Chapter Eleven

Kara ran through the woods, following the sound of gunfire, dodging around trees and boulders on pure instinct.

What the hell had Lee been thinking? She was going to kill him when she got her hands on him.

She saw a red light ahead and realised she was catching up with the Centurions. Her heart pounded with anxiety. Lee must be slowing down.

Suddenly she heard a shot, a different sound from the Centurion's guns, and one of the Centurions exploded. Kara stumbled and nearly fell, but she caught herself and ran forward.

She spotted Lee in the light from the flaming remains of the downed Centurion, crouched behind a fallen tree. He had his gun aimed at the other one, which was advancing relentlessly towards him, guns blazing.

Kara raised her own gun. It was a long shot, but she might just make it at this distance. She fired.

Missed. She cursed and ran on, closing the distance.

She vaguely realised Lee still hadn't fired. What was he thinking? The Centurion was almost on him…

Oh gods. He's run out of bullets.

She raised her gun, taking aim. So far, she was still so far from them – but she had to fire now, there was no time left, no time-

Her lips moved in a silent prayer as she fired.

----

The Centurion exploded.

Kara barely felt any relief; all her thoughts were focused on one thing.

"Lee!" she yelled, running towards the fallen tree. Frak, frak, she couldn't see him-

She dodged around the metal chunks of the fallen Centurion, frantically peering through the smoke from the flames. "Lee!"

"Kara."

Her heart almost stopped at the sound of his voice. She turned towards it, and there he was, pulling himself up from behind the tree.

Alive. Dazed and bewildered, but alive.

For a moment she couldn't speak.

"Kara," he said again, and the dazed expression gave way to a frown. "What are you doing here?"

She blinked at him, confused.

"I drew them off so you could get away, damn it! Why the hell did you follow me?"

Her voice came back with a vengeance. "Why did I follow you?" she shouted back, staring at him incredulously. "I don't know, maybe it was so I could save your sorry ass when you ran out of bullets!"

"Kara-"

"What the frak were you doing drawing them off anyway?" It was such a relief to channel all the sick fear and panic into anger. "Have I ever – ever – needed you to look after me?"

"I know you don't! That wasn't why I-"

"Why then?"

"You said it yourself," he said, stepping over the tree trunk to stand in front of her. "I'm not important to the resistance any more, but you are. They can't run the evacuation without you; you had to get away-"

Kara hit him.

Dead on the jaw, channelling all her fear and fury into the punch. Lee went down like a stone, falling heavily against the tree trunk.

"You stupid frakking bastard!"

Kara couldn't bear any more. Her hands were trembling despite her best efforts to control them, and tears were pressing behind her eyes. She turned her back on him and stumbled away into the trees and the refuge of the dark.

Everything she had seen and heard in the past few days seemed to catch up with her suddenly. The terrible things that had happened to her friends on this planet and the way they'd all changed because of it. Nothing was the same any more.

Lee most of all. She could understand why he'd shot Baltar, but the cold detachment on his face as he'd done it had chilled her to the core. Perhaps he had gone beyond her reach after all, gone too far for her to pull him back.

She stopped suddenly. Her legs were shaking, and she leaned against a tree for support.

She'd saved him this time, but what about the next? She couldn't always be there to watch his back, and he didn't seem to care enough to do it himself.

She remembered Laura's words. He doesn't seem to care about living any more.

She was losing him, and she didn't know how to stop it. The tears pressed again, and this time she didn't have the strength to hold them back.

----

Lee picked himself up off the ground, ruefully rubbing his jaw. He'd forgotten quite how hard Kara could punch when she was angry.

He'd known she would be annoyed with him for pushing her out of harm's way but he hadn't expected her to be quite that violent about it.

He walked in the direction she'd stormed off in, hoping she hadn't gone too far. They had to get well away from here before any other Cylons came after them.

After a few minutes he found her. She was leaning against a tree, face buried in her hands, catching her breath.

He walked up to her. "Kara-" he said, and broke off, stunned.

She wasn't breathing heavily, as he'd thought. She was crying.

She can't be, he thought, utterly bewildered. Kara doesn't cry.

But she was.

That simple fact stabbed through him agonisingly, piercing all his carefully constructed walls in one sharp blow. He found himself reaching out to her, putting his hand on her shoulder, desperately wanting to help her, to do anything to make her stop crying.

"Kara, what is it? What's wrong?"

She stiffened under his touch, but she didn't jerk away. Instead she lowered her hands and looked up at him.

The sight of her face, pale and tear-stained, hurt him even more. The numbness that had protected his heart for so long seemed to be slipping away.

"I thought you were going to die," she said, her voice raw with pain.

"I'm still here." His hand tightened on her shoulder. "You saved me, Kara."

"But what about the next time?" she asked harshly. "And don't say there won't be one. I've heard the stories, Lee. You're too reckless now and you don't seem to care if it kills you."

Other people had said the same thing to him and he'd just ignored them. But he couldn't do that this time. Not to her, especially when she was like this.

He took a painful breath and tried to explain. "I made a promise," he said slowly. "To Ana. I promised her I wouldn't let the Cylons win. And I won't. Whatever it takes. Destroying them is much more important than my life, Kara."

Her mouth trembled. For a moment she stared at him silently. He stared back, unable to look away, wishing it was light enough to read her eyes.

Finally she spoke, her voice rough and uneven. "Not to me."

His breath stopped in his throat.

"I need you, Lee," she said, so quietly he barely heard her.

Surely he must have misheard. In all the years he'd known her, he'd never heard Kara Thrace admit to needing anyone, least of all him.

"You don't mean that," he said roughly, not wanting it to be true. He didn't need the burden of it. "You're Starbuck. You don't need anyone."

A bitter smile crossed her face. "Everyone needs somebody, Lee."

"Then you've got Helo," he said desperately, taking his hand off her shoulder. "You've got my dad."

She looked straight at him, trapping him with her eyes.

"I know I have, but they're not you. You're more important to me than anyone else. You always have been."

Lee stared at her for a moment and then abruptly looked away. He couldn't bear it. Not the words themselves nor the fact that something inside him was responding to them, was thawing and cracking under the warmth of them.

"Well, I shouldn't be," he said harshly, fiercely pushing the feelings away. "Do you know what kind of man I am, Kara?" Better she knew the truth about him, knew all of it. That would keep her away. "I'm the kind of man who panics and pushes his girlfriend away when she tells him she's pregnant. I'm the kind of man who gets his wife killed because he's too damn selfish to look after her properly."

"Lee-" She was staring at him, eyes wide and shocked.

He pushed on desperately. "You shouldn't need me, Kara. People who need me end up regretting it. Don't make the same mistake."

She opened her mouth to reply, and suddenly he couldn't breathe. Gods knew she should despise him for what he'd done, but he couldn't bear to see it in her face.

He turned away, biting his lip so hard he tasted blood.

"We need to get moving," he said, hating the way his voice trembled. "There may be more Cylons around."

"Lee-"

"We have to go. Are you ready?"

There was a long silence behind him. Finally he heard her sigh.

"All right, Lee. But don't think I'm finished with you yet."

Oh, Kara. When are you ever?

He wanted to laugh, but he was afraid he might cry instead.

They started forward, and as they walked in silence he tried to calm himself, to repair the cracks in his defences, to be numb and detached again.

But it didn't work. For once it wasn't Ana's last words to him that repeated over and over in his ears.

There was a new refrain now.

I need you, Lee.

He wished it didn't matter to him, but it did.