Dearest Readers, I am sorry. I am sorry it's been years since I've updated this story. I'm back on a fic kick, and I'm trapped in the hell of reading someone else's unfinished story, and then I remembered how many I have floating around out there. This chapter has been written since 2011, but I suck at follow though (I blame ADHD, you can blame me). So here it is! I am working on the next chapter right now, so please review so I know that someone is still out there! Again, I am so sorry I suck.

The ceiling above her had 47 rivets, she knew this cos she had counted them 5 times while trying to wrap her head around this change in her past. Her mind was spinning, she was grasping at reality. There were reasons she didn't dig up memories, sometimes it was best not to remember. Sometimes remembering changed the past in an irrevocable way.

She was so caught up in her own head that she didn't realize someone was at the hatch until she could hear it start to spin. The effort it would have taken to get up was beyond her, so instead she rolled over and looked to see who would appear.

It was Helo. Of course it was Helo, carrying a box she recognized as Helo's Special Occasion Ambrosia box.

"Hey sleepy head." He said with a smile.

"Hey you." She sat up.

"I told you I'd come and find you when I had a chance. Thought we should catch up a bit before the party. It feels like forever since I saw you." He sat on the couch and set the box down, opening the slip lock on it.

"Not forever, just enough time to make me actually miss this place." She got up and sat next to him on the worn couch.

"Enough time for you to look like a completely different person." He reached out for her hair, "I haven't seen it this long since you were a kid. It's lighter too I think."

"Healthy air and occasional sunlight will do that to ya."

He poured them each a shot. It was the same bottle they had shared their last few shots out of, the night before he left for Scorpion, the first night she arrived on Galactica, and now this time, the night before his wedding.

"Remember the last time we had a drink out of this bottle Karl?" She asked.

"Your first official night aboard my Battlestar."

"Your Battlestar?" She asked with a smile.

"Well it was mine until some hot shot viper pilot took my place as top gun."

"Raptor pilots don't shoot anything, so how exactly were you top gun?"

"We didn't have anything to shoot at?" he laughed. His laugh was a panacea to anything that ailed her.

"It's good to see you." She said it with a sincerity she didn't know she still had.

"You too." His eyes looked into hers reflecting back the same emotion.

"I brought you something." She broke the moment by getting up to retrieve her bag. "Now I don't know how they made it or what's in it, but I know it tastes good. I brought one to share, and one for you and Sharon." She pulled two mismatched bottles out of her bag. "They're calling it wine, but from what I can tell there isn't a grape in it. Instead it's got whatever's left over from the fruit they pick. They ferment it and we all drink it."

Helo reached out and took the bottles from her. "Damn Buck, that was awfully thoughtful of you."

"I would have scrounged up a better wedding gift, but someone decided a shotgun wedding was best. I did also find something just for you." She pulled two battered lollipops out of her bag. "I think kids are tougher to barter with than the adults. I lost my ass for these." She had gotten the candy from two kids cutting class a few weeks earlier. She had meant to send them up to him, but had forgotten about it.

The smile that spread across his lips was perfect. Helo was always perfect, not in a better than you way, but in a way that made you feel like the world could be an okay place.

"Wow. You are the best!" He scraped away whatever bits of wrapper wouldn't freely come off the sucker and popped it in his mouth.

She started pulling out of her bag her few toiletries and things for the bathroom and setting them aside.

"How are things down there?"

"Great, really." She replied sarcastically.

"You know you are talking to me."

She threw herself back down on the couch, grabbed the larger of the two bottles and poured them each a drink. "Truthfully? It's awful."

"At least you have Sam. You two made it through Caprica; you can handle this no problem."

"If he were ever around that might be true. He spends a lot of time with Diana, and at the pyramid courts. I on the other hand, spend my days at the bar and my nights swindling civies out of their cutlery while playing triad. It's a boring ass life. Is it sad that I actually miss the cylons? "

"I forgot how boring life on a Battlestar can be when there isn't a war going on. It's all paperwork and repairs and training. It's frakking obscene."

She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. "It wasn't supposed to end up like this you know."

"I know."

"Do you remember when we were kids and everyone thought if two people were ever going to get married it was gonna be you and me?"

"Yeah, my poor mother, she swore up and down that would be our fate. Now look at us, I'm marrying a cylon and you married a pyramid ball player."

"Yeah, I think your dad would be more pissed than your mom about your wife choice." She said with a smile.

