Kara giggled like a little girl as Lee chased her down the corridor, and she knew that no matter where the journey had taken her in the past and despite the places she had yet to travel, she had always known the destination.

Kara giggled like a little girl as Lee chased her down the corridor, and she knew that no matter where the journey had taken her in the past and despite the places she had yet to travel, she had always known the destination.

She had always secretly been the kind of girl who pictured her possible future at the drop of a hat. She would meet a person and wonder if fifty years down the line she would still know them. She would find a restaurant she loved and wonder if this was the place she would celebrate her hundredth birthday.

It was both sentimental and silly, but at her heart, beneath all the pain, that's the kind of person she was.

She figured it said something that the day she ran into Lee Adama in the Academy mess, her first thought was a question. Is this the man I'm supposed to marry? Some of the students in her year were teasing a freshmen, and Lee came to his rescue. The resulting confrontation ended with everyone present heading down to the flight simulators to watch Lee take out the bullies one by one in a dogfight.

Kara watched the numbers keep lighting up on his screen as he won over and over again. She had heard the name Adama over and over again from all her friends in the flight program, but she hadn't realized they weren't exaggerating. This guy was fraking talented.

Not to mention good-looking.

Kara winced at that damn little voice in the back of her head. It always seemed to steer her down the wrong road. This particular road involved her, Lee Adama, a twenty-four hour pass from Academy, and a bed with satin sheets. It didn't help that when Lee stepped out of the simulator victorious, his eyes locked with hers, and he gave her a smile that made her knees go weak.

Two weeks later, she hurt her knee in the pyramid game against the Academy of Leonis team. Her mind turned to flying the second she recovered. She knew that a change was in order.

She flew against Lee only a few times during their days at Academy. Kara had gotten a late start so that put her and Lee in different years. The few times they did fly together was like nothing she had ever experienced. She often wondered if he felt the same, but for once in her life, she was too afraid to ask.

The Academy commonly paired up graduating cadets with the younger students taking their flight test, and somehow it was no surprise to Kara that when she walked into the sim room that morning, Lee was waiting for her. Her flight instructor was pretty much a bastard so he made sure to remind her with all the red marks on her discipline record she had one real chance to pass this. Kara's gaze had shifted to Lee, and she felt her stomach clench when she realized he heard.

Lee pushed her to fly the hardest she had ever flown that day. He didn't let up. He didn't let her give up.

And for that, she fell in love with him just a little bit.

Even all the way back then, she knew things would be different with this particular man.

Then Zak Adama showed up and everything changed.

She didn't meet Zak until she was ingrained in the life of an Academy flight instructor. He was a member of her fourth round of students, and she didn't put two and two together until that first day of class. She read his name from the roster and looked up to see a student with a rather solid build and unassuming smirk answer. He looked nothing like Lee, and yet she knew.

Anyone who was familiar with her would think in those few seconds of recognition she might start wondering if Zak would become a part of her life, if he was supposed to be the main character in a funny story about how I met your father when he was a student and I was an instructor.

Sure, that thought came to her mind. Only it was later that night when she was eating dinner at her kitchen counter.

In the moment, she thought of Lee and wondered if maybe this was the moment where he came back into her life. Maybe this was supposed to be the beginnings of a story about how your uncle got to be friends with his flight instructor and she turned out to be head over heels in love with his brother, your father.

When Zak asked her out a few weeks later, she said yes against her better judgment. To this day, Kara still had no clue if she said yes for her sake or for the prospect of seeing Lee again.

Zak did the impossible, though. He pushed all those thoughts of possible futures with other men right out of her head. He was funny and cute and really respectful. When Kara was out with him, she tended to forget all those nasty things she had learned growing up about how she would never be good enough. Her thoughts seemed to settle on the idea that this was the man she was meant to love.

She thought she was fine. She thought whatever that strange something she felt the few times she spoke to Zak's brother was just a fluke, a small moment of tension that she exaggerated up to some huge, life-altering event in her life.

Then Lee came to visit Zak and everything changed.

He took one look at Kara, and there was that damned smile again. Kara stood back and listened to Lee tell the story about this cocky, upstart student who almost gave him a run for his money on her flight qualification test.

Kara would always feel proud that her thoughts never turned too far in those years that she had both Lee and Zak in her life. Whenever she imagined walking down the aisle, it was always Zak at the end.

Though if she was being truthful, occasionally she had a hard time deciding if he was the person she was walking towards. A few times she could have sworn he was the best man.

Still, she was determined to live her life with Zak for as long as she could. He was good for her in ways she had never even imagined.

Her thoughts on Lee made a subtle shift towards friendship, both out of desire and necessity. She started imagining them all grey and old, bickering over which of the grandchildren had followed the example of their youth and tried to build a Viper out of the primary school's new lawn mower. She could imagine being close to Lee's wife, whomever that might be, but being even closer to her brother-in-law. They would find time to have lunch together several times a week, and afterwards she would win all the money from his military pension in triad.

Then Zak died and everything changed.

The weeks following the funeral surpassed the pain of all those years she had lived with her mother. Zak had been her rock in life. She was lost without him.

She was knee-deep in a haze of ambrosia when Lee took it upon himself to break down the door to her apartment in Delphi. Later he would claim he had been pounding on the door for well over twenty minutes. That was the day that Kara learned about his knight in shining armor complex. Well, she figured it out later when she was sober enough to remember.

Lee stayed with her as she bottomed out. He held her hand when she decided she wanted to be sober and then went through withdrawal. He wiped her sweat when she woke up in the middle of the night, sick to her stomach. He let her rattle on and on about how much she loved Zak and not once did he point out that Zak meant something to him to. He wouldn't listen to Kara when she tried to tell him she was responsible.

