SECRETS (formerly "The Secrets that Haunt Us"

By Greensleeves104

Word Count:
Date: 10/5/05
Series: Season 2
Rating: M+
Category: Relationships
Pairing/Focus: Lee/Kara
Warnings: Angst, violence, and sexual situations
Summary: Kara reflects on her recent relationship with Lee, and grows concerned over his disappearance. Covers season 2 episodes through leaked spoilers for 213
Spoilers/Disclaimers: SPOILERS! SPOILERS! I will be referencing spoilers for season to through 210, AND ALSO leaked spoilers for episode 213!!! You have been WARNED!!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am reposting my revised Chapter 1(A) of my fic, Secrets (I changed the name. See above) I revised some stuff and also wanted to repost it since I'm about to put up 1B. Also, I need to WARN everyone that this story references spoilers I've read concerning the second half of season two. My imagination has wrestled with them for weeks, and I've now made them into a Kara/Lee story. And it IS a Kara/Lee story. Promise.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I would like to extend my most sincere apology to Greensleeves104. She has repeatedly sent me the document file which has this PROPERLY formatted, however due to the size of the story I have been unable to place that into this .html file. Each time I have tried, the size of the file with italics and such has frozen the program and I have been unable to do anything with it. In addition, spacing and blocking have not translated well from her document into my word processing program. The result has been an unholy mess which was literally impossible to decipher. I apologize also to the reader, who may have some difficulty following the author's precise intent. Please understand that the formatting was NOT the result of the author's writing, but rather the limitations of the programs that are used by the archive. The story is just too good to dismiss from the archive because I couldn't format it properly... it's an awesome read, truly. Please do not hold the formatting against the author, and give the story a chance. Thank you for your understanding in this matter, and enjoy the story (as I know you will)...

Chapter 1

Kara swung open the hatch to the officers' duty locker, her eyes going immediately to a certain locker and nearby rack that belonged to one Lee Adama. "Frak," she said under her breath, as she took in its neat, undisturbed appearance. He had still not returned. Frustrated, concerned, and more a little annoyed, she stripped off her flight suit and got herself into her own rack.

He had been gone for a few days, off somewhere in the fleet. Where, she didn't know, and the not knowing bothered her more than she cared to admit. He had been cagey with her when he had first mentioned his planned absence a few days earlier. Just handed her a duty roster, carefully penned in for the week ahead, and asked her to fill in as CAG for a day or so. She had tried to ask him where he was going, but he had brushed her off with an excuse about paperwork to do in his office, before disappearing down a corridor. In the opposite direction of the CAG's office, she noted with some annoyance.

His aloofness hurt her, especially since they had been almost inseparable since they had returned together from Kobol some weeks earlier, sliding into a laughing, easy companionship that she valued more than she cared to admit. Without necessarily intending to (at least not consciously) they always seemed to be together, their shifts invariably coinciding. They worked well as a team, anticipating each other's concerns, solving problems together among "their" pilots. Kat had referred to them as "Mom and Dad" under her breath at one point, after botching a landing and getting chewed out by the pair of them. Lee had caught Kara's eye and they had struggled not to laugh out loud until after Kat had departed in a huff. "Makes me feel old," Lee had said. "You are old," Kara retorted, and laughed again at the face he had made at her.

In their rare time off as well, they somehow kept finding themselves together, keeping up a constant, playful banter about anything and nothing. It was companionable, satisfying, and fun. And it kept them from touching on any deeper issues or emotions that Kara (and maybe Lee as well) were just as happy avoiding. Things were good between them. Comfortable. No need to mess with a good thing, she told herself.

Yet that night, lying in her rack, exhausted yet unable to sleep, those emotions and memories were harder to keep at bay. It had been such a strange, surreal sojourn, those few weeks on Caprica. She had yet to speak of it in depth to anyone, mostly because the simple act of remembering it raised in her such overwhelming feelings of panic and guilt. Panic at the hazy yet terrifying memories of the Cylon "farm," of the women tethered to those machines, and knowing how close she had come to being one of them. Guilt, because she had made it out, and they hadn't. Because she had left, escaped home to her "family," while those desperate survivors on Caprica had no home or family to return to.

And guilt because of Anders.

Their time together had been so short, yet she had believed herself to be in love with him. They had shared a brief, passionate tryst at that remote school in the Caprican hills, on a planet shadowed by fear and death. The threat of imminent attack had intensified their lovemaking, and heightened their emotions for each other. She had admired his gutsy attitude, his leadership skills, and frankly, was turned on by his body as well. He had reminded her a little of Lee, actually. Not just in looks, but in the competitive yet sensual way they had played that first intense game of Pyramid. During one play, she remembered, when Anders had grabbed her to try to strip her of the ball, an unbidden thought of Lee had risen in her mind, which she had fiercely pushed back down again.

