Kara scowled at the painting in front of here. After five hours, there was still something missing.

"Frak me," she hissed, setting her paint brush down and wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. Painting was supposed to be a relaxing way to spend her mandatory downtown. It turned out the Old Man wasn't happy when his pilots went a year straight without requesting a leave pass to the Colonies, even if that pilot was the one that ruined his son's life.

Kara let out a deep sigh. Things had gotten better when it came to Zak, but it taken her so much time and effort to get to this point. She was exhausted.

Zak had come up to her before she left Galactica. He said he wanted to wish her well on her much needed break, but she knew better. Zak had pried and poked until she finally admitting to renting this little rat hole of an apartment in Delphi. He had actually been concerned that she was just going to set up shop in a Picon bar for the whole of her two week break.

The words they shared had soothed away the last of the hurt she had inflicted upon herself. They had a normal conversation like any two friends would be. There was no feelings of longing and no sudden admission that there was still love between them. She could now look back and see that she had made the right decision.


Zak was too young to be settling down. He was your stereotypical pilot, dedicated to his job and his people, showing both facets every night at the triad tables. Kara had been forced to use her steadily increasing influence on the officers of Galactica to get him out of the brig far too many times. He didn't know that, of course. Zak had taken a special liking to the green stuff, but that wasn't anything new. Kara had always heard Raptor pilots were partial to ambrosia. She was more of a beer gal. Most Viper pilots were.

There had been a silent agreement about six months ago by Kara, Zak, and his father to put the past behind them. They all knew that nothing would come out of dwelling on things which couldn't be changed. Kara made it clear to Zak that she wasn't backing down, and everyday she believed it more.

If she wanted to point fingers as to how she managed to get control of her feelings for Zak, she would have to give all the credit to Helo. Her instincts had been right. He was just the man to make her get over Zak, though it wasn't in the way she thought.

She had thrown herself at him the first chance she got, and he had flat out rejected her. He told her he didn't like to take on extra baggage and fraking her would do just that. A massive wave of hurt had washed over her until Helo simply smiled and pulled her into his arms. He had whispered that he already loved her too much to ruin what they had, and that small admission made a dam break inside of her. He held on tight as she finally let herself feel the grief that had built up for over twenty-three years.

That was the day she fell in love with Karl Agathon. She let him know it in the only way she could. She routinely won all his money and worldly possessions at the triad table.

Kara's eyes shifted to the picture taped on the window next to her easel. She didn't know why she brought it with her planetside, but it felt good to look over and see it. She figured that was pretty fraked up.

Her eyes fell down to the piece of paper and small pin on the bedside table. Commander Adama had handed her the promotion notice right before she stepped onto the shuttle to Caprica. She was a full-blown Lieutenant now. There was nothing Junior about it.

Honestly, that was what surprised her most. She had thought her time on Galactica would be more horrible than she could imagine. That was before she fell in love with the ship and realized what a gift it was to have William Adama as a commanding officer. The war veteran and his ship seemed to understand her on a level she hadn't even known existed. Lately, she had even planned her morning runs so that her path intersected the Commander's. They had developed a routine.

Things were still unspoken between them, but it seemed like she might actually get a good recommendation from her time on Galactica. She wouldn't let herself admit why that meant so much to her.

Kara looked back at her painting and swore. "Fraking thing is never going to be finished," she hissed, standing up. Her eyes landed on the bag next to the bed. It had been barely touched since she entered the apartment. She had simply unzipped it for long enough to grab her picture and promotion notice and then closed it right back up. A box from the bottom of her closet was ripped open, and she found herself a pair of shorts and a white tank. She had forgotten how hot Caprican summers could get when you had an apartment that was years away from entering the air conditioning era. She had been wearing the same clothes for a week straight. She had started painting and couldn't stop herself. There were breaks to eat and breaks to sleep, but other than that, she painted.

She had a lot of pain to get out.

She realized with a start she was still staring at the bag. It was like the thing was mocking her by its zipped-ness. There were things inside it that wanted out.

"I'm not a coward," Kara said, marching over to look down at it. "You hear me, bag? I'm not scared of you." A small laugh slipped past the closed line of her lips. Helo had always told her she would crack up one day. She just didn't think it wouldn't be over something as silly as a letter.

Kara kneeled down and unzipped the bag. Her hand reached in to riffle around until she felt the smooth envelope. She should be congratulating herself . She had lasted seven whole days without giving in to the urge. Her previous record had only been twenty-nine hours.

