"Come on Helo, talk to me. It's not healthy keeping all those emotions bottled up inside like that," Dee coaxed. "And with you pulling all those extra patrols it's not going to be healthy for anyone in the fleet. You need to have your head on straight out there."

"I need to have my head on straight?" he questioned defensively. "Maybe this is the part where I should ask how you and Apollo are doing. I'm not the only one guilty of bottling up their emotions around here."

"That's a completely different situation Helo. And no longer relevant, I came to terms with the fact that Lee was never going to be able to give me his whole heart. And I know that I deserve better than that, I don't want to be someone's second choice."

"So maybe I made some realizations myself. She doesn't even have a heart, Dee. So how could she have ever really loved me?"

"I've seen the way you two were together; it looked like love to me. And I think you're not only trying to bullshit me by saying it was something other than love, I think you're trying to bullshit yourself too."

Helo grimaced and let out a short, mirthless laugh. "And admitting that she is capable of really feeling love, and that I'm so in love with something that isn't even human, that's supposed to contribute to my mental health? Help get my head on straighter? Maybe even magically fix everything, make it all better?"

"No, it's not a magic fix. But at least it's a place to start."

"Maybe. But I still don't know how she feels anymore, or if she feels anything besides anger. It used to be so easy to believe that she loved me…….."

"And now?"

"Now I keep asking myself if any of it was real. You know? Did she really feel something for me? Or was it just part of her programming? A means to and end."

"A means to an end? You're talking about Hera."

"Yeah."

"So what does that have to do with not visiting her?"

He gave her a small smile. "It's stupid, but……I guess I just wanted to see what would happen."

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder?"

"Something like that. I guess I just figured that if I don't visit her for a little while, she either won't care or she'll be so pissed off that she'll be willing to at least scream at me. Either way, I'll maybe get my answer about where I stand with her."

"You've been thinking about this a lot I take it?"

"Too much. That's sort of where the extra patrols come in; it gives me a little bit of a reprieve."

"Reprieve," Dee said with a surprised laugh. "You've got a really warped idea about what constitutes a reprieve."

"It makes me focus on something besides my pathetic wreck of a personal life."

"I guess that makes sense. Have you given any….never mind….." she trailed off.

"Come on Dee, you're choosing to be silent now? Have I given any what?"

"This is just a crazy kind of 'what if' theory, but have you given any thought to the idea that maybe she'll care about you not visiting her, but that she won't give you the satisfaction of knowing that it hurts her?"

"You've lost me."

"Okay, what if she's sitting over there in that cell right now, going crazy, wondering where you've been the last couple of weeks? She could be wondering if something happened to you, if you finally got sick of her gloom and doom, whatever. And then say out of the blue, you go visit her, and she sees that you're okay and that you aren't really sick of her, but she's not going to let you know that she's relieved to see you."

"Why would she do something like that?"

Dee smiled. "Because she's been programmed to act like a woman, and not all of us are easily forgiving. And we're also experts at hiding our feelings. Look at how good she's handled all the insults and mistrust she's received since she piloted that freighter back to Kobol? Maybe all the rage she's been venting at you is about more than just Hera's death?"

Helo's head hung down, cradled in his hands. He was silent for awhile, pondering Dee's words. At last he slanted a look towards her. "So in all your infinite, womanly wisdom, what the frack should I do now?"

Kara's mind reeled at Sam's words. "What the frack are you talking about Sam?"

"Sharon's been bringing me antibiotics."

"Yeah, I heard that part. Why?"

"Why don't you ask her?" he prompted, nodding his head towards Sharon.

"Yeah Starbuck, why don't you ask me?" Sharon asked belligerently. The look Kara leveled at her was equally hostile.

"So tell me."

"We have uses for Sam, he's more valuable alive than he is dead."

"And this is supposed to make me feel better Sam?" Kara demanded as she whirled to face her husband.

"Just hear her out," he prodded.