Thoughts of Lee had been painful at the time. His last scathing words to her were still reverberating in her mind when she was on Caprica. He had shown his disgust for her on Galactica's hangar deck before she had left, and although she had punched him, his words had only matched her own self-loathing over her behavior with Gaius Baltar.

So there had been a sweet sense of relief in giving in to Anders's obvious desire for her. He knew nothing of her past. Was unaware of all the pain she had experienced, and the pain she had caused others. He knew nothing about Zak, and the myriad ways she had failed him. And for a few days, she had surrendered to the bliss of forgetting it all as well, and thought herself in love.

But now, weeks later on Galactica, she knew it had been an illusion. She had a hard time now even recalling Anders's face . The guilt of her broken promise to return for him also weighed on her. She had tried, albeit half–heartedly, to fulfill it. Within a day of their return together from Kobol, she had asked Commander Adama for permission to take the Raider and return to Caprica on a rescue mission. He had refused pointblank, citing the danger of the mission. She hadn't argued, indeed had been overcome with a sense of relief that she wouldn't have to go near Caprica again.

But the guilt of her quick acquiescence –and her relief—continued to nag at her. Another screw-up, another of her failures, another ghost to haunt her in sleepless hours at night. She wondered if Anders was still alive. The odds were against him, she knew. She guiltily murmured a prayer for him, turned on to her side, and staring into the darkness, thought about Lee.

She would never forget the moment she had seen him again, there on the Astral Queen. When her Raider had found the fleet (albeit an oddly diminished one) off Kobol, she had been intensely relieved, grateful that her instinct to jump there rather than the fleet's previous coordinates had been correct. After docking, she was the first out of the Raider, driven by a visceral need to get away from any and all things Cylon. Walking down the dimly lit corridor, she realized wearily that she felt no elation that her crazy-assed mission was finally nearing completion. Instead, she was simply exhausted, scarred by the physical and emotional wounds she had suffered on Caprica, and uncharacteristically close to tears.

Then she turned the corner and in a sea of faces on the far side of the room, saw only one.

Lee.

He was walking toward her, arms outstretched, blue eyes warm and loving, his relief at seeing her alive and whole radiating from him. Her exhaustion, her pain, her sadness—all were forgotten in an overwhelming sense of relief and joy. She was home. She was with Lee again. Her arms reached out to him, and they caught one another up in a huge embrace, unconsciously sighing in relief as they held one another. She couldn't remember ever hugging him before, and wondered why ever not.

And then he had kissed her.

It was sweet, yet electrifying, but so utterly unexpected that without thinking she had pulled away, and stared into blue eyes as shocked as hers surely were. That brief confused moment was shattered in the tension that suddenly escalated when Lee caught sight of Sharon. And it wasn't until hours later, alone with her thoughts, that she had time to reflect on the kiss, and her reaction to it. And to grow utterly disgusted with herself.

What kind of a person was she? She had stood in the yellow haze of Caprica, holding on to Anders, believing herself to be in love with him, and promising to return for him. And now, mere hours later, she found herself aroused by another man's kiss, brief though it had been. The fact that it was Lee's kiss didn't change anything. Maybe it made it worse. He was the one who had hurled in her face the charge that she couldn't keep her pants on. Was he right? Was she incapable of really loving someone? Was she perhaps too shallow for anything better than a quick frak? Was that all that Anders was to her?

It was in this mood that Lee had found her, angrily bouncing the pyramid ball against the wall of the deserted holding room. Perhaps, she thought, as she lay in her rack now, weeks later, remembering it, just perhaps, if Lee had opened with the warm words he used later, she might have succumbed to her desire to tell him everything right then. To weep on his shoulder, to surrender to the honesty and openness their earlier hug had implicitly invited.

But instead he had grabbed her pyramid ball, and refused to give it back. (The ball that Anders had given her, she remembered, lashing herself again with her guilt.) Her own self-loathing was immediately redirected into anger at Lee. And by the time he did reach out to her, expressing his concern for the evident pain she was in, it was too late. She was so determined to prove to herself that she loved Anders, that when Lee uttered his soft "I love you," she made sure to turn it into a joke. She teased him with it mercilessly, to ensure that he would be too embarrassed to ever bring it up again. And he hadn't. Nor had she.

Despite that turbulent reunion, their subsequent adventure together on Kobol had been exhilarating, she had to admit to herself. Odd to call it that, since they had been in constant danger of getting killed. But the frisson of danger had added to the romance of it. Lee and Kara, side by side, watching each other's backs, working in smooth and deadly tandem, protecting each other, and the President. They had slept under the stars, and during the night watches had kept one another company.

