Kara straightened her shirt as she waited to board the Raptor shuttles down to Cloud Nine. She still couldn't believe that Lee had worked out this system to give them some temporary passes to the luxury liner. It had been forever since she felt that annoyingly fake sun on her skin.

She looked around the hangar bay to see the pilots and crew joking around with one another. It was amazing what a night of free time could do for morale. If Kara was a selfish kind of person, she would be pointing out to each one of them that they had her to thank for this. After all, she was the one who mentioned to Lee that everyone seemed to be getting uptight. She was the one who pointed out with the addition of the pilots from Pegasus, they finally had enough people to get into a regular rotation for the CAP and alert fighter assignments.

Kara smiled at the thought of Lee. She woke up this morning, and it was like she could feel the damage between them slowly start to repair. Whatever had happened between them that day in the break room had given them the answers they were looking for. Even though they hadn't really spoke of what happened, she couldn't be more happy.

They had gone back to their normal laughing, joking selves, and Kara couldn't help but think it would only be a matter of time. Soon she'd be able to tell Lee that she had made her choice. She had always meant to choose him. It had just taken her some time to understand that.

Somebody came up beside her and started speaking. It took Kara a moment to realize they were talking to her. So many people had approached her since she single-handedly took out Scar that she was actually getting tired of being labeled Galactica's top gun. It was almost refreshing when the rather green looking deckhand started talking about how he saw her in a pyramid game on Geminon. Kara fought the urge to laugh with delight. It looked like there were still people on this ship who still hadn't adjusted to having the great Kara Thrace, pyramid player extraordinaire, as a part of their team.

The deckhand was mumbling something about finally getting the courage to show her this when Kara's eyes caught on the two people crossing the hangar bay and stepping onto one of the shuttles. She saw Lee first. She felt her stomach knot at the sight of him in civilian clothes. It was strange. Even though she had never thought about meeting him outside of this crazy, fraked-up situation they were in, she knew that with the way he was dressed, he would be the kind of guy she would be attracted to if she had ever randomly met him in a bar. Even without the pilot uniform, she would have wanted him.

A paper was thrust into Kara's hands by the deckhand, but she ignored it as her eyes caught on the woman. Lee had his hand securely on Dee's back, leading her along. They were definitely together. Kara could feel the jealousy flare up, and it mingled with the pain she felt in her head.

"Starbuck?"

Kara snapped out of her internal jealous rage to look at the deckhand. "I'm sorry. What did you want?"

"I would love if you could sign that."

Kara looked down at the paper in her hand and realized it was a picture. More than that, it was the fraking cover shot from Caprican Life from a few months before the attacks. The reporter had been doing a story on the Bucks during their game against their biggest rivals, the Picon Panthers. Those in attendance that night got to see Kara and Anders execute a perfect pass run to score the winning goal. Those who didn't get to see the game in person got to witness the aftermath of excitement when they got their issue of this magazine.

The cameraman had caught Kara and Anders just as he was lifting her up of the ground. Her hands were pumping up in the air in victory, and she was smiling down at him. Kara could remember the way it had felt like it was yesterday. Those were the moments in which she loved Anders the most.

She took the pen the deckhand was offering her and signed her name to the bottom of the paper with a flourish. It felt familiar, doing this. Kara's eyes darted to the Raptor holding Lee and his girlfriend one last time before she looked up at the enthusiastic fan in front of her. "What's your name, Specialist?"

"James Merprog, but everyone always calls me Jammer."

"Well, I tell you what, Jammer. You save that picture, and I guarantee within the next few months I'll get Samuel Anders to sign it for you, too."

Jammer's mouth dropped open. "No way! I didn't even know he made it through the attacks."

"He did," Kara said. "And I'm going to make sure he's back in this Fleet if it's the last thing I do." She gave Jammer a quick nod, and after straightening her clothes, made her way to the nearest Raptor. This was her downtime. She was not going to let Lee Adama ruin it by messing with her head. She had a man who loved her unconditionally out there, waiting for her to save him. She couldn't let herself lose focus anymore.

Kara was on her third glass of ambrosia at the seedy little bar. She hadn't even known Cloud Nine had seedy bars until she found herself wandering through a part of the ship she had never seen before. Her thoughts had been wrapped up in Lee. She had actually believed she would get to spend some time with him on this ship, and maybe they could even figure out what they had missed the night of Colonial Day when they left the party to return to Galactica early. "Stupid girl," Kara muttered to herself. "You forgot about his damn girlfriend."

