Kara looked down at the small diamond on her hand and wondered if she really wanted the Cylons to be defeated; good things had only started happening to her after those attacks pushed Lee back into her life, and she didn't want to risk losing that.

ooooooOOOOOOOooooooo

Kara knew she should be focusing on the mounds of paperwork in front of her, but it just wasn't happening. She couldn't focus more often than not these days. Somehow she knew that was connected to how happy she was. Back when they first started running from the Cylons, she was as focused as they came.

Being this grateful confused the hell out of her. She didn't know how to handle it.

She tried to push the thoughts to the side and focus on the freighter schedules in front of her, but watching herself write was probably the last thing that would help her concentrate. Sighing, Kara dropped her pen and leaned back in the chair.

The day this whole happiness thing had started was permanently etched in her head. She was still getting used to the memory. It had the bad habit of popping at all the wrong moments. Technically, this was one of them, but she didn't mind the distraction.

Kara shut her eyes and welcomed the memory of the lowest day of her life.

ooooooOOOOOOOooooooo

The faint buzzing of the comm handset on his desk woke Lee up. He could feel Dee shift next to him, but when he forced his eyes open, he saw she was still sleeping. Doing his best to be quiet, he slid out of bed and grabbed a shirt off the floor. He paused only briefly at the hatch to wipe his hands across his face and then stumbled over to the desk.

The sound of the comms officer's voice grated on his still very much sleeping nerves. "Call from the planet, patching through."

It was the middle of the night both in the Fleet and on the planet. Lee had no clue who would be requesting this call right now nor did he understand why his crew would be patching it through to him. The line faintly buzzed as the connection was made. "Commander Adama," Lee growled almost on instinct. He really hated being woken up.

The line was silent for well over a minute before a small whisper filtered through. "Hi, Lee."

Lee snapped awake at the sound of her voice. He hadn't heard from Kara for weeks now. The last time he even saw her had been the day she returned from Caprica, the day before she disappeared down onto the Fleet's new home.

The comm went silent. Lee could tell Kara hadn't thought out much beyond that first hello. He also knew that he had no clue what he was supposed to say to her. In the end, when the silence stretched too long, he went with his gut. "It's really good to hear your voice."

There was no response. Lee sighed. She had made the decision to call him, not the other way around. He shouldn't be raking his brain in order to find out something to say to her. "Why are you calling me so late? Why now?"

There was a soft sound on the other end, and it took Lee a minute to realize Kara was crying. He had forgotten how that one small lack of sound could tear his heart in two. "Kara, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Finally hearing her respond should have put him at ease. If only her voice wasn't so shaky. If only he couldn't imagine what she looked like in this exact moment. "Kara… I know you better than that. What happened?"

"Nothing," she replied again.

"Kara, stop it. I know when you're upset, and right now, you're upset. You never come to me unless it's really bad so what's wrong? Why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying, Lee."

"You are, too," Lee sighed. The line went silent as a complete and utter helplessness washed over Lee. She had been the one to put the distance between them, but that didn't help ease the pain as he began to understand that she needed him and he couldn't be there. There was just too much holding him away. "Why'd you have to do it, Kara?"

The question seemed to take Kara by as much surprise as it took Lee himself. It was a few seconds before she could find her voice. ""Do what?"

"Move down to that planet."

"Why do you care?"

Lee let her question sink in. He knew she was expecting the same answer he always gave her at moments like this, but he didn't really feel like being safe right now. "Because I can't take care of you when you're so far away. I can't look after you, make sure your mistakes are fixed before you even let the guilt sink in. This distance is killing me, Kara. It's killing us."

The line went silent again, and Lee felt himself grimacing. He hated how he always said things like that. Now Kara was going to get uncomfortable and break the connection. It's what she always did. He could practically hear the sound of her begging him not to ask her to come home. Everyone kept telling him that she would come home when and if she was ready and that Lee should push her.

That was all he wanted to do, though. Every time he got wind of how she was doing on New Caprica, he wanted to go down to that surface and push her to come back with him. The skies were her home. They always will be.