And they had talked. Mostly about inconsequential things, neither willing to approach the intimacy so abruptly aborted on the Astral Queen. But Lee had been more forthcoming than she, filling her in on the horrible events of the previous weeks—the Commander getting shot, Sharon's betrayal, and the chaos the fleet had descended into under Tigh. Kara had tried in turn to tell him about Caprica, but gave him only the sketchiest of details. She mentioned the Resistance movement; she told him of the Cylons' breeding programs. But she never told him of her own experience on the farm. And of Anders, she said nothing. Lee, his clear blue eyes fastened on her face as she talked slowly and hesitantly, seemed aware of the many gaps in her story, but didn't press her.

And then, their shared joy in the reconciliation with the Commander, the successful discovery of the tomb and the map, and their return to a reunited fleet. And with their return home to Galactica, Kara and Lee's relationship had shifted into its same old comfortable pattern.

And at that thought, Kara suddenly sat up in her rack, almost smacking her head on the bunk above hers. No, she admitted to herself, it wasn't the same. They had been close ever since the Attack, of course, when Lee had found himself marooned on his father's ship, with her as his only friend. But their companionship since their reunion on the Astral Queen was far more constant now than it had ever been. They seemed almost incapable of being out of each other's sight. And Kara knew, deep down, that part of the reason her feelings for Anders had faded so quickly was because her feelings for Lee had grown.

But grown to what? What did she want from Lee Adama? Afraid of examining that thought too closely, she shied away from it, and whispered into the darkness, "right now I'd just like him to come back, lords," and then after a pause, more forcefully, "And to know where the hell he's been the last few days."

***

Settling down again, and punching her pillow savagely, Kara reflected on the change she had seen in Lee, not long before his abrupt leave of absence.

It has started, innocently enough, with a trip to Cloud Nine two days earlier. At breakfast in the mess hall that morning, he had dropped into the chair across from her, took a sip of her coffee, then mentioned that he was off to spend a few hours on Cloud Nine, dealing with some supply issues the President was concerned about.

"Great," Kara said sarcastically, reclaiming her coffee with a mock glare at him. "So you'll be off getting a suntan in the fake sunshine, while we're here doing your work. Must be nice to be the President's advisor, huh? Perks are good."

"Oh, shut up," Lee said companionably. "I don't work with her much anymore, really. She's been careful not to ask me for help, since the...." he paused, "well, since what happened."

Kara leaned forward, her face all wide-eyed innocence, though her eyes were sparkling mischievously. "Whatever are you referring to, Captain? Oh, oh, wait, do you mean the… mutiny?"

Lee's face tightened a bit momentarily, then he laughed despite himself.

"You just don't know when to shut up, do you, Lieutenant? And anyway, your record isn't too spotless when it comes to obeying orders, is it?"

Kara leaned back with a grin, "Part of my charm, sir. You, on the other hand," she cocked her head at him, "your job has always been to be the perfect gentleman, hasn't it?"

Lee rolled his eyes, smiled, and got up. "I'm off, but listen. You're off duty this afternoon, right? Why don't you pick up a few other pilots, grab a raptor, and come and join me in Cloud Nine's bar? Maybe a little R&R will stop some of the..." he raised an eyebrow, "*whining* I've heard complaints about lately."

Kara gave a mock salute. "Yes sir, Captain." And grinned at his retreating back.

A comfortable friendship. Companionable. Satisfying.

Mostly.

And then, somehow, it had all gotten shot to hell. Lee's fault? Her own? She couldn't precisely recall. But what she did recall, with complete clarity, was the moment she had seen him again that day.

Kara, Racetrack, and two male pilots named Hummer and Castoff had been wandering through the throngs of people on Cloud Nine, on their way to the fleet's best bar. While the others chattered, Kara's eyes scanned the crowd for Lee, until she caught sight of his unmistakable figure in the distance. With a little smile, she started towards him, then abruptly stopped, causing Racetrack to run directly into her back.

"What the hell are you doing, Starbuck?" Racetrack said in an annoyed voice, giving Kara a little shove to move her out of the way.

Kara wasn't listening, her eyes still staring at Lee, and...who was that? Remembering herself suddenly, she turned back to the other pilots. "Hey, guys, go on in the bar, and I'll meet you in a few, OK?" Racetrack flicked her eyes towards the direction Kara had been staring, then looked at Kara shrewdly, before shrugging and linking her arms through those of her companions. "Come on, boys, I'm dying for a drink."

Alone now, Kara cursed herself a little under her breath. What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she act naturally, go and approach her friend, standing only some 50 feet from her?

But she didn't. Instead, she shifted a few steps towards a nearby fountain for cover, and engaged in some shameless, covert staring.

Not that Lee would have noticed her if she had been doing cartwheels on Cloud Nine's expansive lawn. For Lee Adama was engaged in an intense conversation with a woman near the steps of the Cloud Nine resort building. Despite the many people brushing past them, filling the air with chatter, Lee seemed completely oblivious to anything but her, and it was his concentrated focus on his companion that had caught Kara's eye, and pulled her to a stop.

