Kara's hands were shaking as she walked down the hallway. She still felt out of place. This was the nice part of Picon that had all the apartments she would never be able to afford. The first few months she had lived here, she had been too freaked out to even go in through the front entrance. It was the back door for girls like Kara Thrace.

The apartment key was digging into her palm. She was holding it that tight.

It had seemed like a good idea to come here while Zak was away. Getting it over with was all part of the process of healing and moving on. It was natural to feel a little nervous, though. She was slamming the door on the love she had for Zak.

"You're a fraking coward," Kara said, staring at the door. Her fingers traced the gouges around the keyhole. They were from Zak frantically trying to flip the lock while her hands in his pants already had him halfway to release. There was a large gash in the middle of the door from the time they hadn't made it. Someone had fixed the number seven on the door. It no longer hung on its side.

Sighing, she pushed the key into the lock on the first try. The door creaked slightly as it opened. She had always meant to grease it. Kara dropped her small bag onto the floor and took a look around. It was exactly how she remembered it.

This was the first place she had ever called home.

She placed her key chain on the table by the door. That way Zak would see it first thing when he came home on leave. She didn't want it to pop up on him out of nowhere like it would if she put it on the bedside table or the counter in the kitchen. It would cause him more pain if she didn't make a big thing out of it.

The pain actually started to fade from the second Commander Adama handed her the official acceptance for her leave request. Things had been going extraordinarily well since she made this decision. Coming here was giving her as much closure as she hoped it would give Zak. Hell, she had even started wondering if maybe this Karl Agathon guy would be a good rebound guy for her. She had been getting "I want to frak you so hard" vibes from him for the past couple days. She could use the distraction right about now.


"Maybe I should have asked the Commander to tack his name onto the pass," she joked. She glanced around the apartment not sure where to begin. There were signs of her presence all over this place. She had never been a neat person Her feet and stomach walked her into the kitchen without much conscious thought so she figured that was the place to start. What she saw made her freeze in her tracks.

She had been prepared for anything, ranging from the apartment looking exactly like the day Zak had asked her to move in with him to it being ripped to shreds like any scorned lover would do. She wasn't ready for the Adonis clad in military sweats and no shirt, standing in front of the stove and cooking up a healthy pan of scrambled eggs.

Scratch that, she corrected. This was even worse than an Adonis. This was an Apollo.

Lee's eyes were wide as he took in the sight of her, the woman who had so swiftly broken his little brother's heart. He had thought he would never see her again. There was no way a woman like that could find her way back into his life. Half the time, he hoped that was true, and she would stay far, far away from him. It was safer. The other half, Lee found himself praying to the gods that he would run into her every time he was on a planet. That was the half that happened more frequently, much to his annoyance.

"You're in Zak's apartment," he spit out.

"So are you," she pointed out, walking over to the small kitchen table. Her hands reached out blindly until she felt a chair. She wasn't sure if she could handle this.

They continued to silently stare at each other for what felt like an eternity. The kitchen filled with smoke, and Lee realized his eggs were burning. Taking the pan off the stove, he threw its hot contents straight into sink and sighed. They were going to have to speak sometime. "Zak asked me to live in his place for a little while. He said he couldn't handle the memories." Lee looked over his shoulder at Kara. The look on her face told him he didn't have to explain what memories he was talking about.

"I'm here to get my stuff. He doesn't know."

Lee nodded. His eyes looked down at the ruined breakfast in front of him. Turning to Kara, he smiled, "Hungry?"

Whatever was in that awkward question seemed to please her. Her face, which had been full of worry and pain, broke out into a large smile. Who knew he could make her smile just by offering eggs.

Lee walked over to the fridge and got out the remaining eggs. He hoped there was enough. The stove was still hot from his previous attempt so the eggs started cooking right away.

"You're limping."

Kara's voice surprised him, but her question did not. She had always been perceptive.

"Frak, Lee. Where did that come from?" he scolded himself. He had known her for what added up to only two days. He had no right to think he had any idea who she was or what she had always been. "I hurt my leg. It was stupid. I wasn't watching where I was going, and I rammed right into a Viper." He tensed as Kara burst into laughter, but after a moment, he joined her. "It's not funny," he insisted.

"Then why are you laughing, flyboy?" she asked..

The way she said that word, like it was her secret pet name for him, made them both stop laughing immediately.

"I don't know why I said that," Kara blurted out. She could feel her skin turning pink. How the frak could this man make her feel uncomfortable for calling him something simple like flyboy when she had gone to the brig for drunk and disorder every other day and never once felt embarrassed? She hadn't even felt this mortified when she was dared to streak across the Academy campus as a triad bet and then caught by her superior officer.

"They gave me three weeks off my feet to recoup. Doc says I didn't break any bones so at least I'm not a complete moron." Lee took two bowls out of the cabinet and dumped a healthy portion of eggs into each. He limped over to the table and set one down in front of Kara. "It's killing me not to be in the air."


