Two failed marriages, one aborted Cylon pregnancy, the loss of the first ship he ever commanded, and a mutual recommitment to the military later, Lee decided she was worth the wait.

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

Helo was helping empty out one of the last Cylon prisons when he saw her. A tattered smock was wrapped around her body, and her skin was caked with dirt. Her hair was a lot longer than he remembered, and it looked almost white in the harsh sun on New Caprica. Her eyes were scanning the crowd as she stubbornly fought her way to the front. She was clutching her stomach in pain.

He dropped his post immediately and ran to her side. She looked like she was about to collapse, but when Helo reached out to hold her up, she pushed his hands away immediately.

"Kara?" Her gaze remained slightly off, almost as if her mind had checked out completely. Helo couldn't fight the fear that hit the pit of his stomach. "Kara, it's Karl."

His name seemed to snap her out of it. She took a few steps away from him, and Helo would have been worried if her jaw hadn't tightened. There was a familiar glint of Starbuck in her eyes regardless of the fact that she still wouldn't look at him. "I want to see Lee."

"No problem. As soon as Cottle's cleared you, we can get a Raptor to take you over to Pegasus."

"No!" Kara growled. Her eyes finally met his. There was an icy hardness that frankly scared Helo to death. Something was gravely wrong with his friend. "I want to see Lee now."

Kara didn't say another word.

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

Helo found them an available Raptor almost immediately, though he did have to pull rank to get it. Kara sank down into one of the chairs. Still holding her stomach tightly, Helo watched her eyes lose focus. He let his gaze linger on her for only a moment longer and then the ship lifted into the air. As soon as they were within comm range, Helo requested to be put through to Pegasus Actual.

"Raptor 496, you should be reporting to Galactica Actual."

Helo cringed. He had forgotten Racetrack had been transferred back to Galactica for this mission when he pulled rank and conned her out of her ride home. "This is Helo, sir."

"Helo, you're supposed to be on the ground," Lee pointed out. The disapproval was thick in his voice.

"I know, sir, but something came up." Helo took a deep breath. He had a bad feeling that he was about to flip the Commander's life upside down. "I found Kara."

Lee faltered as his heart skidded to a stop. The only sign anyone in the CIC could see was his knuckles going white where they gripped the command consul. "You are to take Captain Thrace back to Galactica like all other military survivors. She is to see Doc Cottle immediately."

There was a small scuffle, and he heard Helo mutter something. "Sir, she keeps saying that she wants to see you. She's rather insistent."

"Orders are she's to go back to Galactica."

Helo glanced back at the only woman he would consider his best friend. "Pardon me, Commander, but frak orders. I'm landing on Pegasus. Shoot me down if you feel you must."

He could hear the anger filtering through Lee as the Commander took a few deep breaths. "You'll have clearance to land. You can take her to my office and I'll deal with her from there."

Lee hung up the phone with a bang and ignored the attention that got him. He motioned for Dee to come over to his side. "A situation has come up with the recovery efforts. I'm going to need to be in my office for a few hours."

"I guess the boards are mine then," Dee said with a smile.

Lee laid his hand over hers in thanks and then turned to leave the CIC. Somehow it bothered him that his wife wouldn't ask what exactly had happened, but he didn't have time to figure out why that was.

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

Lee was sitting at his desk when he heard the knock on his hatch. Helo stepped hesitantly into the office and after a few seconds, a woman hobbled in after him. It took Lee a moment to realize it was Kara. Her shoulders were hunched, and her face was vacant of any emotion. It was completely different from what she had always been.

"Captain Thrace, you may have been out of the military for some time, but that's no reason to be disregarding orders and taking advantage…" Lee's voice trailed off as he noticed she was clutching her stomach rather tightly. He leaped to his feet and was at her side in seconds. "Frak me, Helo. She's hurt! Why the hell didn't you take her to sickbay?"