The woman was petite, with long blonde hair, and carried herself with such a graceful femininity that Kara was suddenly painfully aware of her own grungy tanktops and sweaty military pants. As she watched, Lee leaned in closer to the woman, still talking intently. Kara felt her breath tighten suddenly. With what? Could this be jealousy? She shut her eyes and gave her head a little shake. "Get a grip, Kara," she hissed to herself, then, unbidden, her eyes opened again on Lee. He was bending down now, and Kara realized that that there was a small child, perhaps one and a half or two years old, playing next to the woman. Lee tentatively reached out his hand, then immediately withdrew it and abruptly stood up. The woman placed her hand on Lee's arm, and the three of them—-man, woman and child—- went up the stairs and disappeared into the building.

Leaving Kara Thrace alone in the midst of a milling crowd.

Chapter 2

Lying in her rack days later, Kara couldn't recall walking through the luxurious facilities on Cloud Nine to arrive at its spacious bar. She couldn't remember sitting down with Racetrack, Hummer, and Castoff, or which of them had ordered her first drink. She couldn't remember what song was loudly playing in the background.

She remembered only the painful, hard ache within her that made breathing difficult. And a single thought.

To hell with you, Lee Adama.

A quiet inner voice whispered that she had no right to feel so angry with him. That he had done nothing wrong. That she was being completely irrational.

But then the memory of his standing so close to the woman (the 'Mystery Bitch,' as Kara immediately, savagely dubbed her) flooded back, and her own panicked jealousy caused her to shove rationality away, and fiercely embrace the anger.

To hell with you, Lee Adama.

With the anger, she could stay in control. In charge. If she let that go, she might drown in the shadowy, far more frightening emotions stalking her. Jealousy. Loss. A sickening sense of abandonment.

So she nursed her anger as the hours passed, and Lee never came.

To hell with you, Lee Adama.

To hell with you for walking away from me.

To hell with you for blowing me off tonight.

To hell with you for turning me into someone so frakin' pathetic and needy.

To hell with you for making me care for you so godsdamn much.

An outsider watching Kara at the bar that evening would never have guessed any of this. For Kara Thrace drank the hardest and laughed the loudest of their group for the next three hours. She told racy jokes. She related scathing stories about Col. Tigh. And she flirted shamelessly with Hummer, leaning into him suggestively, letting her hand rest on his leg when he reached over her to refill her drink.

Only Racetrack seemed to suspect that something dark was seething within Kara, and couldn't resist a dig. With her eyes on Kara, she wondered out loud what was keeping their long overdue CAG. "What do you think, Starbuck? Did he hit it off with that gorgeous blonde, maybe?"

"Bitch," thought Kara. But she merely smiled coldly at Racetrack, who snickered into her drink.

But after three endless hours, Kara was exhausted from the pretense of having a glorious time. Alone at the table for a moment, she dropped her head and put a hand to her forehead, suddenly aware of a pounding headache.

And when she looked up, Lee had finally come.

He had sunk into the chair across from her, rubbed both hands through his hair wearily, then raised his eyes to meet hers. There was an expression on his face that she hadn't expected. He seemed stricken, confused, oddly beseeching. 'I need you,' his eyes seemed to say to her.

"Kara" he said, his voice barely reaching her over the noise in the bar. He reached a hand toward her over the table. "Kara, can I..."

"I'm back. Did you miss me?" Hummer's drunken slur shattered the moment as he slid into the seat next to Kara. Lee's hand was off the table in an instant, all hint of vulnerability gone from his face. His eyes narrowed slightly as Hummer shifted his chair a little closer to Starbuck's, and offered her a cigar. "Just got it from the bartender," he crowed as he lit it for her.

The music ended, and Racetrack and Castoff breathlessly rejoined them from the dance floor.

"Captain! Where've you been?" Castoff bellowed.

Lee shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "Oh, sorry," he murmered vaguely. "I was asked for help by, um ...someone."

The weak excuse dangled there for a moment.

"That's it?" snorted Castoff derisively. "Yeah, right. Well, thanks to Racetrack here, we have a little more info that you're not sharing. We happen to know that "someone" was a beautiful blonde. Now, if I had a gorgeous woman ask me for help, I think I'd take three hours helping her also, wouldn't you, Hummer?"

"You got that right," Hummer nodded. Then he leaned forward conspiratorially towards Lee, who was staring down at his own clenched hands on the table. "So, Captain, tell us. How many times did you `help' her? Did you do it once?" He leered. "Twice? Maybe three times? And does she need either of us to `help' her too?" Hummer smirked, and Castoff laughed and high-fived him.

"You got it all wrong, boys." Kara said suddenly. She was slouched in her seat, arms folded tightly across her chest. Any shred of empathy she had felt with Lee's first vulnerable look had vanished with the pilots' banter, and the images they had conjured up.

Now she was as cruelly mocking as only Starbuck could be.

