Kara fought to hold back the tears as Lee continued to stare at her with that familiar cold expression on his face, and she couldn't help but wonder if he would even pray for her soul should the Cylons finally catch up to her.


Kara waited out in the corridor for a moment before slowly pushing the hatch open. Lee never kept his office locked. He kept saying that a Commander needed to be accessible at all times. Kara just thought he must be lonely. It wasn't like she knew for sure. Things weren't that simple anymore.

A lot had changed since she got back from Caprica.

It took Lee a few seconds after she shut the hatch to look up at her. He held up a hand to stop her from speaking. He mouthed that he had to finish this, and Kara realized he was on the phone. It only took a few seconds for her to remember the problem Pegasus was having with some of the freighters. There had been a drunken exchange of words at the bar on the Rising Star, and now half the Fleet's military wasn't receiving rations.

Kara took a seat in the chair by his desk and tried to relax. She shouldn't be this nervous. This was Lee. She had known him for years. They were practically family. He didn't always like her choices, but he recognized the reasons behind them. He would understand why she was doing this.

She watched Lee argue with the person on the other end of the phone and really let herself look at him for the first time in months. He looked different, harder if that was even possible. He had a bandage wrapped around his left hand, and Kara suddenly connected what her eyes were seeing with the reports of an electrical fire in Pegasus's CIC which she had heard about earlier that week. Lee must have gotten hurt. She felt a small pang of sadness in her heart. That was the type of thing she would have immediately known a few months earlier. Hell, she would have been the one teasing Lee back to health.

Things weren't like that anymore.

Something had shifted in their relationship when she brought Anders back to the Fleet. She couldn't say what it was that changed. All she knew was it started with Lee being angry at her for making some inappropriate, intoxicated comment and never stopped. They just kept shifting and changing until she didn't know what they were anymore. She didn't know who they were.

Everything had been so damn simple in the beginning. Life was lived a day at a time. Flights were flown to protect. Relationships were formed to feel. Good was good. Up was up. Lee was Lee.

Kara hadn't recognized that what she had with Lee those first few months was so precious, which was why it didn't hurt her when she lost it. There was no head-pounding, gut-wrenching loss. Instead, it was a slow steady drain that was only now really adding up to the ache in her soul.

Then again, it had been her choice. This was her doing. Always had been.

Ever since childhood, she had been focusing on getting herself through one day at a time. Her world was not the pretty picture of happiness everyone else lived in. It never had been. She knew that if she wanted to survive, she needed to keep fighting. She hadn't even known what she was fighting for. It shifted too often for her to keep track.

She heard a click and looked up to see Lee had ended his call. There was a small hint of a smile on his tired face. She missed who they had once been, the people they could never be again. That was one of many things she refused to let herself admit while she was awake. It was only when she was hanging on the edge of a peaceful dream that she surrendered herself to the fantasy. Still, when she woke up, it was always with the same thought on her mind.

Reality was some things couldn't be fixed even if you tried.

"This is an unexpected surprise, Captain," Lee said slowly. His deliberate use of rank didn't match the way he was looking at her, but Kara was used to confusion when it came to Lee.

She gave a small nod, acknowledging that she hadn't been called over her for some official reason. No, the burden of this encounter rested on her shoulders alone. "I…I heard that things have been tough here on the Beast."

Lee waited a minute before narrowing his eyes. "Yeah, things are tough here just like they're tough on Galactica. That doesn't explain why you're here."

Kara watched the smile slowly melt off his face as he spoke, and she knew he knew. She was trying to pretend like her suddenly showing up on his doorstep wasn't odd. She was trying to pretend they weren't broken for just a few seconds before she told him why she was here. She should have known Lee wouldn't let her get away with the denial. He never bought into her bullshit.

"I came…" Her words caught in her throat, and she tried again. "I wanted to tell you personally… I felt I owed it to you… I know things have been different the last few months, but I've been trying… you're still my…" She looked up at him, their eyes catching for the first time in so long, and she wished she was better at this game they played. "I submitted my official resignation to your father a few hours ago. I'm moving down to New Caprica with Sam."

Lee's face went white, but he didn't turn his gaze away from her. He had been expecting this.

"I thought you might…"

"Might what?" Lee hissed.

"I don't know," Kara lied. She knew exactly what she thought he might do. He might ask her how his father took the news, focusing on anything but his own feelings. She thought he might ask her questions as to how she could leave behind the life she loved so dearly. She half-expected a few insults directed towards Sam and how quick their relationship was developing. He might scream at her for being an idiot, for running again. He might pull her close to him and refuse to let her frak up her life again. His anger might take over, and he would hit her like the last time. He might beg her to stay, pointing out all the reasons that the Fleet needed her, all the reasons he needed her.

All these scenarios had been playing on an endless loop in her mind from the moment she told Sam she was going to move down to the planet's surface with him. None of them were close to what was happening.

"Don't you have anything to say?" she tentatively asked when the silence got to be too much.

"I don't think I really have a right to voice my opinion when it comes to you anymore. You made it quite clear that whatever I say in regards to your choices is irrelevant." Lee picked up the papers again. "Is there anything else I can do for you, Captain?"