Helo watched in amazement as Kara lowered her hands and let Lee pull aside the tatters of her dress. "She wouldn't let me within two feet of her, sir. She just kept saying she wanted to see you."

Lee looked up and saw Kara was watching him very closely. He gave her what he hoped was a comforting smile.

"Is… is it really you?" she asked after a few moments of silence.

"I should send you to hack for being such a thorn in my side," Lee whispered, knowing he would have a lot of phone calls to make to explain why protocol had been broken by multiple officers of the Fleet, including the second highest leader. Because as much as he wanted to be angry with Helo, one look at Kara told him the tactical officer had been right. This was a situation, and it needed to be handled before anyone knew what was happening.

Kara's face crumbled as tears came to her eyes. She fell forward, and Lee managed to move in time to catch her. He held her close to him as her cries shook both of their bodies. After a moment, he heard the hatch click shut. Helo was gone.

"It's going to be all right," Lee said, stroking the hair of the woman he have never been able to get out of his head. "You're safe."

Lee led Kara over to his bed when his knees felt like they were going to give out from the stress of supporting both their weights. She said barely a word as he laid her down and tucked the covers around her body.

"Do you want me to call my father and let him know you're safe?"

Kara shook her head.

"He should know, Kara."

"Helo will tell him."

"He's going to want you to go back to Galactica," Lee pointed out. "He's going to want to make sure you're safe."

"I am safe," Kara whispered. "As long as you stay with me, I'm safe."

Lee couldn't focus enough to figure out what that was supposed to mean and why, even if he didn't understand it, it still brought a burning joy to his heart. "He still needs to know," Lee said softly.

Before he had a chance to move away from the bed, Kara captured one of his wrists tightly between her two hands. Her eyes were pleading. "Don't. Please. I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want them to know. Don't make me tell them."

Lee's brow furrowed in concern, but he didn't try to pull away from her touch. "What happened to you, Kara?"

She shook off his question. "I just want to rest." She tugged lightly on his arm until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. "Promise you'll stay. Promise you won't leave me."

Lee gave a small nod and laid on the bed next to her. He was taken aback when she immediately moved herself closer to him. The last he could remember, Kara would rather die than be near him, and here she was curling her body up next to his.

He could feel her relax almost immediately and it was when she was about to drop off to sleep that she whispered, "You're the only one I can trust, Lee."

Lee stayed awake that whole night, just watching her sleep and following through with his promise. She would be safe.

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

Lee finally broke away from Kara when his phone rang and he knew that it was his responsibilities calling. He quickly informed Dee that he was still tied up with the situation and asked if she couldn't get someone to cover the CIC while she went down to the hangar to speak with the deck chief and assess the damages done. She agreed immediately, and Lee knew that she was only humoring him. He had slipped during the year of downtime, and he knew his wife wondered if he could ever get back up to the level he had once been.

When Lee returned to the bed, he let himself surrender to the tickle of sleep that was playing along the back of his mind. He woke up sometime later to feel the bed shaking. He quickly realized it was Kara. She was having a nightmare.

His mind went back to the way his mother would soothe him when he was a child, and he gathered Kara up into his arms. He spoke quietly to her, telling her that she was safe, that she was free. It seemed to calm her down.

By the time she woke up a few hours later, the fear had taken hold of Lee. He knew he had to make her tell him what happened down on New Caprica, but he found he didn't want to know. He didn't want to know what had made her so frail.

"Lee?" Again it was the hesitant, scared voice that came from her lips.

"It's me, Kara. Remember Helo brought you on board the Pegasus last night."

Kara tensed as the memories took hold. He was right. Helo had been here. She could smell him on her skin. He was there, almost overpowered by the scent of the man lying next to her, but he was there. "I don't want to talk, Lee," she whispered, burrowing her body in closer to him. "Not yet."

Lee nodded and watched as Kara drifted off to sleep again. Hopefully, there would be time for words later.