"Why don't you tell me what you meant about her saving your life more than once," she countered.

Sam sighed. "Back on Caprica, after you'd been gone for all those months, I started getting a little reckless with some of our hit and run jobs. And I always took the most dangerous ones for myself."

"Why, Sam? I told you I was coming back," she replied, a haunted look coming over her face. It was the first time she'd allowed herself to think about what he'd been going through waiting for her to return. His next words confirmed her worse fears.

"After time passed I wasn't sure that you really would be back. I started wondering whether or not you'd really made it free from the planet, if maybe that Cylon, Sharon, had turned you in."

"If you were thinking those kinds of thoughts, then why the hell would you trust her?"

"I'm getting to that. There was this parking garage, back on Caprica. We'd been staking out the building it was under for weeks, one of the major Cylon complexes was housed there, hundreds of those things coming in and out everyday. I came up with the idea of a controlled blast in the garage, right on one of the major support beams. We, or at least I, thought it would bring down the whole structure, kill a group of them, and wipe out a building that was obviously important to them. Problem was, it didn't go down the way we'd anticipated."

The tent became quiet, Starbuck looking expectantly towards Sam, while Doc Cottle and Sharon were completely forgotten. Anders himself seemed to be far off, once again reliving the botched demolition job of the garage.

"The blast was supposed to be detonated from a timer, about the time it'd take for a half a cigarette to burn," he began softly. Starbuck moved closer, pulling him down beside her till they sat on the edge of the bed. "But I didn't get out like I'd planned. Three Cylons showed up, blocked my escape, we were all there when it blew."

"You're telling me she was there?"

"Yeah."

"What about the others?" Doc Cottle asked, surprised they were including him in this little tale.

"There was a blonde one, like the one you told me about fighting with when you came back to Caprica," Sam said, looking at Kara.

She thought about the blonde from the museum, the one who'd tried killing her after she located the Arrow of Apollo. She'd told Sam all about it one night, lying in his arms, after his band of rebels had picked her and Helo up. It'd been so long since she'd thought about those days. Sam continued on with his story, and Kara tried to stay focused on what he was saying.

"The other one, she wasn't like Sharon and the blonde. She would have been more than happy to see me die. But they stopped her, gave me back my weapon and let me go before the rescuers reached us. I could have easily taken them out after they armed me, and they knew it and gave me the gun anyway," he said pointedly.

"What about the third Cylon? What happened to her?"

"I don't know. That subject never came up."

"We took care of her," Sharon said quietly, drawing the attention of the rest of the room.

"How?" Starbuck asked, curiosity rather than anger in her voice now.

"It's complicated. We couldn't leave her alone, she would have just told the others what we'd done, given them all the excuse they needed to box us. But she couldn't die either, eventually she'd just be downloaded to a new body, and once the shock of rebirth wore off she'd still turn us over to the others."

"What did you mean give them an excuse to box you?" Doc Cottle prodded, having picked up on that one small phrase.

"It's a living death. Our memories would just be stored away, and there'd be no download to a new body after they terminated the ones we have now. We'd be existing in a box, but not really existing."

"Why would they do that to their own kind?" Starbuck asked, not even trying to hide the surprise and confusion in her voice.

"We stand out from the collective. We were assigned or programmed or however you want to think of it with a particular function, a mission and we did it."

"What? You've lost me."

"The blonde that Sam's been talking about, she's model number Six. But this particular number Six was dubbed Caprica Six because she's the one who gained access to the security grid that gave them their victory. I refused to accept that I'm a Cylon, the memories of a family; of a life before all this happened …..they're too powerful to be anything but real to me. But because of my contributions to the cause, things I don't even remember doing, I was given a little leeway."

"They wanted to kill you that?"