"See, boys, I know Apollo better than you do. And he's far too much of the perfect gentleman to give into those kinds of urges. He's *so* superior to us mere mortals, you see. Keeps a tight check on all those emotions that the rest of us indulge in. Isn't that right, Captain?"

Lee had looked up sharply at the "perfect gentleman" comment. He gave a quick intake of breath, as if she had slapped him.

She picked up her cigar again, inhaled deeply, and insolently blew a ring of smoke toward him. Through the gray haze she saw his eyes register surprise and hurt at her biting tone. Then they narrowed. He grew still and cold, staring at her. His best friend.

She didn't care. She was cresting on her anger now, riding the wave. And somewhere in the back in her mind she was remembering another bitter exchange between them. Lee's voice echoed in her memory...'A pilot who can't keep her pants on.'

"No quick fraks for our CAG. Gods forbid!" She laughed. "Wouldn't be proper. And Apollo always does the right thing."

She affected a mock note of concern, now. "Makes it tough for you, I bet? Getting a little repressed, huh? Probably been a while? Afraid of losing your touch?" She blew another ring of smoke toward him, her eyes icy. "I'd hate to see the great CAG having to resort to a date with his right hand."

The two male pilots by now were laughing loudly, enjoying the familiar—-but always welcome—-diversion of Starbuck razzing a fellow pilot. Neither seemed aware of Lee's cold tension, or the edgy anger underlying Kara's mocking insults.

"Tell me, Apollo." Kara continued inexorably, crudely. "Do you avoid frakin' anyone because that stick up your ass keeps you from it? Or do you keep your pants on to cover up certain, shall we say, inadequacies? Which is it?"

Racetrack ,who had been glancing at both of them, now leapt in. "Lay off the CAG, will you, Starbuck? Gods, you get bitchy when you drink. Hummer, pour the Captain some ambrosia."

Hummer obeyed, still chuckling, and the conversation among the other three turned to the pleasures to be found on Cloud Nine. Kara and Lee, meanwhile, stayed locked in a cold stare-down, as the conversation ebbed and flowed about them. Hummer murmured something about enjoying seeing the civilian women on Cloud Nine, which earned a snort from Racetrack. Castoff toasted the superiority of the bar's drinks to the "watered down piss on the Big G."

Then Racetrack said, "Well, I like Cloud Nine because you get to see actual families. And little kids. Like the one you were with earlier, Apollo." Lee's eyes registered surprise, as he shot a glance at Racetrack. His face tightened.

"There's no families on Galactica, you know?" Racetrack mused. "And seeing kids, seeing families...It just feels more normal, somehow. Feels kind of like home."

While the others murmured appreciatively, Castoff cocked an eyebrow mischievously at Kara. "What about you, Starbuck? Do you go all soft and squishy over children, too?

Kara had a sudden, sickening memory. Simon, the Cylon doctor, probing mercilessly into her wounds.

A cold wave of fear and shame washed over her. She licked her lips, and attempted a flippant remark. "Me? I hate kids. And I sure as hell hope I never have any."

The words didn't sound flippant at all. They were cold, hard. She glanced at Lee.

But Lee had clearly had enough, and had abruptly stood up. "It's late," he said, sounding businesslike. "I'm heading back to Galactica. And since all three of you are on duty in (he checked his watch) six and a half hours, I'd suggest that you follow me pretty soon." His eyes flickered past Kara dismissively. Then he was gone.

To hell with you, Lee Adama.

But the words rang hollow to her now. Her cruel mockery had dissipated her anger against Lee. Emptied of it, she now was simply exhausted, remorseful, and feeling the beginnings of what was going to be one massive hangover.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The hangover was her penance the next day. As she flew an uneventful CAP, worked on her Viper, and instructed the nuggets, she let each throb and ache remind her of the uncomfortable truth.

She had been a complete bitch to her best friend.

This, despite the look he had first given her, the way he had reached out to her, asking her for *something* (she still had no idea what.) But without bothering to find out, she had torn into him, mocked him mercilessly, drenched him with every ounce of her icy anger.

Self-reflection was not Kara's strong suit. But that day she struggled to understand the reason for her cold fury with Lee. She fumbled to only an imperfect awareness. Something about feeling alone. A fear of losing him. A fear of needing him.

But now, on this long sleepless night, with Lee having been gone for three days, it came to her.

She had regarded Lee as hers. She had taken his constant, steady companionship for granted since the Attack. He would always be there for her, she had believed. Supporting her. Watching her back. Laughing with her. Yelling at her. Kicking her butt when necessary. Encouraging her to talk. Forgiving her outbursts. Waiting until she got her shit together.

Just...there. For her.

But seeing Lee's absorption in the `Mystery Bitch,' (Kara got a childish pleasure again from the phrase) --and the child--had rattled this faith.

Maybe he wasn't hers. Maybe he never had been. Maybe he just spent time with her out of necessity, because there was literally no one else left for him.

Maybe she, Kara, had no one.

