Kara tried to smooth out the slight wrinkles in her wedding dress, but just like her nerves, they wouldn't go away. She could hear a clock ticking somewhere in the room, and all she could think of was the large amount of people sitting outside the door, just waiting for her to frak this up.

She had thought this was going to be easy. He had told her that this was what she wanted.

"I don't want this!" she yelled, turning to glare at the closed door. She jumped when she realized she wasn't alone. There was a rather unexpected visitor leaning against the wall. "You're not supposed to be here."

Lee smiled at her and walked to stand in front of her. "That's not true."

"Isn't there something about seeing the bride before the wedding?"

"That's an old Picon tradition, and I think it only applies to the guy you're getting married to."

Kara felt herself blush. She should have known that. "What do you want, Lee?"

"You look beautiful," he whispered, taking a step closer.

Kara could feel her heart drop up, and she swore silently. She didn't need this right now. "I look like a little girl playing dress-up," she said, turning to stare at herself in the mirror.

Lee stepped up behind her in the mirror and rested his hands on her shoulder. "That's not what I see."

Kara fought back the urge to shiver. This was Zak's brother, the man she had just met the day before. He shouldn't be able to make her knees weak with a smile and a small touch. "Lee…" she warned.

"Kara…" He shot back with a smile.

She met his eyes in the mirror. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not really sure. People were starting to get restless, and I offered to check on you. I don't know why I did it. It probably would have been better if my mom came back here or something." Lee's hands slid down the sides of her arm and rested on top of where her hands were clutching her stomach. Kara turned to look up at him. "All I knew was I had to come and talk to you before you did this. I have no clue what I want to say. I just knew that I had to see you."

"Lee, we can't be doing this."

"I know," he whispered.

Kara could feel his eyes on her as she turned back to look into the mirror. She had been introduced to Lee at a picnic Zak's family had in honor of her wedding only twenty-four hours earlier. The meeting had been a long time coming. Zak had been trying to introduce her to Lee since practically the second they started dating. The look of disappointment on his face ever time his brother called to cancel yet another visit was something she would never forget. Each time, she had jokingly said it didn't matter to her if she met Lee for the first time at the wedding because he would always be family. It had seemed like a safe thing to say to cheer Zak up. Who could have predicted she would look into the eyes of her fiancé's brother and suddenly feel her defenses melt away? That was something that had taken years with Zak, but in one second, she was an open book to Lee.

She heard him softly whisper her name, and she could just imagine where this could go if only she let it. He wanted to lean down to kiss her. Kara barely had the strength not to do the same. His touch would be gentle. That wasn't even a question in her mind. She had been watching him enough in the past day to realize that everything Lee did was either extremely intense or extremely gentle. There was no middle ground. It would be crazy and insane, but she couldn't think of one reason why she shouldn't give in. It seemed like all rationality and common sense had left her body.

Lee's fingers came up to brush her cheek, and she reached up to touch the back of his hand with her own. It was then that she felt the cool metal on her left thumb and remembered where she was.

"Oh gods," she whispered, pulling herself away from Lee's touch. Her eyes fell to the mirror again, and she was amazed at what she saw. Two seconds ago, she was a scatterbrained Colonial flight instructor trying her best to play the part of a bride. Now she looked like she had been born to wear this dress. Her skin was glowing, her eyes were shining, and she could feel the smile spreading across her face. It made her want to cry. "Look at me. I'm in a white dress ready to walk down the aisle." She looked over her shoulder at Lee. "I can't be doing this. I can't break Zak's heart, not after everything he's done for me."

"I know," Lee said.

Kara could tell by the sadness in his eyes that he wasn't lying. He really knew how this was going to end when he came into the room. "So what do we do now?"

Lee's hands came up on her shoulders again, but instead of pulling her into that imagined kiss, he turned her to face him. "Now, I'm going to smooth out those last wrinkles for you. Then you're going to follow your heart and make my little brother the happiest man in the Twelve Colonies."

Kara stayed silent as Lee did just that. After only a few seconds of tidying, she was wearing a dress so pristine it looked like it had come right off one of those mannequins in the high-price stores in Caprica City. She was going to thank Lee, but he was already out the door before she could find the words.

Kara Adama hated her job.

If Picon was the heart of the Twelve Colonies, Geminon its soul, and Caprica its brains, then Colonial Outpost PX-29 was the asshole, hands down. Her job was simple. Make sure the product stayed where it was put. Keep the documentation up to date. Don't ask questions.

Years ago, Kara could remember wondering where all the bad guys the military captured went. The answer was pretty damn simple. They went to Outpost PX-29, only a few million miles from Picon. This was the facility to which the Colonial Military sends their special cases. This hellhole of a planet was where they dropped the people they didn't know how to deal with. It was the kind of place parents told their children they would end up if they didn't behave. Half the tiny planet was fenced in to keep the prisoners isolated. They were given the tools to create food and shelter, and they were left on their own.

Kara had no contact with the prisoners. Her job was to make sure the proper paperwork was filed with the Fleet. These people weren't ever going to be leaving this outpost. They were mostly Colonials who had been convicted of some political crime. These were the people that no one cared to hear from again and they were stuck in this hole, just like she was.

She flipped open the newest paperwork. Fleet Headquarters was transferring an interesting one this time. Dr. Gaius Baltar had been one of the leading minds on Caprica until he started making insane claims that the Cylons were planning on attacking the Twelve Colonies. He said that a Cylon agent in human form had been deceiving him for months in the hopes of getting into the Defense Ministry. Everyone had chalked it up as just another genius who had was a few Vipers short of a squadron.

According to the report, Baltar didn't like being patronized. He pointed out several weak points in the defense mainframe. When asked why he never reported these weaknesses, he started rambling about his Cylon woman again and something about two seats at a pyramid game. He ended up screaming about this fancy, Cylon woman that only he could see. Baltar was declared criminally insane, and he had disappeared from public view over five years ago. Everyone assumed he had died on some prisoner ship.

"Guess not," Kara mumbled, signing the bottom of the paper. This was a transfer she could accept. The people on her outpost were mostly out of their minds. They wouldn't notice one more.

She pushed the completed papers out of her way, and her eyes came to rest on the picture tacked up to the wall her desk was against. It was the one memory of her past she had kept after being transferred. Caroline Adama had taken it on a whim that day. Kara was standing in the center of the picture, her eyes turned towards the ground. Lee and Zak were on her right, arm in arm. They had been laughing about some stupid comment. Zak was at the far end of the picture, looking straight into the camera with his trademark smile plastered across his face. Lee wasn't so easy to read. His face had the hint of a smile to it, but he was looking right past his brother. Kara could remember Caroline teasing him that he always had his head in the clouds when she tried to get a photo of both her boys.

Looking at the picture, Kara saw that was far from the truth. If you looked closely, you could see Lee wasn't staring into space. He was looking at Kara.

There was a worn line through the middle of the two Adama brothers, put there from years of folding and unfolding. Staring at the picture, a familiar pain filled Kara's heart. She slowly untacked the picture and folded it. It was what she did when the pain of staring at their two faces, so happy together, got to be too much.

"I'm sorry for what I did to you, Zak," she whispered before slipping the photo into her jacket pocket. She did her best to swallow back the last of her fear. It had been a hard lesson to learn, but she knew if she wanted to be happy, it was up to her to make it happen. That meant no more running away. The paperwork was done, and she had a shuttle to catch. Lee was waiting for her on his Battlestar.