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

It soon became common knowledge in the Fleet that Captain Kara Thrace had risen from the dead and instilled herself in Commander Adama's life. It became a kind of myth. It was said that Starbuck was on Pegasus, but no one saw her.

People knew better than to ask the Commander out right If nothing else, the temper of Lee Adama was legendary throughout the Fleet. He fed into the persona of the stubborn, opinionated leader who was willing to go to the ends of the universe to uphold the ideals he believed in. It would not be wise to ask him questions.

Plus, anyone who was around during those first initial months were quick to tell the tale of Apollo and Starbuck as they had once been. Lee Adama had a soft spot for Kara Thrace, and you didn't put yourself in the middle of that if you wanted to keep living the life you had grown accustomed to.

So the brunt of the questions fell onto the calm shoulders of the Commander's wife.

Dee fielded the questions with a soft grace that left the asker feeling as if he had learned something when really no information had been exchanged. At first, it was just damage control on her part while the Fleet figured out how to repair itself and continue on the road to the thirteenth colony. Then it shifted to a more personal type of damage control.

It was embarrassing to admit that her husband wasn't completely forthright with what was happening in his personal quarters with the resurrected pilot. She hated that she hadn't seen one inch of Kara Thrace since Helo had brought her onboard. Lee kept her tucked away from sight, and since Dee had stopped sleeping in his quarters months earlier, she had no reason to visit.

So she fielded the questions. She fed the myth. She waited.

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

Lee tightened his grip on the folders in his hand and leaned against the closed hatch to his office. He needed a moment before he went inside.

The whole morning and most of the afternoon was spent in meetings with his crew. Then the conference call came in. His father wanted to speak to him about Kara.

Lee had danced around the real subject as much as he could, but eventually he got sick of it. "She doesn't want to see anyone right now, Dad."

"She wants to see you," William Adama pointed out. "Care to explain that?"

"No." Lee could hear his father bristling on the other end, but there was nothing he could do about that. Technically he couldn't explain why Kara seemed so willing to be around him and no one else because technically she hadn't told him why, and Lee wasn't going to push. He had done that in the past, and it got him nowhere.

The call had thrown him off enough so that when Galen Tyrol stepped into the conference room, he wasn't ready for him. The Chief and his family had been transferred to the Pegasus when it became clear that Lee's ship had sustained the most damage.

The words flowed off Tyrol's tongue so easily that Lee couldn't believe he had ever considered this man gruff. He spoke of the conditions on New Caprica after Galactica and Pegasus jumped away. He talked of the resistance and the collaborators. Just when Lee was wondering the point of this abrupt confession, Tyrol spoke of Samuel Anders.

Lee had purposefully kept himself from questioning why Kara was able to hide away in his quarters when she should have been hiding with her husband. He had been too busy juggling the consequences of their attack, their attempts to rebuild, and his need to prove Kara right when she said she could trust him.

Letting the hatch support all of his body weight, the Chief's words played through his head again. He clamped his eyes shut and focused on the voices filling the corridors as he tried to process the idea that Samuel Anders wasn't dead. He just wasn't with the Fleet.

Tyrol explained it like a slow burn. Once the Cylons occupied the planet, things shifted. Suspicions started up as the sides split into those who wouldn't stop fighting and those who thought they could find a way to live this kind of life. Kara was adamant that her husband was with them when the resistance was formed, but Tyrol was never quite sure.

It came out one night after a particularly painful lose. Anders explained that things weren't supposed to happen like this. The Cylons were supposed to let them lay down their burdens. Tyrol pointed out that the old burdens had been replaced by new ones and they would never be free until the Cylons were gone for good.

The ambrosia flowed as the two men came to terms that they had just led twenty of their friends to their deaths, and it was because of that haze that Tyrol wasn't able to pick up on what Anders was saying until it was too late.

