Sorry for the long time between posts. I know how hard it is to keep track of a story's plot when a writer doesn't post frequently enough. Your patience is appreciated. I promise the next chapter will be coming along in just a few days. It'll be longer, too. Much longer.

Thanks as always for reading, and for taking the time to let me know what you think. This is just a shorty chapter, but hopefully sets things up a bit for what comes later.

Disclaimer: They're not mine, but they're fun to play with, so I do. Thankfully, they don't complain.

Too High a Cost
By: Mariel

-xxxxxxxxxx-

Chapter 4

Faith

He'd headed for the edge of a swampy plain, angling the raptor so that it settled into the underbrush beneath a canopy of tall trees that stood guard at the beginning of miles of thick forest. Setting the raptor down neatly, he cut the thrusters, gathered his equipment, and stepped outside. After spending several important minutes hiding the one side of the ship visible from the clearing, he got his bearings and set out. Cylons would not have spotted his presence in orbit, and they appeared not to have made visual with him as he burned through the atmosphere. He didn't, however, want to be found anywhere near what might be Kara and Lee's only means of transportation off the planet. With that in mind, he moved away quickly.

Three hours later, he had covered a lot of ground. Sure that he had not been traced, he stopped to eat and to examine his position. Cross-referencing where Gaeta had plotted Kara and Lee's last transmission, he chose an area he expected they might have landed. Looking at the terrain contained within the circled area, he chose the most welcoming site and decided to head in that direction. It would take at least two more hours, he figured, to reach it, but not quite as long to search. Cylons weren't particularly quiet, and since they'd leave at least one to patrol where the raptor had landed, he'd hear it sooner or later.

Checking his timepiece, he readied himself to go and then shrugged his gun over his shoulder. Thankful for a year with little to do but work out in Galactica's gym, he resumed his trek.

Once he found their ship it wouldn't be long before he knew where they were.

Something told him all he'd have to do is look for cylons...

-xxx-

Kara and Lee sat huddled together and held their breath. They'd managed to land their damaged raptor and had barely managed to escape it before the cylons had appeared. They had run for their lives, until, scratched, bleeding, and exhausted, Lee had spotted a small copse of brush and fallen trees. Grabbing Kara's arm, he'd unceremoniously pulled her into the middle of it. Short minutes later, a cylon had menaced by, its head turning back and forth as it sought sight of them.

When its footfalls faded into the distance, Kara let out a relieved sigh. "That was close," she whispered.

Lee just nodded and waited. When nothing had moved for ten minutes, he relaxed somewhat.

"We are so frakked," Kara whispered.

Lee shook his head. "Not yet. We just have to outwait them."

She snorted. "Outwait them, and then what? We've got no way off this planet, Lee. That raptor will never fly again."

"Never say never," he replied.

"Oh, and that's so helpful," she said sarcastically.

Out of ideas, Lee fell silent.

-xxx-

Half an hour later, Lee and Kara looked at one another. Visibility from their rabbit warren of a hiding place was poor, but they figured that worked both ways, so they felt relatively safe. They'd found enough space to sit in reasonable comfort while they tried to figure out a plan of action. As they did, however, tension between them began to build.

Lee finally spoke to it.

"It's killing you that you can't blame me for this, isn't it?" he accused her.

"No more than it's killing you because you can't blame me," she snapped back.

There was a moment's silence, then Kara said disgustedly, "We're both frakking idiots."

He hated to agree, but given their present situation it was impossible not to.

Kara decided to press the matter further. "Your father knew this would happen."

"Yeah, maybe," Lee agreed. "He sure didn't try to stop us though, did he?"

His tone indicated the question was purely rhetorical.

Kara responded anyway.

"Would it have done any good if he had?" she asked regretfully. "We'd made up our minds already. Frak," she said angrily, "we screwed him over him again..."

Lee turned on her angrily. "We did nothing of the sort. We-"

Kara refused to listen to his excuses. "Excuse me," she said. Holding up her fingers, she counted off as she spoke. "We consorted with Roslin behind his back," she said harshly, "and we agreed to carry out a mission without even discussing it with our superior officer, and then we stood there while Roslin presented it as a done deal. Damned right we betrayed him. And the line of command, and a whole bunch of other things, too." She threw up both hands. "Hell, we don't learn, do we?"

Put that way, he could see her point. It was just that where Roslin was concerned it was hard to tell what was military and what was presidential and who you were supposed to pay attention to and when. He looked at Kara and decided against mentioning that.

"When we get back-" he began.

"If we get back," she said. "We're on our own. Roslin agreed that no one would be sent after us, remember? "

"We'll get back," he insisted. Looking into the distance glumly, he continued, "Though it'd probably be better for us if we don't make it back - when we do, there's going to be no forgiveness in him."

There was no need for him to say who he was referring to.

She looked at him askance. "Like his forgiveness has ever made a difference to you!" she said bitterly. "You haven't cared about what he thinks or how he feels since I've known you." She shook her head. "You just don't get it. You don't know how lucky you've been."

She slumped as her anger dropped away, leaving her face sad and drawn. Her voice soft and haunted, she said, "You just don't know... You've spent your entire life - or at least your life since I've known you - pushing away the one person in the universe who loves you unconditionally." She paused. "Or who did, anyways."

"He's changed," Lee said in a low tone.

Kara nodded. "Almost into the man you tried to say he was."

Lee moved restlessly. It was true, and that hurt. Even during the years he had refused to communicate with his father, he'd known he was at least partly wrong in the way he had chosen to react to his brother's death. But there had been a certain satisfaction in having something solid and real to blame for something that had hurt him so much, and so he had continued to hold his grudge and nurture his blame.

"Yeah, well..."

She looked at him sadly. "I miss him, Lee."

He looked at her. There were tears in her eyes, and the wounded, lost look on her face was painful to see. Her closeness to his father - her neediness in regards to his father - confused him and was the source of a lot of resentment. Anger began to simmer inside him. They were on Kobol being chased by cylons and probably in the most hopeless situation they'd ever been in, and she was crying over his frakking father - a man who could have stopped them from being in this situation in the first place.

"We've got other things to worry about at the moment. Let's focus," he said abruptly.

He was right. Angry at herself for showing weakness, she looked in the direction from which they'd come and surreptitiously wiped the tears from her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes a moment, then turned and asked calmly, "When do you suppose the cylons will be back looking for us?"

Lee looked around. "If they follow a typical search pattern, they'll be back in about an hour or so. It depends on how large an area they're searching at a time, I guess. There's only half a dozen or so of them from what I can tell, so they'll keep the search area as large as possible and spread themselves thin."

He didn't want to think about what it would be like when their reinforcements arrived.

"So we'd better find a safer place to hole up."

He nodded in agreement. The place they were in had worked okay, but they'd never be able to light a fire, and they'd get soaked when the evening rains started. Looking through the foliage towards the dark escarpment he knew loomed high on their left, he nodded his head. "That's where we were headed. Why don't we get started?"

Lifting her share of the items they'd quickly removed from the raptor before leaving it, Kara nodded.

As Lee moved past her to take the lead, she looked at him and said softly, "The Old Man won't leave without us, you know. He'll find a way of getting us home."

Without pausing a beat, Lee continued forward. "The old man you knew is dead," he said curtly.

Kara bit her lip, thinking she hated this old Lee as much as she hated the new Adama. Lowering her head, she plunged into the undergrowth. Adama wouldn't let them down. He just wouldn't...

End
Chapter 4