She had been teasing him from the start about how much Dee seemed to worry and care for him. It looked like Lee had finally noticed. Before she could stop it, an image of Lee showing Dee exactly what he and Kara had missed that night popped into her head. Biting her lip, she lifted her hand to motion the bartender over but realized he was already on his way. "I want another," she called as he got close.

"That's going to have to wait if you're Lieutenant Thrace."

"I am. What's it to you?"

The bartender helped up the phone receiver she hadn't even noticed was in his hand. "There's a phone call for you. It sounded pretty fraking important."

Kara took the receiver and motioned to her glass. "I still want that drink." She waited until the bartender had nodded and walked away before lifting the phone to her ear. "Thrace here."

"Lieutenant, this is Galactica Actual."

Kara straightened up immediately. If Adama was referring to himself as Actual, that meant he was in the CIC. This was important. "Sir, what's going on?"

"There's a hostage situation in the Starlight Lounge."

Kara's eyes went wide. "Sir, is it wise to be telling me this over the phone?"

"There's no other option. We need someone to run the mission to fix the mess that's been made."

"Why me, sir? Aren't there other people who would be better suited for this?"

"You're the only person available right now. Can I count on you, Lieutenant?"

"Absolutely sir. Just point me in the right direction."

"We have half a Marine squad on r & r right now. They're going to meet up with you in the conference room of the main hotel. Keep this quiet, Starbuck. We don't want them to know we're coming."

"Any word on who's behind the situation?"

"Her name's Sesha Abinell. We believe her to be a member of the 'Demand Peace' movement. The Marines will have more information for you." The phone went quiet for a minute until there was a small click. Kara was thrown off as she realized he had switched to the handset. This next part was going to be private. "Starbuck, I need you to tell me you're all right."

"I'm fine, sir."

"Your head needs to be clear on this one. I won't accept any mistakes."

The bartender set the drink she ordered in front of her, and Kara sighed. It would be forever until she was able to have ambrosia this good again. "You can trust me, Admiral. My head's on straight."

"Good."

Kara was about to hand the phone away when something occurred to her. "Actual?"

"I'm still here, Starbuck."

"If you don't mind me asking, why did you hunt me down instead of Apollo? I think he would be better suited for this operation."

Adama sighed on the other end of the line. "He's already there."

Kara breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank the gods. Between the two of us, we'll end this thing fast."

"You misunderstood me, Lieutenant. He's in the Starlight Lounge. He was there when the terrorists took control."

Things suddenly started to make sense for her. No wonder the Admiral was demanding perfection out of her. His eldest son's life was in the hands of a renegade pilot who had been drinking her troubles away for the better part of an hour. "I will not let you down, Admiral," Kara said before setting the phone onto the bar. She slapped a handful of cubits beside it and gave the bartender a quick nod before leaving.

It took Kara a solid ten minutes to get away from this seedy part of the Cloud Nine that had suited her needs only minutes earlier. She did her best to keep from running when, really, that was all she wanted to do. The idea of Lee laying on the ground with his hands behind his head while a bunch of fraking idiots pointed guns they didn't know how to use did not sit well with her.

The front desk clerk of the hotel stopped her as soon as she set foot into the building. She took the walkie he offered her and was comforted to hear Gaeta immediately start relaying everything Galactica knew about the situation.

She shuffled through the front halls and breathed a sigh of relief as she saw it was Burrell waiting for her inside the conference room. She wouldn't have wanted to see any other face leading this charge. "Good to see you, Gunny. I'm going to need some of those gorillas you call Marines."

"Most of my gorillas are already here, sir, just trying to cop a little r & r."

"Tell me about," Kara growled, thinking about how nice the prospect of drowning her sorrows in ambrosia bought by horny, drunk old men sounded. Then again, keeping Lee Adama alive sounded a lot better. "Here's what we know. We got an unknown number of shooters with at least twenty hostages and about a ninety minute window before they start throwing out bodies."

"You got a plan, sir?" Gunny asked.

Kara gave him a smile, the one she had been famous for on the pyramid pitch. "Lock and load, boys. I'll figure out the rest as we go along."

It only took them ten minutes and one call from Sesha Abinell for Kara to realize that Lee was helping them from the inside. He was giving her an opening, and she was going to take it. She called Galactica and told them as much.

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with the atmosphere in there. Someone screwed with one of the CO2 censors in the bar."

"It could be a glitch," Adama pointed out.

"It isn't, sir."

"You think that it's Lee."

Kara looked around at the handful of Marines she had. "I think he's giving us an opening, sir. If I can get someone inside, we'll have a clear idea of what we're dealing with and we can end this."