"No Starbuck, not kill us, it'd be much worse than completely ceasing to exist. For us though, we're seen as heroes to the Cylon people, and that sets us apart from the rest. We're all supposed to be equals and our being considered like celebrities, that's just not acceptable in God's eyes. It starts making us more like humans and their need to stand out. Think about it. The major strength of the Cylon collective is that there is no one person greater than the other, we're all equals. We don't fight amongst ourselves, we don't get jealous or envious of each other……those are human weaknesses."

"So why make yourselves look human if you don't want to be human?" Doc Cottle asked.

"I don't know…..in my mind……I am human, as human as you are. Downloading my memories into a new body isn't going to change who I think I am. It's not going to take away the memories of the people I knew, or of the loved ones I've hurt…even if some of them never really existed."

There was the sound of steel steps marching down the street.

"I have to go; if they find me here it won't be good for any of us."

"Wait! So what now?" demanded Starbuck. She was mad again, leave it to a Cylon to start talking and then leave before ever really saying anything useful.

"I know you're getting the resistance movement started back up. I'll try to help you as much as I can, but I can't promise you much, not yet anyway." With those final cryptic words, Sharon darted from the tent, disappearing into the crowds of people and Cylons alike that filled the settlement.

"Any news to report from the patrols?" Admiral Adama asked his son. The two of them strode side by side from the Galactica's landing bay towards the Admiral's private quarters. He'd called yet another meeting with Lee, trying to determine their best course of action to liberate those left behind on New Caprica. The hope of freeing mankind from Cylon imprisonment had become his new driving force. Despite their current situation, Lee was amazed at the change in his father. He hadn't seen him so vital and alive since they'd first set out to find the lost colony called 'Earth.' He didn't seem at all like the old man who'd been wandering around the ship the past year, pretending that there was still a need for the two battlestars orbiting the planet.

"No sir, so far everything seems to be clear. We're sending some Raptor teams out on long distance recons tomorrow."

The Admiral nodded pensively, his eyes far away and lost in thought. Lee would have been surprised to learn that his father's thoughts weren't actually centered on any sort of desire to return to New Caprica, but on Lee himself. He was saddened at the change in his son during the last year, the way he had thrown himself into his command of the Pegasus to protect himself from the downward spiral the rest of his life had become. First the breakdown of his relationship with Dee and then Kara's marriage to Anders followed by the latter's subsequent departure to the planet surface. Kara's defection had hit both of the Adama men hard.

"These Raptor patrols, are they going to affect our Viper patrols?"

"How do you mean?"

"Don't dance around the issue and pretend you don't know what I'm talking about son."

"Nothing that can't be handled, I've got some volunteers to pull double shifts on the Viper patrols…….plus I've added myself into the rotation." The last was said so quietly the elder Adama wasn't sure he'd even heard it correctly.

"Did you just…..?"

"Yes," Lee responded, not even allowing his father time to voice the question.

"Son, you're in command of a battlestar, you can't just go hopping into a Viper cockpit…."

"Dad!" Lee cut in harshly. "I'm of more use out there than I am pacing around aimlessly in CIC wondering if maybe this time they're going to radio in contact. I'm a pilot."

"I know where you're coming from Lee, I really do. I started out as a pilot too."

"I'm well aware of that, Sir."

"Who do you plan to take command while you're pulling patrols?" William relented, not wanting to start yet another argument with his son. The past year of watching the fleet numbers dwindle around them had added a strain to their already fragile relationship. Whenever Lee began referring to him as 'Sir' and hiding behind military protocols, it felt like another nail being hammered into the proverbial coffin.

"Dee can handle things."

Lee's words took his father by surprise. Of all the officers remaining on board either battlestar, hers was the last name the old man had expected to hear.

"What if we should come under attack?"

"She'll learn how to manage, I did. And I'll still be of more use in a Viper than I would be on the Pegasus. We don't even have enough good people left to crew one battlestar, let alone two, Dad. If the Cylons attack, it'll only be by the grace of the Gods that we make it through alive, you do realize that don't you?"

"All too well, Son."