She didn't understand all this yet, the day after her mean-spirited mockery at the bar. But she knew she desperately needed to see him. Not to explain anything. Hell, she couldn't explain it to herself. But to say she was sorry for the pain she had caused him. She wanted him to forgive her. She wanted them to laugh again. She needed to regain their easy, warm camaraderie.

So she waited. Knowing that Lee, being Lee, would come looking for her, driven himself to confront the problem between them.

But he didn't come. In fact, he studiously avoided being alone with her all day, never even sparing her a glance during his daily pilots' briefing.

Hours after her shift had ended, after playing countless Triad hands in the raucous rec room, carefully facing the door so she could spot him coming, she gave up on him finding her. Throwing in her hopes along with her cards, she excused herself and left for her rack.

And there, finally, she found him.

He was sitting alone at the table in the deserted, dimly lighted, officers' duty locker. She softly closed the hatch behind her, and gathered her courage.

"Lee?" He didn't turn. "Lee, I wanted to say that I'm sorry for... (she paused) for being such a bitch yesterday."

Still no answer. "I was...drunk," she offered feebly. Not much of an excuse, she knew, but it was the best she could do.

Still no answer. She took a few steps closer, and noticed a nearly empty bottle in front of him, and a glass. She had seen Lee drink before, of course. But she had never, ever seen him drunk. He didn't do that, he had told her once in response to her teasing. Because getting drunk meant losing control, and Lee always wanted—-needed—- to stay in control.

She tried again, "Lee, are you...?"

"Apology accepted." Lee's voice cut through the air coldly. "Now get the frak out."

Kara felt an automatic spark of anger at his tone, but took a deep breath, and shook her head. "No."

"What?"

"I'm not leaving."

Lee gave a hard laugh. "Be careful, Starbuck. `Cause I'm drunk, now." His words were faintly slurred. "And I can use the same sorry ass excuse to say some things to you."

Kara sighed and closed her eyes. "Maybe I deserve them. So, go ahead."

He didn't respond, merely picked up his glass, drained it, then refilled it with a shaking hand.

Kara tried again. "Lee, you're scaring me, here. What happened yesterday?" She flushed a little. "Before you got to the bar, I mean? Do you want to talk about it?"

Then finally he looked straight at her, and her eyes widened a bit at his face. It looked ravaged, with grief, sadness, regret, and now, anger. "Talk?" he spit out contemptuously, and his voice rose with each sentence. "You want us to TALK? Since when do you and I talk, Kara? We work together. We have a few laughs together, yeah. But we don't talk. We NEVER talk. So cut the CRAP and get out of here."

She took an involuntary step back at his anger, drew her breath, but didn't leave the room.

A long silence, then Lee shook his head. "Fine. I'LL leave," and he shoved his chair back savagely and got up. But before he could gather up his glass and bottle, Kara had grabbed his right arm. "Lee." He almost pulled away. "Lee!" she said again. Then, very softly: "Please?"

Perhaps it was the `please' that did it. Lee looked down, closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths.

"It's just that..." he stopped, struggling with words and what seemed like a profound sense of self-loathing, then began again. "It's...it's all too late now. It's too frakin' late, because everything's gone-—our past, our lives, the people we knew. Wiped out, like they never even existed. But there were so many things… Kara, things I didn't do. Things I *should* have done. There were people I let down. People I *hurt.*" He shook his head. "And there's absolutely nothing I can do about it now. They're all dead. But gods, I just wish..." His eyes had tears in them now. "I wish I could tell them… (very softly) I wish I could tell *her* ...that, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…" His voice broke.

Kara was silent for a few moments, desperately trying to fill in the gaps of Lee's confession. Who was the `her' he referred to? (Not he Mystery Bitch evidently, for she had certainly been alive and well yesterday.) And what had he done to create this remorse? Her mind spinning, not sure what to say next, she realized she had hesitated too long. Lee was pulling away from her.

"Never mind," he said, cold once more. "Like I said, we don't talk."

"No!" Kara stepped in front of him again. "Look at me, Lee. Lee!" She grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to look into her eyes. "You're right. The people we've loved--they ARE all dead. And there's not a damn thing that you or I can do to bring anyone back." She was talking more fiercely now. "All we can do, is whisper our `I'm sorry's to the universe, and hope it's heard by their ghosts" (she drew a sharp breath, stabbed by a thought of Zak) "…or by the gods."

Lee was staring at her intently, his face only inches away.

"But you're ALIVE, Lee," Kara continued passionately. "WE'RE alive. That's what you focus on. You focus on the NOW. The people here on this ship, in this fleet. That may be all we have now, but it's a hell of a lot."

Lee nodded slowly, the words penetrating. She suddenly become aware of how close his mouth was. His lips were parted, and his breathing labored, as he struggled to control his emotions. She could feel his shoulders trembling under her hands. His extraordinary blue eyes, still looking lost and despairing, were fixed on hers.