Her body on autopilot, Kara shook her head and rose from the chair. She paused a moment, but Lee had turned back to the reports. She had felt this moment coming for months. The door had been poised to slam on the end of their relationship, but she really didn't think it was going to play out like this. Apollo and Starbuck went out in a fiery blaze of glory. They didn't end in icy silence.

Kara paused at the hatch as the familiarity of what was happening finally slammed in to her. That was what made her turn back to face him. He looked up at her after a moment, and she choked out, "I have to know. Will you… will you miss me, sir?"

That faint smile returned to Lee's face, and Kara felt relief wash over her. The Admiral had been right to say that no matter how bad things got, the two of them would find a way to fix it. She turned to the hatch, prepared to leave explanations for another day when they were both stronger and more stable.

Lee's words caught her as she reached for the handle of the hatch. Her guard was down, having settled into a comfort she thought had been long gone. He knew it. He could see it. And despite that - because of that - he ripped her heart out. "No."

Her knees buckled and his name fell from her lips, a small plea to the gods to let her have heard wrong. Her hands braced her body against the wall, supporting the weight of her body. She barely had the strength to move, but somehow she turned to stare at him, eyes wide as the familiar ache settled in once more.

He was sitting calmly at his desk, watching her crumble, a smile playing at the edge of his lips. This was the Lee she had become all to familiar with. This was the Lee who had fought his way back from death twice in a matter of weeks and yet came back different. Altered. "I once needed all the pilots I could get, but that time's long passed. Now I only need the ones I can count on to be there, the ones that won't make stupid mistakes and then not stick around to repair what's been broken." Kara's eyes dropped to his shoulder before she forced herself to meet his eyes once more. "I need someone who will keep her head in the game because it's obvious that this little reprieve is going to end someday. I need a woman who's strong enough to know when it's time to stop running, who can understand what I'm trying to tell her without forcing me to open my heart only to have it ripped out over and over again until the pain becomes how I define myself. I thought I knew someone like that once, someone I thought I could love. She was someone I would probably miss dearly if she ever went away. I invested a lot in the person I thought she was, but I was wrong. It was all a hollow fantasy." He took a deep breath and shrugged. "So, I'm sorry, Captain, but the last thing I would ever do is miss you."

Kara fought to hold back the tears as Lee continued to stare at her with that familiar cold expression on his face, and she couldn't help but wonder if he would even pray for her soul should the Cylons finally catch up to her. She wanted to scream that it hadn't been a fantasy, that she had felt the same way, but she knew that wouldn't help. It was over.

There was no fixing the break, no way to push the splinters of who they were back together again.

She watched him for a few seconds before nodding. "Then, I guess this is goodbye, Commander." She paused, giving him one last second to take it back, but she only felt the silence in the air.

Lee didn't speak until the hatch was nearly closed. "Good hunting, Kara."

This final blow was the hardest. It had been months since the sound of her name fell from his lips.

Kara stood in the middle of the hallway and struggled to get her breath back. Her eyes stung as she kept them clamped tightly, willing the tears to stay inside. She would not cry. She would not show weakness.

The despair was familiar to her. She had been losing hope for as long as she could remember. First it was her mother and the abuse. Then it was her father leaving, Zak dying, the Cylons attacking, Lee discarding her like some broken object, leaving Sam behind, knowing she was slipping away a little more each day. The blows never ended.

She had never had this bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, though. There had always been something that told her she was going to make it through. Often it was only just enough to get her out of bed in the morning and nothing more, but it was enough. She knew she would heal. If she had patience and waited for the pain to pass, she could move on. That hope had always been on the tips of her fingers, just out of reach.

A small voice in the back of her head whispered that maybe she wouldn't make it out of this one on top. Maybe this was the one that would break her.

Even if she was wrong and she found the strength to keep fighting, it was going to take a long time to figure out how.

It was going to be a long way to happy again.

She had been broken into a million pieces, small bits of her soul that it would take a miracle to piece back together and she had no clue where to start. One thing she knew was this time, she was going to have to dig deeper than ever before. This time, she had people depending on her.

Laura Roslin, a woman struggling to find a way to save her people even though those same people took away the one thing she had left in life.

William Adama, the one man who would never forsake her even though she was abandoning him when he needed her the most, a father until the very end.

Karl Agathon, her dear fraked up Helo, holding tight to the emotions of the past that had shifted and changed when he wasn't looking, oblivious to the fact that he was forcing his best friend to watch him waste away, his wonderful laugh and wise words withering until one day they would disappear completely.

Samuel Anders. Sam. A man who had never once lost faith in her, a man who would miss her until the day he died if she ever went away, someone who understand the person she had to be, someone who wouldn't point out her mistakes, someone who just let her live.

It was going to be a long time until she could stitch the pieces back together, until she could make herself something he deserved. For the first time, she wasn't sure she was up to the task. There was a hesitance in her heart connected to that bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Kara forced her face into the familiar mask of numbness and did her best to cover up the damage. The world would not see her weakness.

Just like that, the last step had been taken. Starbuck was gone. She had been washed away with tears that held back for years, and she wasn't coming back.

Now it was time to finally prove to herself that as tough as Starbuck was, Kara Thrace was lot stronger.