The silence stretched on until it was too much for Lee. If she was going to break his heart again, he just wanted to get it over with. "Kara?"

"Why are you whispering, Lee?"

"What?"

"You were whispering everything you said before."

"Dee's asleep in the other room," Lee explained. He knew that it was probably to leave any mention of Dee out of this conversation, but he just didn't feel up to lying to Kara yet again. "I didn't want to wake her."

"She'd be mad," Kara pointed out. "I mean with the whispering and all." There was a pause, and Lee could practically hear the smirk sliding across her face. "Of course, she doesn't have to know."

"Stop, Kara," Lee said, rolling his eyes. He regretted the words the second they fell from his lips.

"Sorry," Kara apologized softly. The little bit of smile Lee had heard slipped away as quickly as it came. "I forgot for a second."

"Forgot what?"

"Forgot that I always seem to say the wrong thing when it comes to you."

"That wasn't wrong," Lee corrected. "It just wasn't well thought out."

Again, the conversation slowly died out. Lee heard a small movement behind him and leaned his chair back to peer through the open hatch. Dee was still sleeping soundly.

"Lee." She said his name so softly that for a second Lee wasn't even sure he had actually heard it, but then she said it again.

"Are you okay?"

Kara waited a minute before answering. "No."

"Is it about Caprica?" Lee waited. When he got no response, he pressed a little harder. "Anders?"

Again it took awhile for her to reply. "Yes. No."

"Which one is it, Kara?"

"I don't know."

Lee shut his eyes and let his head rest in his open hand. "Listen. I'm just going to sit here, Kara. Whenever you're ready to tell me what's wrong, that's what I'll be doing."

She didn't respond. He didn't expect her to.

Listening closely to the steady sound of her breathing on the other half of the line, Lee let himself remember the last time he had spoken with her. The way they had left things when she came to his office before the Raptors left for Caprica had bothered him the whole time she was gone.

He was waiting in Galactica's hangar bay when the Raptors came back to the Fleet. He was the first person to greet her. He was the one who saw the complete look of defeat on her face before she steeled it away. He was the only person who expected what would come next.

She didn't say a word. She just stood there. So Helo stepped forward and explained that they found the resistance. It was down to only a handful of people, and one of those survivors was not Samuel Anders. He had died a few weeks after Kara returned to the Fleet.

Lee had seen Kara broken before. He had been the one to speak to her the day Zak died. He had been at the funeral when she chose to stand beside his father and not him. He heard her crying herself to sleep those first few nights after the attacks.

He had seen Kara broken, and this… this was something completely different.

He was scared.

Helo told him to go back to Pegasus. He said that Kara would probably be ready to talk in the morning. Lee wasn't sure why he listened to Karl Agathon. Maybe it had something to do with Helo's uncanny ability to understand Kara. Maybe Lee was just remembering how Kara tended to lash out when she was in pain.

Either way, he got on that shuttle back to his battlestar, not knowing he was making one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

The next morning, Lee got word that the first round of settlers had left for the planet. Kara went with them.

Lee hated her for running, but he hated himself more for letting her go.

"Thank you."

This time Kara's voice was still soft, but there was that familiar quiet strength behind it. Lee felt himself breathing a sigh of relief. He was about to ask Kara what she was thanking him for when the line clicked. She was gone.

Lee set the handset down on the base as he tried to figure out what just happened. Kara reached out to him for some reason and obviously got whatever it was she was looking for. He wasn't sure why she chose him to be the one to come to or why she had chosen this exact moment, the middle of the night months after New Caprica had become the Fleet's home.

She had gotten something out of the call, but Lee still couldn't shake the nagging feeling that it wasn't enough. Her voice was stronger at the end, and yet there was still some unknown thing laced into that final thank you. His mind had flashed back to the days when they were hunting Scar. She had sounded just like she did back then.

Something was hurting her, and she was trying to be brave and not let it show.

Lee continued to stare at the phone on his desk as he tried to work out why that bothered him so much.

OoooooOOOOOOOooooooo

Kara tried her best to get a hold of herself even though she wasn't sure if that was possible anymore.