The next morning, Tyrol awoke to find Kara gone. The Cylons had raided their facility. It wasn't until he found Anders that he realized the toasters had help. The ex-pyramid player was sitting on the bunk he had once shared with his wife, staring vacantly into space. When he finally noticed Tyrol was there, the words fell from his lips. "They weren't supposed to take her. They promised they wouldn't take her."

Tyrol kept explaining, but Lee's mind had already checked out. He didn't care why Anders did it or why that stupid jock had thought he could solve everyone's problems by cutting a deal. All he cared about was finding him and hurting him.

Lee sighed and pushed off the closed hatch. Revenge wasn't an option. Anders had been left behind by choice. For that, he would be grateful to the friends he had down there on the surface. There had been a distance between them that built up over the year he spent confined to the sky while they were free to build their second chance, but in the end, they had stepped up to protect his girl like only he could have done.

Lee opened the hatch and stepped into his office. He could the water running in the bathroom and let out a sigh as he sat down at his desk. He flung the folder of papers in front of him but didn't have the energy to open it. It was more performance reviews and personnel shifts.

The water in the bathroom shut off, and he could hear shuffling around in the bathroom. Smiling, he stood up and walked into his personal quarters. He slid his jacket off his shoulders and sat down on the bed.

It was only a few moments before Kara came out. Lee tried not to stare, but she was walking around in her bra and skivvies. This was the most skin he had seen since the day she stumbled back into his life in that tattered smock. She stopped right in front of him, and Lee watched her shuffle from one foot to the other. She was wringing her hands together as she struggled to find the words.

"What's wrong, Kara?" Lee asked, reaching out to hold her thighs. It was a constant comfort to him when she didn't shrug away from his touch, and yet it confused him. She seemed afraid of everything but him, and he had no clue why.

Kara broke him away from his thoughts as she grabbed his hands and moved them onto her stomach. Lee let his fingers run over the scaring on her stomach. She refused to let the Pegasus medics check her out, and the large surgical scar running parallel to the one she had gained from Caprica had healed over under the lone care of Lee. She hadn't talked about what it was or what it meant whenever he redressed the wound, and he didn't want to push her.

All those thoughts rushed through his mind as she let him touch her pain for the first time.

"I need your help."

Her voice was a soft whisper, but it managed to stop his touch in its tracks. She sounded scared and worried and exhausted and determined, all rolled into the small act of biting lightly on her lower lip. "Anything," Lee said without hesitation.

"I know I haven't told you much about what happened to me on New Caprica, and I want to thank you for not pushing that issue." Kara sighed and moved to sit next to Lee on the bed. "But it's time I faced up to what they did to me.'

Lee watched her hesitate again, and a bad feeling washed over him.

"I'm pregnant, Lee, and I need to get rid of it without anyone knowing."

Lee had thought he was prepared for anything she could say. He had seen and heard so much that nothing could surprise him. But this… this made his heart stop completely. "What?"

"I'm only a few months along so it shouldn't be a huge ordeal."

"Kara, abortion is illegal."

"It's a machine. I have a machine growing inside of me, and I want it out." There was a vehemence to her voice that had been missing before. "I'm starting to show, Lee, and that can't happen. People can't know."

Lee leaned forward to rest his head in his hands. Abortion wasn't an issue you could play with these days. Repopulation was key to their continued survival, and there was no one in the Fleet who would argue that point. He was the Commander of the Pegasus, second highest officer left in this world. He was supposed to set the example.

Yet this was Kara. This was his heart, his whole will to fight. And she was standing here asking him to save her.

Lee slid his hand down to grasp hers and let his gaze settle on the open hatchway leading to his office. The two most important things in his life were colliding, and yet there was no real choice to be made. "I'll come up with something, Kara. I promise."

Kara leaned her head down to rest on his shoulder. The silence of the room filled with all the things they couldn't say.

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

"I want to go home."