She could hear Adama hesitate, but in the end, he had no choice. "Kara, this is a recon mission. Get someone to volunteer. Then you assess the situation and get the hell out of there. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Starbuck said. She handed the walkie to the nearest Marine and turned to look at the man in overalls who had entered in the middle of the conversation. "Who the frak are you?"

"I'm here to repair the O2 line."

Kara regarded him for a moment before reaching out to grab his hat. Gunny stepped up beside her. "Starbuck, what are you doing?"

"Volunteering," she said, rolling her eyes. "You didn't think I was going to let one of you goons turn my op into a hack job."

It only took another ten minutes to strip the repair guy down to his boxers and have him teach Kara everything he knew about fixing gas lines. The Marines used the time to rig up a hiding spot for a few guns in case she needed them.

"Are you sure you can do this, Lieutenant?" Gunny asked as Kara squared herself in front of the comms to the Starlight Lounge.

Kara immediately thought of Lee. Even if he didn't know she was on Cloud Nine, he was still counting on her to fix this mess. She wasn't about to let him down. "I know what I have to do, Gunny."

"All right. We'll be right out here. If there's trouble, you just make your way to the door. We'll throw down cover fire. The fallout will be dealt with later."

Kara gave Gunny a determined look. "It won't come to that." She buzzed the comm and waited for the doors to open.

A burly man ushered her into the room, and an attractive woman with a gun demanded Kara be searched. That pinpointed her as Sesha Abinell. She wasn't what Kara would have imagined. "You might not want to do this right now. You're running out of air in here."

The man finished patting her down. Kara tried to ignore the special attention he paid to her back side. "Do your job," Sesha growled as Kara started walking towards the censors. "Cover her."

Kara was almost to the sensors and had gotten an effective count of all the hostiles when she heard Ellen Tigh gasp. She had been concentrating so hard on not checking to see if Lee was all right that she had forgotten there would be other people in the room who knew her. Kara's eyes met Ellen's for only a fraction of a second before she ducked her head and kept moving.

"Wait a minute," one of the men with guns said. "Turn around slowly, girl." Kara threw her box down on the nearest table. "Someone check that box again."

Kara tried to center herself, taking a few deep breaths, before she flipped the false top of the tool box down and took out her guns. She wished there were another way. The room erupted into gunfire. The Marines were true to her word and were inside the lounge, covering her ass, almost immediately.

She was aiming at Sesha, intending to take out the obvious brains of the operation, when her whole world exploded. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lee rise. She didn't even have time to yell at him to stay down before her shot hit home. Her eyes went wide as she saw Lee's brow furrow. He was looking right at her as he crumpled to the ground.

The sound of gunshots faded out around the two of them as they both stared at each other in shock. Kara could see Lee trying to mouth something to her, but she couldn't focus for long enough to figure out what that was.

The next thing she knew Gunny had his arms around her and was yanking her to her feet. "We need to get out of here , Lieutenant," he yelled in her ear.

She was too disorientated to do anything other than nod. Gunny took a shot to the knee as they were at the door, and her instincts kicked in long enough to pull both of them out of the lounge before the hatch slammed shut.

"Get the Admiral on the phone," Gunny yelled. He turned to look at Kara. "Are you okay, Starbuck?"

Kara looked up at him from the floor, and her eyes finally focused. She had shot Lee. She had shot Lee and then left him behind. Jumping to her feet, she flung her shoulder into the control pad for the hatch and started banging.

"Lieutenant, the hatch is locked from the inside. You can't open it without their consent," Gunny yelled.

Kara turned to look at him, fear wild in her eyes. "I have to get back in there, Gunny. I can't leave him behind."

"Who?"

"The Old Man's son!" Kara yelled, kicking the hatch hard. "He needs medical attention." She turned back and started banging with all her might. The door had to give way eventually. She could feel the metal already beginning to cut her hands.

"Starbuck, you have to stop," Gunny screamed.

"Frak off!" she growled, switching to kicking the solid piece of metal again. "I have to get back in there. I have to save him!"

Gunny grabbed her from behind and forcefully dragged her back. He was rewarded with a violent head bunt, and she was back to pounding on the hatch. His hand came up to push the blood from his split lip, and he decided trying to get in Starbuck's way had been a horrible idea.

Kara kept kicking and punching at the door until the voice of the Admiral rang in her ear. She turned to see one of the Marines holding out the walkie to her. She held it up to her ear.

"What is going on down there, Starbuck?"

Her eyes stayed glued to the hatch as the memory of what she had done played over and over in her head. She had shot Lee. She had shot Lee, and he was going to die without knowing she loved him. She could hear Adama yelling her name, but she couldn't respond.

The walkie clattered to the floor a few seconds before Kara's body crumpled to join it.