Kara stood outside the auditorium to the high school, smoking a cigar. She had no clue how the Resistance had found cigars, but she wasn't about to complain. At this moment, she needed nicotine like she needed oxygen.

Her whole life had turned upside down again, and she was pretty sure she wasn't going to escape this in one piece.

"Kara?"

She tried to squash the feeling of disappointment when she realized it was Sam. "I'm over here," she called, stepping on the cigar butt.

Anders jogged over to her side and smiled. "I was wondering why you ran off. We were just hearing about why you and Apollo happened to be on Caprica."

"Then why are you out here? I thought you'd be dying to know how I ended up with a guy like him." The sarcasm was heavy in her voice. She couldn't let go of the fact that Anders expected her to go running back into his arms. He didn't even wonder what she had been doing with her life now that the world was over.

Anders leaned up against the wall beside her. "I figured it would be best if I heard it from you."

Kara stared at him a moment, memories flashing through her head at full speed. Sam didn't deserve her anger. He hadn't done anything wrong. "I'm a Lieutenant in the Colonial Military."

"Stop fraking with me," Anders said, rolling his eyes.

"I'm serious. I fly Vipers now, Sam."

"But you don't even know how to power up a ship!"

"My mother was in the military. I told you that."

"No, you didn't," Anders insisted. "I would have remembered."

"She was a Marine. She got transferred a lot so I ended up on quite a few bases when I was little. I must have picked up a few things because it turns out I'm a good pilot. Le-" She caught herself just in time. "Apollo took me up into the air for extra training so I could get my wings faster."

"He mentioned he was your boss. Is that why he's here?"

Kara let the question hang in the air. She wasn't ready to answer that right now. Because to a point, Lee was here because he was the CAG and she was a pilot. To the rest of the points, he was here because she was Kara and he was Lee. They had become a single entity. Where one goes, the other goes, too.

"Aren't you even glad to fraking see me, Thrace?"

Anders' suddenly harsh words tore her away from thinking about Lee and his motivations. "Of course I am, Sam."

"You really don't look like a woman who has just seen the love of her life come back from the dead."

Kara rolled her eyes. "Who says you're the love of my life?"

"Who says I'm not?" Anders countered.

Kara sighed. That was just it, wasn't it? She desperately needed someone to tell her which end was up and the correct way to go with this, but there was no one in sight. There was only Lee and Anders... and that Helo guy who she still couldn't place. She wasn't sure if he'd be any help. He was in love with a toaster for frak's sake.

"It must have been hard." When she gave him an inquiring look, he smiled. "You had to start your whole life over again. That's not an easy thing to do."

Kara chuckled. Anders didn't even know the half of it. She leaned back against the wall and shut her eyes. "It was hell for the first few days, but I came to realize that I had a lot in common with the people on Galactica. And you should see me fly, Sam. I'm not normally a cocky person-"

"Yes, you are," Anders corrected.

"Well, not all the time," Kara defended. "I'm good, though. Maybe even better than some of the pilots who were stationed on Galactica before the attacks. It's odd. Sometimes I find myself wondering if maybe flying was my true path in life."

"I don't care how good you fly. Pyramid is in your heart and soul. Your true path is on that pitch playing ball."

Kara didn't answer. She didn't feel arguing and at the moment, she couldn't be sure that Anders wasn't right. There was a struggle inside of her. The part that lived for pyramid was currently beating up the part that loved flying. It was funny how, in her mind, those two parts bore the faces of the two men in her life. She had a feeling the struggle wasn't even about pyramid and flying. It was something much more complimented and messy. "I've been through so much this past month that I don't even know which end is up." Kara blinked her eyes and stared up at the sun. "Gods, I don't even know who I am anymore."

Anders reached his hand out to squeeze hers. "I want to know about every single second you were gone, Kara. I do. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear before."

It was such a typical Sam thing to say that Kara knew she was a goner. The tears started cascading down her face, and she leaned into his side. His arms slid around her back, and it felt familiar and comforting. For just one second, Kara shut her eyes and pretended like the Cylons had never attacked. This was just another day where she found a spare moment alone with Sam after one of their practices. There was no cloud of death looming over her. There were no battles to wage. There was no rebellious CAG worming his way into her heart.

Kara sighed as her tears began to dry. She knew that she shouldn't be leading Anders on like this, not until he heard the whole story of what she had been doing the past month and not until she sorted out why that should even make a difference. Then, again, he hadn't tried to kiss her since that first time so maybe he understood that she was struggling with something.

She heard him whisper her name softly. It made her want to cry because above all, they had been friends before the world ended. She didn't want to lose that.

A throat cleared, and Kara sprung away from Anders' arms. She didn't even have to turn around to know who it was. It seemed like Lee always had the worst timing.

"We're done," Lee said, shifting uncomfortably from side to side. Anders still had one of his hands on Kara's shoulder. "Sue-Shaun wanted you to know she believes what I had to say. We've come up with a plan, too."

"A plan for what?" Anders asked.