There were currently nine envelopes just like this one shoved in the back of her locker on Galactica. She kept them weighted down with a silver ring. It helped her remember things she had no right to forget. In her head, she liked to think there was an identical nine envelopes in a locker on Atlantia, but she was pretty sure she was the sentimental one.

Sighing, she sat down on the bed and tucked her legs up underneath her chin. Her finger went out to run along the seal of the letter. It opened with a satisfying rip.

He didn't have much to say this time. His CAG was a stupid fraker that never let him forget he was his father's son. His wingman should never have graduated War College, let alone received a coveted assignment on Atlantia. He had made his thousandth landing a few weeks earlier, and his CAG didn't even take the time to find red paint. Instead, he got the blue some of the crew had been using to detail the new Mark VIIs.

Like all other letters he wrote, it was dry. Only the facts were allowed between them. Anything else was too dangerous.

Lately, even the facts were starting to border on dangerous.

She hadn't known it at the time, but giving Galactica as her forwarding address on this apartment had been a spectacularly good decision. It also was a massive risk she had even known she was taking. She could only imagine what would happen if Zak or his father found out she had this relationship with Lee.

Kara finished reading the letter and tucked it into the rest of the unread mail on her bedside table. She wasn't sure if she was going to take this one back to Galactica. Someone might start asking questions. A pilot didn't bring anything back to their ship when they came off leave. It meant they were attached to something, and attachments got you killed.

The painting was calling to her again, and Kara answered. Sitting down, her brush reached for the blue paint, and she covered up the huge red blotch in the bottom corner. Lee had been wrong. Sometimes blue could be better than red.

A knock interrupted her sudden inspiration, and Kara swore loudly. "Go the frak away. This is a private residence and I don't want to be disturbed by some fraking Colonial Scout trying to hock me boxes of horribly overpriced cookies that will only make me fat!"

Her answer was another loud knock, and she threw her brush against the wall. If they couldn't take a hint, she was pretty sure they could take a punch to the face. At least that way she wouldn't be misunderstood.

She clambered up the stairs and flung the door open, ready to kill whoever had broken her concentration. The words of irritation caught in her throat as she stared at the man on her doorstep. A look of confusion spread across her face, and she knew she should probably be asking him what the frak he was doing here but the words still wouldn't come out.

"I need a place to crash for a day or so," Lee said. His smile told her that he was nervous of what her response would be.

Kara knew she should tell him he was fraking insane and slam the door in his face, but for some reason, the ability to speak had abandoned her. Her hands definitely weren't going to be slamming anything any time soon.

Lee shifted slightly and looked down at the ground. "Look, Kara. I could say I had nowhere else to go or there was nothing else for me to do, but we both know that would be a lie. So are you going to let me in or not?"

The door pushed open the rest of the way, and it took her a second to realize it hadn't done it on its own.

Lee stepped past her and walked down the stairs as if he showed up on her doorstep all the time. She silently followed him. He dropped his bag on the floor next to the bed, and it rested against her own discarded bag. She watched his eyes scan the place she hadn't decided to call home yet.

He obviously saw something he liked because he made his way over to her easel. She watched him stare for a few minutes and wondered if maybe he was going to give her some constructive criticism on how crappy her art had become. Then she realized he wasn't looking at the painting.

"What's with the line?"

Kara stared at the faint fold line that separated one Adama brother from the other. She had folded the photograph for the first time a few months ago, not really sure why at the time. It had been Zak's birthday, and life just seemed a little too unfair. It had been an impulse, one that she quickly corrected, but she couldn't take the fold lines back. She had folded and unfolded it a hundred times since then.

She tried to figure out a way to explain this to Lee when she didn't even know how to explain it to herself. The best she could do was "Sometimes the pain gets to be too much." After a few seconds, she added, "And sometimes I just like to imagine what it would have been like if things were different."

Lee's fingers reached out to trace the line, and he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me which way you fold it."

"It's better if I don't," she pointed out. Her eyes shifted to the letter on her bedside table. It was odd. She had just wished she could hear his voice instead of just reading his words, and now here he was. "I got your letter."

"I was wondering if it would make it in time."

"How'd you know I was here?" she asked out of the blue.

"My father called me to suggest I put off the visit to see our mom. Zak and I had been planning it for over a month. I figured there could only be one reason why he would do that."

Kara nodded even though she wasn't sure what that meant about William Adama. Did he mean to keep Kara away from Lee or keep her away from Zak? Did he demand she take time off so that his sons wouldn't want to visit their mother or did he actually think she deserved a break? Was he afraid that Zak would run into her by chance or did he know that Lee would seek her out?