Kara wanted only to comfort him, to relieve the sadness and pain so nakedly visible in his eyes. Driven only (or so she told herself) by that desire, she leaned the last few inches separating them, and touched her lips to his.

And now it was Lee's turn to pull away, startled. He gazed at Kara with a hard, questioning look for a few tense moments, their ragged breathing the only sound in the room. Then, as if surrendering to a force he no longer wanted to control, Lee let out a soft moan, pulled her tightly to him, and let his mouth descend hard upon hers.

Kara melted into his kiss. His lips were alternately soft and hard against her own, devouring hers with a hungry ardor, as soft sounds escaped from each of them. Then Lee pulled back a fraction, and traced his tongue over her lower lip, eliciting a loud gasp from her, before fastening his lips on her throat. Kara closed her eyes, arching her neck as his mouth trailed down the column of her throat.

One of her hands cradled the nape of his neck, while the other found its way to his waist. She slid it under his tanktop, gently scratching her fingernails up his bare muscled back. Now it was his turn to moan against Kara's throat. His fingers reached for the top of Kara's tanktop, and hooking his fingers over its edge, he pulled it down gently to expose the swell of her breast. His thumb caressed it, followed by his lips.

"Lee, oh Lee," moaned Kara. The heat within her was rising, and she couldn't remember desiring a man as much as she did Lee Adama at that moment. Hearing his name seemed to create the same effect in Lee. With a matching moan, his right hand released her tank, only to encircle her waist, pulling her body tight against his, lifting her to her tiptoes with one muscled arm. His left hand reached for her face, caressed it. "Kara, oh Kara," he breathed, then laced his fingers through her hair, holding her head still for a deep, probing kiss.

Kara felt as if she were drowning in sensation, and she knew from Lee's reactions that he felt the same. Indeed, she sensed a fierce, almost desperate longing in him now. Kara was vaguely aware that they had taken a step toward her bunk, then another, then...

The sounds of loud voices, raucous laughter. A flurry of steps approached the hatch door. A second before it burst open, Kara and Lee broke apart with a gasp, each automatically turning to their opposite lockers, struggling to still their breathing and hide their faces. Three pilots burst into the room, laughing over a successful practical joke they had played on one of the junior officers. Slightly tipsy themselves, they seemed oblivious to Kara's and Lee's disheveled appearance and strained attitude.

While the pilots tried drunkenly to relate the story, alternately interrupting one another and dissolving into inarticulate laughter, Kara tired desperately to catch Lee's eyes. But he refused to look at her. Instead, he kept his face a neutral mask, feigning interest in the pilots' story. But his eyes had the distant, haunted look again, and as soon as the story ended, he gave a wan smile, excused himself, and left the locker without a glance at Kara.

Kara felt stunned, and hurt. She turned back again to her open locker door, struggling with what to do next, and her eyes were caught by her photograph.

Zak, Kara, and Lee. Her fingers reached out and touched the image of Zak, wrapped in the arms of a laughing Kara. Then her eyes shifted to Lee's image. He looked aloof, alone, a man used to tamping down his emotions. Her finger traced his face. She bit her lip, nodded, then slammed her locker shut. Pushing aside the still raucous pilots, she followed Lee out the hatch door.

She finally spotted him five minutes later, walking down a corridor (ghostly and deserted in the night shift) far ahead of her. "Lee?" She called softly. "Lee!"

He didn't stop. She finally reached him, panting, and grabbed his arm.

In one swift movement, he turned, caught her hand and pulled it off him.

"Kara, I can't do this." His words came out in a gasp.

She stepped back, hurt. "Why?"

"Kara, look, I was drunk. Hell, I AM drunk. I acted inappropriately with you just now." He gave a self-derisive laugh. "To say the least." He looked down. "And I'm sorry I did."

Kara's face grew wary. Her voice came out a little coldly, "I didn't come after you looking for an *apology,* Lee."

Lee wouldn't look at her. His mask of control was firmly back in place. His voice, clipped. "Well, I owe you one. I don't know what came over me. I'm sorry."

Kara felt his anger rise at his infuriating need to keep such a tight rein on his emotions. "Oh, it figures you would apologize. Always doing the proper thing. Can't let yourself..."

Lee suddenly grabbed her shoulders. "Kara, I'm not who you think I am!" he almost shouted at her. Then he released her, and slumped against the wall, struggling to control himself.

"It's just...I'm dealing with a lot of emotion right now. A lot of memories." He closed his eyes. "Back there, I was only thinking of myself, of my memories. And I shouldn't have..." He was clearly fumbling for words, now.

Kara felt as if he'd punched her. So it hadn't been her he had desired. That's what he was telling her. He had been thinking about someone else. A *memory.*

She was a frakin' idiot.

"No harm done. I understand." she said coldly. She took a step back, wanting to turn and get away from him as fast as possible.

