a lot of thinking about this. And I reckon there is a way we can fix things. I know it won't be easy. But I think what I have to do is just concentrate on loving you, and making sure you never have a reason to doubt it. I promise I'll try and make you happy every day. And, well, maybe you can do the same for me in return."

"I think I can do that."

"Good." He pulled her into another hug and continued to whisper into her ear. "And then maybe we can both heal. 'Cos I know one thing, we live in a really frakked up universe, and we put ourselves in danger every day. We never know when it might all end. When we might lose the ones we love. It terrified me today when I thought I was going to lose you, Kara. Knowing that I might never get to makethings right between us. I'm not going to make that mistake again. I want to start living my life. And, if you'll let me, I want to start living it with you."

He felt Kara tighten her arms around him and he squeezed his eyes shut as he held on to her. And together they stood in the middle of the hanger bay, oblivious to the world around them.

When he finally opened his eyes, Lee saw the Chief smiling at them and he grinned right back. He still wasn't convinced that everything would be as simple as the cylon had described. And maybe life wouldn't be as interesting if it was. But Lee Adama knew one thing for sure. Standing here, right now, was the happiest moment of his life. And that had to be a step in the right direction.

THE END