Frankly, she didn't think she wanted to know the answer to any of those questions.

"You look exhausted," Lee said, and Kara realized he had been staring at her.

"I've been painting."

"You should have taken a break."

"I did. I took a break to eat and sleep."

"Now as often as you should have," he pointed out.

Kara knew he was right. She was running herself into the ground, and she honestly didn't care.

Lee shrugged his jacket off and threw it on the bed. Silently he walked over to the music player and put in a random music disc. Kara was surprised to hear the opening bars of her father's favorite song float through the air. Lee moved past her again to take a seat on the couch, and the weight of his body sank into the cushions. He grabbed an old blanket she had thrown there hastily when she unpacked some random stuff a few days ago and looked up at her expectantly. To Kara's credit, she hesitated.

Then her resolve faded and she took a seat next to him. He laid the blanket around her body and gave her a smile. "This is a nice song."

"It's my father," she said. Somehow, she wasn't surprised how easily she shared such an important part of her life with Lee. It had taken her months before she even let Zak know her father had been a musician, let alone that she had multiple recordings of his works which she played every night before falling asleep.

The soft melody of her father's piano playing lulled her to sleep rather quickly. She felt Lee move his arm around her shoulder as she faded off, and she knew she didn't have the energy to fight it this time.

"I can't believe you kept this place," Lee said as Kara pushed the door to her apartment open.

"I couldn't stand to let the old girl go to some other frak-up pilot," Kara admitted. She sank down into the dusty couch and pulled out the letter Helo had handed her before they left Atlantia. He had tried to write down everything he knew about where the old crew from Galactica had ended up. Kara smirked. Even after five years of not speaking, Karl still knew exactly what she wanted and needed.

Most of what he had to say didn't surprise her. Specialist Cally was now the Chief on Triton. Kara had always known that girl had the chops. Petty Officer Dualla had quit the military to start her own communication company. Kara had always gotten the feeling that the military wasn't the place for Dee to be. Seelix was on her way to being the top resident at the most prestigious hospital in the Twelve Colonies. Kara had seen Seelix spending her off-hours in sickbay enough times to not be surprised by this.

The one thing that did surprise her was the update on her old Chief, Galen Tyrol. It was short, which was to be expected. There had to be some bad blood there considering Boomer had been Tyrol's girlfriend before she was Helo's wife. It really didn't seem like Tyrol was hung up on that, though. After Galactica was decommissioned, he took the Chief job on Solaria and then, one year later, married the most cutthroat reporter in the Twelve Colonies, D'anna Biers. They were expecting their first child in a few months. Kara had no idea how that happened.

Trying to shove old memories and new revelations out of her head, Kara set the letter down and watched Lee as he looked around the dirty apartment. His eyes landed on the windowsill and the place where her easel had once stood, and he shook his head.

"Bringing back old memories?" Kara asked. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Lee's face went white, and his eyes looked first at the window and then at the couch. She knew he was remembering what had happened all those years before. "I shouldn't have said that."

Lee didn't correct her as his attention shifted to the stairway wall. "That's new."

Kara looked over at the physical representation of her guilt. There were slashes of color and black words covering every inch of the wall. "I did that after…" Her voice faded off.

"Did it help?" Lee asked, stepping back to stand beside her.

"Not really." His hand slipped into hers without much thought, and she smiled. "But what I finished after it did."

Lee gave her a curious look and was rewarded with a sly smile. Kara pulled her hand away from him and walked over to the small nook that had served as her bedroom. She reached behind the headboard and pulled out a canvas covered in plastic. Lee knew what it was even before it was unwrapped. Kara had struggled with that painting for a week before he showed up on her doorstep and then five days after that. Back then, she had told him she never thought she would solve it.

"It's magnificent," he whispered, taking it from her hands. There were swirls of blue mixed in with green, and he could see a faint red vibrating through the paint. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. He tore his eyes away from the canvas to look up at her. "I can't believe you finished it."

She gestured at the back wall. "Something clicked inside me after I did that. I guess I needed to get rid of my aggression and guilt." She looked down at the art in Lee's hands. "The painting didn't want it."

Lee stared at her a minute before setting the painting down on the empty easel in front of him. "Are you sure you want to do this, Kara?"

She thought his question over for a few seconds before nodding. "We did nothing wrong, Lee, not one fraking thing."

Lee leaned in to kiss the top of her head. "That doesn't mean you're not scared to death of seeing my mother again."