Thank you very much to all who are reading and reviewing! You definitely motivate me to write more. So sorry for the delay. In this part, we finally get to hear Kara's pov. I was missing her inner voice.

Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 8?

Author: abelard

Rating: T

Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part

Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny." LeeKara, of course.

Feedback: Please!

Archive: Yes, just let me know.

Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.

Part 8

The taller one, Karl, she's more at home with, and she almost regrets that he's the one leaving. She can tell they were friends for a long time, before. She feels like...almost like a sister to him, somehow, and if only they had a few hours together, she could ask him questions about where they come from, what she was like, the people in her life. She just has a sense that Karl would give her straight answers.

She could ask Karl about the other one, Lee, for example. She has a lot of questions about him. She's asked a few of them out loud. What is she to him? Why is he staying behind, why isn't he going to their home village with Karl? The answers Lee gives her are confusing and vague and all his words hide other words, words he doesn't want to say, she can tell.

Still, she's drawn to Lee, and although a part of her wishes Karl could stay, or wishes she could go back with him (if only there was half a chance they wouldn't burn me at the stake, she reminds herself), she knows it's better if Lee's the one who remains. He'll be the harder nut to crack, and Kara doesn't remember anything about her life before two weeks ago, but she knows that she never liked doing anything the easy way.

Karl and Lee are talking outside, and Kara's been finishing up her morning rituals, baking bread and going to the well in the back of the hut, the one her neighbors allow her to draw from, to get enough water for the day. Kara's caught a few of the men's words. Words like "ship" – but how do their people sail in the mountains? And Karl says once he's "sent a message over my comm," and what does that mean? And then these strange names they call each other, "Helo" and "Apollo." Are those their family names? Kara's never heard names like that around this village, although of course everyone knows Apollo is the name of a god.

She smirks to herself. No way is that Lee guy a god. Though he might think he is. Then her smirk fades as an image of his hard, muscled torso and arms comes into her mind. Okay, so what if he looks like one...

The men come inside and she can tell that it's time to say goodbye to Karl. She goes to him and embraces him tightly, and he hugs her right back, and she can feel Lee stare at them with...anger? Envy? He's a strange one. When Kara pulls back, Karl holds her hands.

"It hasn't been easy without you," Karl says.

"I'm sad to see you go," Kara answers. "I wish I remembered you."

"When your...memories...start to...come back," Karl says, and Kara wonders why he hesitates to talk about her memories, "try to only dredge up the good ones about me, all right? Forget about any unsavory recollections you might have, especially if they're about too much ambrosia and games involving weapons."

Kara laughs and Karl smiles. "Take care. I hope to see you again someday," she says.

"I'll see you again," Karl says, and he looks as if the thought causes him pleasure, but also some pain. "Somehow. I know it. Maybe you'll remember me then."

He sounds strange, and Kara realizes that this man, so obviously her friend, also has his secrets and silences. Then Karl and Lee shake hands and embrace in that way men have, of showing affection without getting too close, and then Karl is off.

"He'll be okay on his own?" Kara asks.

Lee says, "He's joining up with others, from our, our village. They'll all go back together."

"There are others?" Kara can't believe Lee didn't tell her before. "Can I see them? Meet them?"

Lee looks at her and shakes his head. Whatever she asks him, the answer is always no. It's driving her crazy.

"They'll think what everyone back home will think," Lee answers.

"That I'm..." Kara really doesn't want to say it.

"Yes. That you're...that you deserve to be locked away. Or worse." Lee's eyes, which Kara has already noticed are usually an incredibly bright blue, turn to smoke when he talks about what might happen to her if she tries to go home.

"Why don't you and Karl think that way about me?" Kara asks. It's another way of asking what she is to him; maybe if she throws Karl into the question, he'll give her an answer.

Lee gives that sigh-and-huff thing that she's also grown to dislike. It means he's holding back from her. She doesn't want to be lied to. She senses, though, he's not exactly lying to her; but he's being careful in his phrasing, he's presenting facts in a certain way. If only she remembered more, she could see through the parts that are bullshit. Damn her amnesia. She has a feeling that being at any disadvantage with respect to Lee is something she hates.

Lee says, "Karl is your friend, as you can tell. And his...Sharon, he's seen what our people have done to her. He doesn't want that to happen to anyone else he cares about. As for me... Why don't we go someplace we can talk, and I'll tell you about our past."

Finally. "Good," Kara says. "I want to hear about that. I know a place."

She brings him to the lake east of the village, away from the ocean, closer to the mountains. Kara has come here a handful of times by herself, to think. Even though she has plenty of time to herself in her miniature cottage, she likes it better out here, in the open, with the wild grass and the stones and the water and the sky.