Even through the sickness and the guilt, Kara's thoughts were running wild. When she was hanging in that small limbo between sleep and wake, she would find herself imagining Lee taking care of her for the rest of their lives. They were good together. Anyone could see that. He might consider it settling, but she would do her damnedest to make him happy. She owed it to Zak to watch over his older brother. Zak had always said Lee took life too seriously.

Then William Adama offered her a future on Galactica and everything changed.

She didn't see Lee for well over two years, but not once did she wonder if that was it for them. She knew she would run into him at some point. Her mind dreamed up a million different scenarios, ranging from her accidentally punching him in a bar to hunting down where he was and surprising him before she could lose her nerve.

For some reason, each one of these chance meetings in her mind ended in a kiss, and that was the real reason why none of them ever happened in real life. The guilt was too great.

Kara knew she would always love Zak. He would always be a part of her heart, but she also knew she would move on eventually. She was still young and even if she didn't get over the loss of her fiance for a decade, that would still leave her in her thirties. The world expected her to find a new love someday, but she had a feeling that no one would understand if that new love was the brother of the man she once loved and lost.

It was just a mere glimmer of a thought that she entertained now, but it still got to her. She knew she was betraying Zak in some way.

That was why every time Lee wrote her she threw the letters away without reading them.

She had decided to cut him out of her life before she did something really stupid. So no more thoughts about futures which involve him in any shape or fashion.

She had just managed to put all her concentration on giving Galactica a proper send-off when she was told the Old Man's son was attending the decommissioning. For a brief second, she imagined Zak standing in front of her, telling her the past two years had just been a huge mistake. Then reality came. The man in front of her turned into Lee. He was smiling at her and insisting that the past two years had been a huge mistake.

Then he showed up on the other side of the brig cell bars, and she realized she was wrong in so many ways. Again, everything changed.

He almost died out there in the final battle at Ragnor. She knew that she would hear his voice screaming at her to leave him behind for the rest of her life if she didn't pull him back. Staring through the beaten glass of the cockpit window, her mind wandered for a few seconds. She could see her life unfolding, a life that Lee wasn't a part of.

She hadn't realized how accustomed she had become to the prospect of having Lee in her life until she saw that possibility being ripped away.

It was these quick flashes of memories fading away that tore at her.

She would stand tall next to the Old Man at the memorial with the guilt of knowing she had killed both of his sons. The CAG job would be thrust upon her, and the weight would kill every last bit of who she was. She didn't want that kind of burden, but she would take it on knowing that she deserved it.

Maybe they would find refuge from the Cylons. Maybe they would run out of fuel and just fade away. Maybe she would sit back and watch the people around her be killed one by one.

Thinking about all those days ahead of her, she knew that it was going to be a long and hard process, coming up with a reason to survive.

It was in that moment Kara knew she needed Lee. She needed him to be there for the simple fact that he understood her. He had seen her at her worst and challenged her at her best. Their relationship was anything but perfect and millions of miles away from conventional, but he was in her blood. From the very first time he looked at her and gave her that grin that set her stomach on edge, she knew that she wanted to a part of his life and somehow, someway, he wanted to be a part of hers. Their lives were entwined by the gods themselves. Everything that had happened up to this point was evidence of that.

So she saved him. She rammed her Viper into his, joining their two ships, and she flew them home. He screamed at her for disobeying his order, his voice heavy with the knowledge that he had almost died. Kara had waited until they turned into a deserted corridor. Only when they were alone did she let herself latch onto Lee so tightly she could feel his heart beating against her.

Then she felt Lee's arms come around her, and she knew everything had changed.

The road was never easy, and her idea of where she and Lee were heading was constantly shifting. However, somewhere along the way, she came to the realization that her first real encounter with Lee had been right. During that flight qualification, she found herself falling a little bit in love with him, and over the years, that little bit grew to the point that she could no longer measure it.

Kara's hand tightened around the papers in her hand as she cut the corner into the briefing room. She could not believe Lee was working on the freight schedules when they should be out celebrating. They found Scorpio in the skies today. That left them with only two more constellations to locate, and it was only getting easier. She had gone down to his office intent on sharing a glass of the Chief's brew with him. Upon seeing him with that stick still shoved up his ass, she snatched the schedules and started running.

She could hear Lee's pounding feet behind her as she cut a line through the briefing room and out into the corridor on the other side. He was gaining on her, but she had expected that. They had been running partners for years now. She knew just how good he was at keeping the pace.

They were just outside the senior officers' quarters when she felt the tips of his fingers on her back. Reacting on instinct, she chucked the papers at him and was surprised when he stepped right over them and kept up with the chase.

He caught her waist, and Kara felt herself being pushed right into a bunk. She laid on the bunk, eyes locked with Lee's as they both struggled to regain their breath after that rather long sprint, and she couldn't help but smile.

Her thoughts drifted to the day she would finally get the courage to tell Lee how long she have loved him. Her mind played out their future together, and if it was possible, the smile on her face grew.

"Why the frak are you smiling, Kara?"

The sound of Lee's voice in her ear made her shiver, and she pulled him down to lay next to her. "I was just thinking about something."

"You? Thinking?"

Kara smacked his chest. "Yes. Me. Thinking."

"About what?"

"Spending the rest of my life with you."

Lee's eyebrows shot up, but to his credit, he did manage to keep his jaw from hitting the floor. "And that's something you're looking forward to?"

"For some time now."

Lee turned his head to look at her, and Kara suddenly felt like she did that day back in Academy when their eyes locked and he smiled.

Then he leaned in and kissed her.

And not one thing changed.