Lee looked up from the reports he was currently working on to see Kara sitting on his couch, her legs curled up underneath her. She was in a pair of his sweats, holding a glass of ambrosia in her hand and looking completely focused. "You shouldn't be drinking that," Lee insisted.

"I need to dull the pain and considering you couldn't find a way to get me pain killers, this will have to do."

Lee nodded. The operation had been three days ago during the only off-shift he would get for the next few months. He had had to bribe Dee with the promise of a romantic dinner in order to get her to cover the CIC, and it had been worth it. Kara needed him.

Together they traveled to the Prometheus. Lee went in to the doctor's personal compartment first and only when he was satisfied was Kara allowed to enter. The operation was done to the best it could have been, and Kara was able to hobble off the ship with Lee's help.

Lee couldn't even start to explain what an immense relief it was to see Kara up and around so soon after the operation.

She set down the glass and turned to face him. "I want to get back to the way things used to be."

"You miss flying?"

Kara nodded, not sure if she could talk without crying. Being unable to fly was so painful that it threatened to keep her from getting out of bed each morning. Without flying, she had nothing.

"I can talk to my dad. He'd love to have you back on the rotation."

Kara shook her head. "I want to stay here."

Lee pushed his chair back to look at her. "Kara, you belong on Galactica. They need you."

"I don't care where everyone thinks I belong. I know where I belong. It's here."

"Kara…"

"Don't Kara me, Lee. I spent months locked up in that damn Cylon facility where the only thing changing was the level of fear coursing through my vein. I feel safe here on Pegasus. I'm not giving that up."

Lee nodded and went back to his paperwork. He heard glass clinking as Kara poured herself another drink. He looked up and watched her for a moment. This little break had been nice, but it was going to have to end. Kara wanted to get back to normal even if she wanted it on a different ship than before. That meant there was going to have to be changes. "You're going to have to move to the senior officers bunkroom."

"I figured as much," Kara agreed. "I think I can handle it."

Lee watched her for a moment before grabbing the papers on his desk. He walked over to the side of the couch and dropped them in her lap. "These are next week's flight schedules. If you want to be on active duty, you need to start being of some use to me."

Kara stuck her tongue out at him but took the pen out of his hands. Lee walked back to his desk and sat down, settling in to watch her at work. He had missed this.

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

Kara was in her Viper, doing her best to single-handedly kick Cylon ass, when the announcement came over the comms. They were fighting hard to win, but the last basestar refused to be taken down. Pegasus had sustained heavy losses. There was no chance the battlestar was making it through this one.

Kara's heart dropped out as she realized that this irrelevant petty officer was telling her that Lee was about to die. Her Viper faltered for a second, and luckily her wingman was there to take up the slack. She tried to focus on doing her job, but her mind kept wandering.

She still needed Lee. He couldn't die.

Her mind raced to find some way out of this situation. It hit her almost immediately that she had no control over this. She was completely powerless.

"Galactica, Starbuck. Are there escape pods being jettisoned off Pegasus before it performs its attack run?"

Kara didn't have to wait very long for her answer. "Starbuck, Galactica Actual." The sound of the Old Man's voice in her ear made her heart drop out, but she quickly pushed the fear down. She needed to know if Lee was going to make it through this. "All available Raptors have already evacuated the high-ranking personnel from the ship, and anyone who isn't necessary to running the ship will evacuate to the escape pods and then wait for pick-up when the crisis is over."

Kara wanted to ask him outright if any of those people were Lee, but she couldn't form the words.

"Starbuck, get your ass off the comms and focus on the gods-damn fight!"

She wasn't sure who was screaming at her, but it worked. She cut off the connection to the Old Man and did her best to focus as the air lit up in fire around her.

The Pegasus was gone.

She couldn't change anything about that.

She could only hope that Lee didn't do something stupid like insist he go down with his ship.

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

Kara took the combat landing hard, but it was the best she could do. Panic was running through her veins, pushing her into a state of complete chaos.

She needed to see him alive.