And now this place isn't entirely hers anymore. She's brought this strange man, Lee. She feels as if she should mind that she's given up her private thinking spot, but she looks over at the intruder, his sharp blue eyes and troubled face, the way the muscles around his shoulders and upper back are so well-formed but look hunched up slightly, as if he's not been sleeping or even lying down properly, and the way he looks at her, so hopeful, tired, and anxious all at once. And she realizes that wherever in her life she might bring this man, he has some kind of right to be. She doesn't know why, but he's no intruder.

"I like to sit here," she says, picking an even patch of grass in the sun and plunking down. Lee sits down beside her and they stare out onto the water together. She waits for him to say something, to begin, but he doesn't so she does. She guesses she is not a patient person.

"Last night, I asked you a question," she says. "And as I was falling asleep, you answered."

Lee nods, and his shoulders get a little tighter, in, what? Defeat? "You asked what you are to me, and I said you're the person I can never have," he says.

So she wasn't dreaming. "What does that mean?"

Lee squints up at the sky momentarily, and Kara knows he is trying to avoid looking at her. He says, "My younger brother introduced me to you. You two were in love. You were betrothed to him."

Kara gasps. "I'm your brother's wife?"

Lee shakes his head. "No. He died in a terrible accident before the marriage, even before he could tell our parents about you. I was the only one who'd met you, the only one who knew about your intentions..."

Kara senses the pain in him, over his lost brother, and she feels the echo of it in her own gut. Or is that only empathy, and not the ghost of a memory of her own sorrow?

"So...," Kara says, wishing she were not hopeful in the guess, "I'm not your family?"

Lee smiles abruptly. "Yes, you are. You are my family. You're like a daughter to my father. And for me..." Kara notices that he still isn't looking at her. He's still glancing at the blue sky, out at the blue lake. "If you aren't my family, I don't know who is."

Kara puzzles over what that means. "If you think of me like a sister, then what you said last night..."

"You're my family. That doesn't mean..." Lee pulls a handful of grass out of the ground in frustration.

"You don't think of me as a sister?" Kara asks cautiously.

Lee says, "In many ways, we're more like twins. Opposites, but counterparts. Artemis...and Apollo."

Apollo...there's that name again. For the hundredth time, Kara wonders what it means.

"You're not making any sense," she says. "I was your brother's intended and he died. I'm not a part of your family, but you say I am. Last night you said you could never have me. But how have you wanted me?"

"There isn't any way I haven't wanted you," Lee says so quietly, Kara has to lean forward to catch his words. Even when she realizes what he's said, she can't quite make sense of them.

"What are you saying, Lee? I'm tired of asking you to explain," she says and she tries to convey with the very timbre of her voice how serious she is.

"I'm saying...," He turns and faces her for the first time since she brought him out here, and she frowns at the tears in his eyes. "I'm saying that I was never allowed to feel for you what I feel. Because of my brother, because you felt guilty over him and so did I, and then because...we both worked for my father and it wasn't...it was just never right. And then because you died. You died, Kara," he says, his voice breaking. "And I thought, wherever you went, maybe you were with Zak. And I thought, even when I die," and now the tears fall from his eyes freely, "even when I'm dead, she won't be mine. She'll be Zak's. And I'll never have my chance, not for all eternity..."

Kara feels her frown deepen, and his sadness fills her heart. She puts her hand over his. "Oh," she whispers.

Lee says, "I've been trying to fall out of love with you, Kara. I've been trying since I met you, and it's never going to happen. Your death didn't make it happen. Now that I've found you alive, I don't care everything that happened before, and I don't care what you are. But other people are going to care, and so you have to stay here, and be safe, while I might have to go back, probably will have to go back, and so even now, after everything...I still can't have you. I can never have you. And all my wanting, years of it, and more desperation than I hope you ever know...it comes to nothing. You're the person I can never have."

He is so distraught that she can't help but take his hand in his and hold it tightly. He turns away from her again and scrubs at his face with his sleeve. She sees immediately – or remembers? – that he despises showing weakness, even, maybe especially, to her.

"I can't believe it never occurred to you," Kara says.

"What?" Lee asks, turning back abruptly despite the fact that his eyes are still bright with tears.

"I can't believe you've never realized that if I'm the person you can never have, that that means I've never been able to have you, either."

Lee looks at her, stunned and silent.

Kara huffs and shakes her head at the density of this man. "Don't you understand that you've probably been just as lost to me as I've been to you? I don't even know you, and I've only heard about ten sentences – and damned confusing ones, too – about our history, and even I can figure out that you haven't been the only one suffering here, you know."

Kara didn't say it to be funny, but nevertheless, Lee looks to the blue sky, closes his blue eyes, and laughs and laughs.