"I know," Kara agreed. "That was part of my teaching contract with the Academy. I had to be in the air every day if they wanted me to keep from killing the nuggets." She looked over at Lee and saw understanding in his eyes. He knew what it was like to crave the feeling of flight.

Lee watched her gaze shift down to his bare chest, and he could practically feel her eyes bearing into him. He winked at her before reaching over to grab his shirt off the table. He was rewarded with a soft blush creeping up her cheeks as she stared intently at the eggs. "So you're here to get your stuff?"

Kara looked up at him. "I thought it would be easy. A simple snatch and grab is the kind of thing they trained us for in Academy."


"The Academy curriculum doesn't factor in the emotional part," Lee pointed out, shoving a massive scoop of eggs into his mouth. "At least, they didn't have that course when I was there." He glanced over to see Kara staring at him in disgust. "What?"

"Are you going to chew?"

He chuckled lightly. "Sorry. I've been living in this place for two weeks now with no human contact. I've forgotten all the manners my mom tried to beat into me when I was little."

"It's not hard. Chew, swallow, and then talk." Kara took a small bite of eggs. "So, how's life on the Atlantia? If I remember correctly, that's where you're assigned."

Lee's face lit up in admiration, and Kara realized she probably shouldn't have let him know she remembered what was only supposed to be a small detail told in passing. "It's good. Atlantia has the best of the best working on her."

"Sounds like heaven. Half the crew on Galactica seems to be two steps short of becoming Fleet rejects."


"That's the way my father's ship has always been," Lee verified. "It has something to do with his being decommissioned as a pilot when the Cylon War ended. I think he felt like he was a reject who had been given a second chance. He just wants to give other people the same opportunity."

"What does that say about me?" Kara asked quietly.

Lee's face whitened. He hadn't meant it like that.

Kara pushed her half-eaten breakfast away. "I should probably start gathering up my things. It took me almost a day to get here, and it'll probably take me just as long to get back. My pass doesn't have much leeway to it." She didn't wait to hear Lee's response. She just pushed out her chair and stepped back into the living room. There wasn't much to gather. She had never been the type of girl to carry around personal possessions. Most of her past was only worth the willpower it took her to forget it.

By the time she was ready to tackle the bedroom, her bag had a couple music discs, a small painting she was making for Zak's next birthday, and a pair of earrings she had left on the TV the last time she was here. It was a relief to see that her clothes had been boxed up. If she had had to take them down from next to Zak's, she might have changed her mind about doing the right thing.

Kara sat down on the bed and pulled open the drawer of the nightstand. Inside was the Book of Pythia the priestess had given her on her tenth birthday. It was the one possession she had taken with her whenever she began a new phase of life. A small scrap of paper fell out of the book and slowly floated to the ground. Kara reached down to grab it. She didn't have to look at it to know what it was.

In all their time together, Zak had written her one letter. In it, he had explained everything he was willing to give up if she would only give him a chance. He said he would quit the Academy so they could be seen in public together. He would move to a distant Battlestar if she decided she couldn't handle living anywhere but in the sky. He would do anything for her. All she had to do was take a small step forward and trust him. That was the day she realized Zak Adama loved her.

The tears fell down to pool on the folded piece of paper in her hand, and Kara felt all the pain came flooding back. She loved Zak, even if no one believed her. She had done everything for his sake.

"They don't understand things like love and heartbreak and pain and self-sacrifice."

Lee's voice made her look up. He was leaning on the doorway, and his face was a stone wall. She hadn't even heard him coming down the hall. "Excuse me?"

"Some people don't understand what you're doing, Kara, but I do. I guess it takes someone willing to give up anything to make Zak happy to know how much you love him." Lee sighed. "I thought about trying to explain it to my parents, but I knew they wouldn't get it. Zak's their baby boy. He was born to be protected."

Kara sniffed slightly. She hated that she was showing such weakness to a complete stranger, but somehow she just couldn't stay strong when she was sitting on the bed she had once shared with Zak. Her eyes drifted down to the Book of Pythia in her hands. "Sometimes I wonder if the gods have forsaken me," she whispered. "Otherwise, why would they have allowed that day to happen?" She felt the bed shift as Lee sat down next to her. For a second, she wondered if she should stand up. She already knew she tended to lose her senses when Lee was close.

"You weren't alone that day," he whispered. "I was right there with you, and for that, I'll always feel guilty."

His words seemed to give her what she had been looking for, even though she still didn't know what that was. "I made the right choice, didn't I?"

"I can't say," he replied honestly. "I don't know why you chose to run, Kara. All I know is I look into your eyes and I can see you love him. Whatever you're doing, whatever you did, it was out of love for my brother. I trust you wouldn't do anything to hurt him unless there was no other way."

Kara turned to look at the window. The Picon sun was shining straight onto where she sat. She could remember all the mornings she had curled up next to Zak as the warm rays of light washed over them. Life had been simpler back then when she was just a Academy flight instructor sleeping with a former student. There had been black and white. There was none of this grey that seemed to clog up her every thought and action nowadays.