Kara let the deckhand take the helmet out of her hands and help her up onto the ladder, but she ignored the words of praise he had for her. For a second, she recognized the young man as someone she had worked with before. Then reality shoved the memory to the side. There were a lot of people in this hangar bay that she knew, but she couldn't afford to let herself recognize any of them. If she focused on these people, she would slip back into the haze Helo had found her in all those months ago on New Caprica.

Faces could be deceiving.

Kara skipped the last two steps and picked the first person she had never laid eyes on before. "Is Commander Adama on ship?"

"The Admiral's in the CIC," the deckhand said, assuming that was who she referred to.

"I don't need to know where the fraking Admiral is. I need to know where the Commander is."

"I don't know, sir. This isn't the Pegasus. It's not my job to keep track of their personnel."

"There is no personnel from Pegasus anymore, you stupid frak," Kara screamed. She could feel everyone turn their attentions towards her, but she didn't care. "The Pegasus is gone, and it's not fraking coming back. All I want to know is if the Commander made it out all right."

"I don't know, sir," the young man stammered. "It's not my job."

The next thing Kara knew she had her hands fisted in the collar of the deckhand's overalls and was slamming him repeated against her ship. "What the frak good are you, huh? Why the frak are you here, you good for nothing shit?"

"Let him go! He didn't do anything to you."

Kara turned to glare at Kat, and memories of how much she despised this particular Viper pilot assaulted her mind. "Frak off."

"Come on, Starbuck. I'll take you to see the Old Man, and we'll get this all ironed out."

Kara let the deckhand slid away from her grip. "I want to see Lee. No one else. Lee."

"The Commander is still-"

Helo was between the two top pilots before Kat could finish her thought. "You don't want to do that, Kat."

"Oh, I really do," Kat growled under her breath.

"Go work up your post briefing. Your pilots are going to want to know what's going to happen now that we're crammed on one ship or did you forget that we just took a heavy fraking loss and as the CAG you have a job to do?"

Kat's face went white as she realized Helo was right. She snapped him a quick salute and turned to start yelling at her pilots to gather their asses and head to the briefing room.

Helo waited a few seconds before turning to Kara. He made as if he was going to reach out to squeeze her shoulder in support but thought better of it. "I'm going to handle this, Kara. Just come with me."

Kara hesitated. "I… I don't know."

"You want to know if Lee's alive, you come with me, Kara." Helo wished he could be less sharp with her, but gentleness never really go through to Kara even when she was being rational.

Kara shut her eyes for a minute before nodding. Helo started walking through the corridors and stopped when they were out of the main traffic. "Just hold on a second." That got him another nod, and he picked up the handset on the wall in front of him. "Patch me through to the CIC." He waited a moment and then started speaking. "I need you to tell Galactica Actual that I have Starbuck under my watch. She landed safely."

Kara watched frustration wash across Helo's face. "No I do not have more to say to him. What I said should be sufficient and he knows why." Helo hung up the phone with a bang and turned to Kara. "Let's go."

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

Kara had been pacing the empty bunkroom for over ten minutes, and in that time, she decided she had been wrong to trust Helo. He had stuck her in this stupid bunkroom, told her not to move, and then disappeared. She had no clue where he went or what he was planning on doing. When she asked, he just shrugged his shoulders and slammed the hatch shut, cutting off any idea she had about asking more questions.

Kara flopped down on the bed and grasped the bunk pillow against her stomach. She could feel the tears begin to sting as they met the cold air of the battlestar. She just wanted to see Lee. Was that too much to ask? She didn't care about how hard of a battle it had been or how much chaos Galactica was in now that it was on its own again. She just wanted to hear Lee's voice again.

If she heard his voice, she would know this wasn't a dream. She would know she wasn't back there.

The hatch slid open, and Kara fought the urge to start screaming at Helo for doing this to her. Instead she clutched the pillow tighter and turned to stare at the wall. She didn't want to deal with the bullshit anymore. "Go away."