"Mom would have eventually warmed to her, right about when dad shot her." He chuckled. "You're in a nostalgic mood, what's up?"

"I figured at some point I gotta make a speech, so I should remember something worth speechifying about."

"Point." He nodded at her.

"I've already decided not to tell people about how you were my first kiss and my first frak. Something just seems inappropriate about that."

"Good idea, don't need my wife pissed about that." He chuckled.

"So I'm trying to remember less lascivious events. Things like you saving my broken ass, and when we worked summers at the ship yard, playing pyramid, you know stuff like that."

"Big word there Thrace, don't hurt yourself." He poked her in the rib. "We had a lot of good times back then didn't we?"

She took a chance, maybe her memory was implanting Lee where he didn't belong. "Do you remember who recruited you for the Wranglers?"

"Yeah, it was Lee. Come on Kara, you were there, I know you wouldn't forget that." The tone in his voice made her remember how he looked on that day. How he never looked at her the same again.

She felt herself blink more than necessary; she was trying to process his words. She rolled the glass between her hands and took a sip.

"I know you couldn't forget your first run in with the all mighty Apollo. I think not even a month afterward you started shattering his records. Man, did that piss him off! He mumbled to himself a lot about that. I think you're why he went back to vipers, he wanted to reclaim his title."

"Oh." Was all she could manage, it wasn't easy to hear this confirmation of what she already thought.

"Kara why do you look like you've seen a ghost?" The concern was knit in his brow.

"Nothing, I was just trying to remember, you know, cos that was such an important day for you. It's what put you on the path that lead to Sharon." The words came out in a more biting tone than she had intended. There was something just beyond it that she needed to ask. She didn't know how to say it, so she just did what she did best, she spit it out. "Is he why you left?"

"Why I left what?"

"Why you left me, to go to Scorpion, I know it seems stupid, but apparently there are just some things I don't remember, or I'm not remembering correctly, or something. Probably too many concussions." She offered a small laugh and a smile to ease the transition.

"Kara, that's ancient history. You were the one who told me to go, and you were right. It was the best thing for me, for us." The way his voice dropped at the last word showed a hint that his memories of that day weren't the best either.

"Things got weird for us after that didn't they? You didn't call; I wrote you and barely got so much as a post card back. I know I was busy, you were busy, but hell Karl, I wasn't too busy for you."

"Yeah, well there were things I couldn't live up to, things I couldn't handle then."

"Couldn't live up to? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I was in love with you. I loved you more than you know. More than you'll ever realize or understand. When I saw you look at him, I knew you'd never love me back the same way. The way you could love him." He looked down into the glass, as if seeking answers or courage or the will to continue with this conversation.

Kara knew that there were things that were left unsaid between them, things that had never been resolved. She hated digging up the past, it was like unearthing a corpse only to realize it rotted more than you thought it had.

"There was some shift in the air, an electricity between you two. I don't know how to explain it to you, but something passed between the two of you and I just knew. I knew that those powerful feelings you had, those gut instincts were something that would haunt you. You'd be followed by them until one day I'd wake up to an empty bed and find you in his. It was just easier to take myself out of the line of fire sooner rather than later."

"Karl, I barely remember meeting him. I thought he had seemed familiar when Zak introduced us, but I hadn't given him a second thought until then."

"That might be, but I know what I saw and felt that day. It hurt like hell to walk away from you. But I had to, and the less we talked the better. By the time you showed up here on Galactica I had resolved my feelings for you."

"That's why you didn't come to Zak's funeral?"

"I couldn't bear to see the two of you together."

"I hated him, Lee. He was such a pompous ass. I hated him even more after Zak died. I hated you a little too."

"That's okay. I hated you for a long time. I don't anymore though." He smiled at her, a glint of happiness in his eyes. "If you hadn't of broken my heart that day who knows where I would have ended up."

"Yeah, then you wouldn't be marrying a toaster and I wouldn't be married to an idiot." She clinked her glass with his before clearing it of its contents.

They each drank for a moment in silence. She knew that when she had showed up on Galactica that behind the joy in seeing Kara return to him Karl had bit back some anger. At least their dirty laundry was now fully aired.

"I'm sorry, you know?" He broke the silence. "I'm sorry we lost touch for so long. I really missed the hell out of you." He gave her a warm smile and a playful jab to the arm.

"Me too. We're good right?"

"I think we always were."