A slight movement made her turn to look back at Lee. He pulled something from his pocket and held it out for her to take. "I wasn't sure why I've been carrying this around. My mom gave it to me on a whim last time I was on Caprica. I thought about sending it to you, but I hesitated. I wasn't sure if you would understand what I was trying to say."

Kara turned the thick paper over to reveal a photo of herself and the two Adama brothers. It was from the eve of her wedding. They were laughing. It was before all the pain she caused. Zak looked like he always did in photographs. He was laughing and joking, being the typical cheerful guy everyone expected him to be. She was standing to the side, her eyes averted from the two men beside her with a curious expression pasted on her face. Lee was smiling in the middle of the photograph, but she could tell it was only out of awareness that they were being photographed. His eyes weren't laughing.

Kara realized with a start that was because he wasn't looking at Zak and he wasn't looking at the camera. He was looking at her.

Suddenly, she knew what he had been trying to tell her before. It hadn't all been in her imagination. What had occurred between them had really happened.

"Listen, Kara. I know a place in Delphi that's willing to lease out cheap apartments to pilots. You need to have a place to come home to when you're given downtime."


Kara gave him a small smile. "Well, aren't you the practical one?"

"That's what my mother always said." Lee reached across her to grab a pen and paper off the table. He scribbled down a number and address and handed it over to Kara. "Don't let them charge you too much. These places are really crappy, but they're the best you're going to do on a Viper pilot's salary. Just call that number when you get back on Caprica. I'm sure you can set things up on the phone, especially if you drop my name."

"Thank you for everything," Kara whispered.

"I'm just helping out a fellow Viper jock in need," he joked. They both knew that was a lie. This wasn't just an example of pilot comradery. He had some guilt he needed to work off just like her.

Kara sighed and got to her feet. "I think I've gotten everything." Her eyes rested on the boxes. "I can't believe he boxed up my things."

"I did that," Lee admitted sheepishly. "I figured it would be best for Zak if when he came back, he didn't see your things in his closet."

"Great minds think alike. Would you mind sending them to me when I've settled down?"

Lee nodded. "I'll be here for another week or so. Just send me the address and I'll get them out of here."

Kara was halfway out the door before she turned to look back at him. He had been watching her. "Thanks for the eggs, Lee."

"Anytime," he said, nodding.

They both knew there was a lot more to that last exchange, but they couldn't admit it. It would be too painful.

"Lee." Hearing her voice echo back through the ship-to-ship comm system was like heaven. It had been five long years since she heard her own voice.

"Yes?"

"This is the first time we've flown together."

She heard Lee pause and knew he was thinking the same thing she was. "Really? I feel like we've done this a thousand times before."

"No, we haven't. You were never on Galactica, and I was never on Atlantia or Solaria."

She heard him humph. "Well, that's odd."

"You know, I used to have a few nuggets in one of my classes that insisted you could determine whether a person was your soul mate simply by flying with them. They said if the fit was right, it was like fraking in the sky."

"Do we really need to go through that?" Lee shot back.

"I'd like to see it." Kara pulled her Viper up next to him. "I've never fraked in the sky."

"Well, let me be your first then, Mrs. Adama."

Their ships went through an elaborate series of flips, turns, and spirals as they both called to mind flying patterns they hadn't used in years. Lee knew if he hadn't trusted Kara as completely as he did, his hesitations would have caused them to crash several times over. It was odd. He had known her for seven years, and yet he had never seen her fly in person. All he had to go on was the long-buried reports that she was the best pilot to come out of the Academy since the days of the Cylon War. Yet by knowing her and loving her, he put his life in her hands without pause.

This was what all those stupid fairytales and prophecies had meant when they talked about true love. It was a lot messier than they would lead you to believe.

When finished, the complicated set of maneuvers left them struggling to regain their breath. "Frak me, I'm in trouble," Lee laughed over the comms.

Kara tensed up immediately. "You think Nagala's going to be mad that we really pushed these things to the limit?"

"No, he's going to be proud these machines held up. What I meant is I'm going to be in trouble with my pilots. I wasn't lying when I said we were going to show them how it was done. Most of them are on the starboard observation deck, watching us. I wanted to give them a little show as a boost to morale. Now they're going to eat me alive. I always stress keeping your head in the game and not doing anything reckless. You're a horrible influence, Kara."

"You're not as by the book as you'd like them to think," she pointed out. "And anyway, it'll be good for them to see their CAG cutting loose for a change. Maybe they can actually start relating to you." Kara wondered if maybe she had gone too far with that comment. It had taken Lee a long time to tell her how he struggled with some of the new pilots, and here she was, throwing it back into his face at the first opportunity.

"I hope some good does come out of this," Lee said. "Besides, the fact that my pilots are going to be insanely jealous of how talented my wife is."

"Don't forget beautiful."

"Never."

They drifted side by side in space, words filtering back and forth between them on the comms, until their ships signaled low fuel. "Would you like to do the honors?" Lee asked his wife.

Kara smiled at him through the cockpit glass. "Atlantia, Starbuck and Apollo. Requesting permission to land."