"That's an odd thing to say considering I heard you were practically killed a deckhand trying to find me."

Kara was out of the bed in seconds and ran across the bunkroom into Lee's arms. "Where the frak have you been?"

"Abandoning my ship. Where have you been?"

"Kicking Cylon ass." Kara pulled away a few inches to run the back of her hand across her tear-stained cheeks and then she was hugging him again.

Lee felt her grip tighten and chuckled. "Gods, Kara. You really are glad to see me."

"I need you to not do that to me," she murmured against his chest.

"All right," Lee promised without hesitation. He could feel Kara start to sniffle against him again and wondered where all these tears were coming from. She hadn't cried since that first night they spent together after her rescue from New Caprica. His hands rubbed slowly up and down her back, soothing her until the tears had softened. He could hear her breathing even out and realized that the stress of not knowing he was alive had stolen the last bit of energy she had.

He leaned down and scooped her up into his arms. The bunk she had been laying on when he first arrived was only a few steps away. This time when Lee laid her down, she was too tired to ask him to stay, but that was okay.

This time, she didn't need to ask.

ooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo

Lee finally let his thoughts drift away from Kara after she had been peacefully sleeping for the better part of an hour. He had lied to her when she asked him where he had been. Yes, he had been abandoning his ship, but that wasn't all.

He had been talking to his wife.

Dee had been so relieved to see him in the middle of the mass of Pegasus survivors that she immediately flung herself into his arms. He caught her on instinct but quickly broke away. Affectionate gestures between them had been few and far between for quite a while, and it just felt odd to be acting like newlyweds even with the circumstances being what they were.

Dee ignored the way he shoved off her attention and started talking about the losses and what the changes meant for Lee. He knew this was her way of dealing with the trauma so he let her keep talking. It was at that point that Helo came bursting into the room. Lee locked eyes with him immediately, and not a word had to be said to tell him that this was about Kara.

A wave of understanding washed over him and Lee turned back to his wife. "I have to go."

"Lee, your duty to the Fleet can wait. You just lost your ship. Your father doesn't need you that badly."

"This isn't about my father."

Dee turned to look at where Helo was impatiently shuffling back and forth before narrowing her eyes at her husband. Lee was pulling the ring off his hand. "What is this about?"

"I'm sorry," Lee whispered, leaning in to brush a kiss across her cheek. His hand came up to hold hers for just a moment, and when he pulled back, the small silver band was clutched in her hand.

Lee looked down at the woman currently using him as a pillow and smiled. His marriage had always been on the brink of failure, but he had never let himself take that final, definitive step. When Billy had died that day on Cloud Nine, Dee had turned to him for comfort. She needed him more than anyone else in the Fleet, including his father. He kept her sane for those first few months, and that emotion was what snowballed their relationship into marriage.

Then Kara forced her way back into his life, and it was apparent that Kara needed him a lot more than Dee did. However, that wasn't what closed the door on his marriage. It was the realization that he needed Kara more than anyone else that finally made him start facing reality.

Lee pulled himself away from his thoughts as Kara began to stir against him.

"You're still here," she whispered, a sleepy smile on her face.

"I didn't want to put the deckhands' lives at risk. They earned a small reprieve, I think."

Kara buried her face in his chest, and he could feel the vibrations of her laughter against his skin. "I can't believe I did that."

"I can," Lee whispered.

Kara lifted her head to look at him. "You probably deserve an explanation why that is."

"You don't have to," Lee insisted.

"I know." Kara pulled away from him to sit at the opposite end of the bunk. Lee felt the shift in tone between them and sat up on his own end.

Kara stared down at her hands for a moment and then, taking a deep breath, raised her eyes to meet his. "You know that the Cylons took me and that they experimented on me."

Lee watched her hands automatically rest on her stomach and nodded. She didn't have to explain any of that. Having to come up with a way to secure an abortion for her said it all.