The air had been raw and cold against her skin as she silently made her way through the village from the Raptor communications hub. She slid herself onto the bed without much thought, only pausing to clutch the blankets around her body.

An hour later, she was neither warm nor in control.

The pain in her heart had been slowly taking over each day she spent on this planet. In the beginning, she didn't care. She figured she deserved it for making Sam a promise that she knew she could never keep. Then it was the way she had left the Old Man and his son without an explanation that had her welcoming the horrible feelings inside.

This morning, when she woke up, she knew. If she didn't do something, she was going to lose it. She was going to do something she couldn't take back.

She had stumbled to the Raptor comm before the rational voice in her head could point out that it was the middle of the night and she hadn't spoken to him in months. The tears began to fall the second she heard his voice. She had missed him so much.

Her eyes stayed locked on the pile of empty bottles sitting by the door. For so long it had been the only thing that made the ache go away. Then it stopped. She drank and drank but nothing faded. The pain was too much.

Kara clamped her eyes shut as the tears threatened to fall again. She had tried to fix this black hole inside of her, but it didn't work. It wasn't enough.

She was going to lose this one last fight.

Her eyes slid open at the sound of her tent flap opening. She clutched the blankets a little tighter and stared at the only man who had ever managed to pull her back from the brink.

Lee stood there, watching her, for what felt like an eternity. Then he moved across the tent and settled onto the bed next to her. She felt it dip under his weight. He hesitated a few minutes before reaching out to rest his hand on her arm. She turned to look at him. "I want you to come home, Kara."

She shook her head even as he was shifting to move his arms around her. "I can't."

"I'm not arguing about this, Kara. You're coming home with me."

"With you?"

Lee nodded and brushed a few stray hairs back from her face. "To Pegasus, effective immediately."

"But what about the Old Man?"

"My father wants you back just as much as I do. He misses you, Kara. He wants you to come home just as much as I do," Lee sighed and tightened his hold on her. "I'm going to do a better job of looking after you this time, Kara. I promise."

Kara burrowed her face into his chest, and Lee sighed as he felt her body begin to shake. She couldn't hide the tears from him now.

Witnessing her coming unglued proved to Lee that he had made the right decision. It had been hard to wake Dee up from his bed, to watch her whole face crumble as he told her the transfer wasn't going to happen, to stay strong as he admitted he had been stupid to let their relationship get this far. He knew he was breaking her heart, but he didn't have the strength to lie anymore. He promised her he was going to stay away so that she could pack up her things in peace, but he didn't have the courage to tell her he was going down to the planet. She would find out soon enough.

Lee felt Kara begin to relax. She was done crying. His hand came up to rub the tears off her cheek, and he felt her lean into his touch. "So tell me what's wrong, Kara."

Kara shut her eyes for a moment, breathing in the scent of the man currently holding her close. She could feel that hole inside of her beginning to heal already.

And then she began to speak.

ooooooOOOOOOOooooooo

Kara let her eyes drift open slowly. Each time she did this, she was still taken aback to find that it wasn't a dream. She could remember letting Lee lead her back to the transport. She could remember walking through the halls, people stopping to say hello and welcome her back. She could remember all the nights she woke up from the nightmares and all the times Lee shrunk away from his duties to comfort her.

It was both an unimaginable dream and the most realistic thing she had ever experienced.

The sound of the hatch stirred her away from her thoughts. Lee smiled at her as he stepped into the room. He gestured towards the small bathroom, and Kara remembered his casual mention of helping the Chief out with the maintenance on the new crop of Blackbirds.

Hearing the shower turn on, Kara looked down at the small diamond on her hand and wondered if she really wanted the Cylons to be defeated; good things had only started happening to her after those attacks pushed Lee back into her life, and she didn't want to risk losing that.

She knew what being lost felt like. It had been her life before the attacks, and it had been her life during those brief months of respite on New Caprica. She found she didn't like the thought of peace anymore.

The water shut off and a few moments later, Lee stepped out with only a towel tucked around his waist. He took one look at her and made his way over to the desk. "Come to bed, Kara. The reports can wait."

Kara gave a small nod and let him take her hand. She was okay with the war if it meant she got to be this happy.