Lee's gaze shifted to Kara's for a second before he shook his head. "We can talk about that later. I think everyone's a little overloaded with information right now." He cleared his throat again. "Listen. Would you mind giving me a moment with my pilot?"

Kara tried to pretend his words didn't hurt her. So what if he didn't feel like calling her Kara right now? It didn't mean anything.

"Yeah, sure," Anders said. He leaned in to give Kara a kiss on the top of her head, and she couldn't help but wince. She didn't remember Sam being this oblivious to subtext.

Lee walked the few steps it took to look out into the forests surrounding the school. Kara realized that he was still wincing with every move he made. "Are your ribs still hurting you?"

"I'll be fine," Lee said shortly.

Kara gave a small nod and waited for him to say something else. When he didn't, she found herself scrambling to figure out what was happening. Lee wanted Anders gone so they could talk. Anders was gone but they still weren't talking. It made no sense.

The silence hung between them, and as painful as it is, Kara knew talking would probably make it worse. Talking would imply that she had already come up with a way to get herself out of this situation. Talking would tell Lee that the decision hadn't been hard. Talking would mean she had to face what she had done.

Because she couldn't find the courage to meet his eyes, it took her a few more minutes of infuriating quiet to realize that Lee was no longer looking at her face. He was openly staring at the ring on her left thumb, the one she had never had the nerve to talk about. Gods, she should have told him.

His eyes were burning a hole straight through her hand when she decided it was too much. "I'm not married," she blurted out.

Lee winced. He did not want to talk about this. "You don't owe me an explanation."

"I do," Kara insisted. She reached out for him and was actually surprised when he took a step back. Just another reason to add to the list of why she was a complete idiot. "Sam and I were engaged. It happened a few weeks before the attack. We hadn't even gone public with it."

Lee chewed on her words for a minute before asking, "How did he do it?"

"Excuse me?"

"How did he propose to you?"

Kara shook her head and fought back the urge to empty the contents of her stomach. "You don't want to know that."

"Yes, I do. Tell me."

Lee's insanely calm, calculated voice was scaring her quite a bit, but she was more afraid of what would happen if she told him no. "It was after one of our playoff games."

"Which one?"

"Aerelon. He made me wait until everyone had cleared the stadium."

"And until you were done icing your hands?"

Kara shook her head. "I didn't ice my hands that night. He didn't know I had to."

"Wait!" Lee's face looked up in confusion. "He didn't know?"

"I always did it in private. It was something I insisted upon. My team always thought I was just coming down off the pyramid high."

"The man you were intending to marry didn't find it odd that you would go off on your own after every game and then miraculously pop up a few hours later?"

"That's not the kind of thing you openly share."

Lee watched her for a moment. "You shared it with me."

Kara didn't know how to respond to that yet so she just pushed on. "He took me onto the middle of the empty pyramid pitch and asked me to marry him."

"As simple as that?"

Kara could feel her haw tightening. "Yeah, as simple as that. Proposals shouldn't be hard."

"You must really be glad he's alive."

"I am," Kara said, lifting her chin in defiance. She knew that Lee wanted to hear her say she honestly didn't care that much. She couldn't lie, though. It might make her life more difficult, but she was glad to see Anders again. "Listen, Lee. I'm not stupid. I know even if we find a ship, we can't take him with us."

"Who ever said that?"

Kara froze. "A Heavy Raider doesn't really have a lot of leg room. I figure if we take Helo and his little Cylon friend back to Galactica, that's pretty much all the passengers we can handle."

"You're making assumptions."

"What assumptions?" she demanded. Her anger was starting to rear its ugly head again. The fact that it hadn't been around since the first few weeks she had known Lee didn't go unnoticed. They were obviously back to square one, and that was all her fault.

"You're assuming that I'm going back to the Fleet."

"Of course you're going back." Kara expected him to laugh and tell her he was just kidding. She did not expect to see his eyes break from hers to rest on the ground. "You're kidding me, right?"

"I can do good here on Caprica. I can keep this people alive until my father can organize a proper rescue mission. Plus, if I stay, then I definitely know these people won't be abandoned."

It was strange how she felt compelled to deck him all the fraking time. No man had ever had that effect on her. "The Fleet needs you."

Lee regarded her a moment before deciding he was done with subtext. "What about you?"

Kara baulked, not knowing where that had come from. She said the first thing that popped into her head. "You're my CAG. Of course I need you."

"Well, your CAG is tired of the fraking exhausting, bullshit world he's been forced to live in just because he's the Commander's son. Your CAG wants a break from it all."

She didn't know what to say to him. The only thing that came to mind was the stupid saying the rest of the pilots drilled into her head. "Where Starbuck goes, Apollo goes, too," she whispered. "How can we be Starbuck and Apollo if you're on a different planet?"

Lee stared at her a second before letting out a deep breath. Kara could practically feel the weight that was pushing down on him at this exact moment. "Let's not lie to ourselves. There is no Starbuck and Apollo. There never really was." He gave her a sad smile before turning to make his way back into the school.

Lee left her leaning against that wall, trying to piece together how those little words could hurt her so much.

There is no Starbuck and Apollo.