"They didn't just walk in and start sticking tubes in me," Kara corrected. "I fought them hard at first."

"At first?"

"They started working on me, torturing me and then trying to use the people I love to break me down. The pain clogged my head, and I really had no clue what was real and what wasn't. They fed me a hallucinogenic. I started seeing the people I loved, their faces, on the machines that came to my cell. I couldn't tell which end was up." Kara bit down on her lip to try to keep the tears inside, but she knew it was a losing battle. "The worst was when they made me believe the Old Man had come down to the planet to save me. They actually let me get to the door of the facility before beating me down."

"Kara…"

Kara shook her head. She wasn't doing this to get his sympathy. "I almost lost it a million times, but there was always something that kept me from buying into the nightmare completely." Kara reached out to take his hand and smiled through the tears. "They never could get you right."

Lee's eyes went wide. "Me?"

"They knew that I wouldn't give in until I knew that every person I loved had abandoned me. They made their way through the list… the Old Man, Anders, the Chief and my resistance, Saul and Ellen, Helo. Some took longer than others, but in the end, it worked."

"But not with me."

"It was always the wrong mix. You were either too harsh with me, screaming about what a frak-up I was and how I was ruining your life, or you were too gentle, promising me that we'll make it through this, that you'll keep me safe. They couldn't get the balance and that was what kept me fighting."

"But you were pregnant," Lee pointed out.

"They got frustrated with the lack of progress. Compliance stopped being a requirement."

Lee's hands tightened around hers. "Gods, Kara."

"That was why I was so insistent that Helo take me to you the day you found me. If I saw you, I would know if it was all just another hallucination."

"And I passed that test?"

Kara smirked and gave him a small wink before shifting to burrow in at his side. "You were yelling at me for disregarding orders the second you saw me, and then you saw I was hurt. You did a one-eighty and started screaming at Helo for not taking me straight to sickbay. That was what the Cylons couldn't understand. You rode my ass pretty damn hard, Lee, but when I was hurting, you were the first one to show concern."

"Frak, Kara."

"Not to mention you reminded me that I should probably be in hack. Only the real Lee Adama would call me a thorn in his side while looking so completely distraught that I was hurt."

The room filled with silence as they both tried to figure out what that said about their relationship. Kara finally decided it didn't matter what that meant. She didn't fraking care anymore. "I love you. You know that right?" Kara waited for Lee to respond, and when he didn't, she knew they had reached the moment where they normally backpedaled their way out of being honest to each other. "I know it's really selfish of me to be doing this to you, but I'm tired of always doing the proper thing and I just wanted you to know."

Lee smiled. He understood the feeling. Proper wasn't so nice when it kept you from being truly happy. "I'm going to talk to the Old Man in the morning and explain to him your situation. It might take some time, but my father loves you. He wants you to feel safe. If that means making special allowances so that I can spend more time with you, so be it."

"Lee Adama, I think you're taking advantage of my situation," Kara hissed, feigning shock.

Lee smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Sorry?" He jokingly pushed himself flat against the bed and covered his head, seeing as how this was the kind of thing Kara usually decked him for.

Kara chuckled and slapped his hands down off his head. She could feel the smile in his eyes reflecting back in her own and shifted her position until Lee's head lay in her lap. Her fingers ran through his hair idly, and she sighed. "We are definitely playing hooky right now. You realize that, right?"

"They'll wait," Lee practically purred. He had always thought Kara's hands were fraking amazing, but now he had proof.

"Things are going to change."

Lee opened his eyes to look up at her. "It's about time, don't you think?"

Kara smiled and leaned in to kiss his forehead before her fingers started moving through his hair again.

Two failed marriages, one aborted Cylon pregnancy, the loss of the first ship he ever commanded, and a mutual recommitment to the military later, Lee decided she was worth the wait.

Unquestionably, Kara was worth it all and then some.