Now it was his turn to catch her arm and keep her from leaving.

"It's just...I'm so frakked up right now, Kara. I need to figure some things out. I have to understand some things. But, I can't tell you how much I wish..." he stopped himself, but his eyes were fastened on hers with the same stricken, beseeching look she had seen in them the previous day.

But she was too hurt to care. "Look," she said a little coldly, shrugging her arm from his grasp. "You don't need to be Mr. Nice Guy here, all worried about my feelings. I'm fine. Didn't mean a thing."

And she turned on her heel and deserted him.

She didn't see him again until late the next day, when he caught her after a pilots' briefing, and politely asked her to fill in as CAG for a day or two.

"Why? Where are you going?" The question slipped out before she could stop herself.

He didn't look at her, just kept his voice even. "Just need to take care of some things. I got the OK from the Commander. I won't be gone more than a day. Two, tops."

They were silent for a moment. Then, "Sure," she said, taking the carefully filled-in duty roster from his hand. He stood awkwardly for a minute, them murmured something about paperwork, and disappeared.

But it hadn't been one or two days. It had been three, a fact that ate at her while she lay in her rack, tossing on this long sleepless night.

Willing herself to go to sleep, she closed her eyes. And immediately her mind brought her back to their moments of passion in this room. The way he had moaned at her touch, the way he had kissed her, how he had laced his fingers through her hair, looked in her eyes, and whispered her name...

Her eyes shot open. He had said her name. She remembered it distinctly. She had been staring into his eyes, almost drowning in their intensity. And she had heard his throaty whisper, "Kara, oh Kara." Not the action of a person imagining he was with someone else. (She winced a little at the embarrassing memory of her own unfortunate tryst with Baltar.)

The knowledge dawned on her that perhaps she hadn't been fooling herself. That maybe it had really been her, Kara Thrace, that Lee had hungered for that night, not some memory.

Then she frowned. Maybe he had just been lost in the moment. His emotions had been pretty keyed up, after all. And it wasn't like he had been looking for her that night. Just the opposite. He had tried to get rid of her.

And yet, something that had niggled at her suddenly snapped into place. She had idly wondered why he had chosen to have his drinking binge in this room. Why he hadn't gone off to some deserted corner of the ship, as he would have if he wanted to be ensured of solitude. He had waited here.

And now she realized...he had wanted her to find him. Something inside him had wanted her to rescue him from whatever dark hole he believed was threatening to swallow him.

Another image pierced her memory. The look in Lee's eyes when she had first seen him in the Cloud Nine bar. His hand reaching towards her, his voice pleading, "Kara, can I...?

Kara finally fell into a restless sleep. A few hours later, as the other pilots stirred at the sound of the morning watch bell, she snapped immediately awake. Somehow, in her sleep, she had come to a decision.

There was something wrong. Lee should have returned by now.

And she was going to go find him.

Chapter 3

"Sir, may I speak to you?" Kara stood in front of Commander Adama in the CIC, exactly four and a half minutes after her shift had ended.

Adama was paging through reports Dee had just handed him, and barely glanced at her. "Go ahead, Lieutenant."

"I was wondering if you knew when Captain Adama might be returning to the Galactica, sir?"

At this, both the Commander and Dee looked up at her.

"I would imagine we'll see him soon," the Commander said, after a pause.

"But sir, where exactly is he? I mean, it has been three days, and…" Kara caught herself, and tried to adopt a more nonchalant tone. "I had some questions about the roster he gave me, and uh…"

Adama cleared his throat. "He didn't tell you where he was going?"

Kara shook her head, and the Commander gazed down again, clearly not seeing the papers in his hand.

Then, "Maybe we should talk about this in my quarters, Lieutenant." He handed the papers back to Dee, and gestured for Kara to precede him into the corridor.

In his quarters, he poured some water for himself and Kara, and motioned for her to take a seat.

"I know you two are friends," Adama began, a little hesitantly. "I assumed that Lee had talked to you before he left."

Kara felt a painful sting at his words. "Maybe we're not as good friends as you imagine. If you feel that he would rather have me not knowing where he is, I understand." And she moved to get up.

"Kara," the Commander put up a hand. "You're misunderstanding me. I had thought—hoped, I guess—he had spoken with you before he left. Because," he gave her a rueful smile. "He didn't say much of anything to me."

Kara let out a small sigh of disappointment. "So you don't know where he is?"

"No."

"But, sir?" She leaned forward. "Aren't you getting a little worried about him? I mean, this is Lee, after all. Responsible, dependable, conscientious Lee. Why wouldn't he have contacted you?" Her voice rose a little. "I mean, he's the CAG! He's got responsibilities! If he's going to disappear like this, and get us so frakkin' worried— excuse me, sir—doesn't he at least owe us some kind of explanation?"

The Commander swirled the water in his glass thoughtfully. "We've all been pushing ourselves very hard for months now. It was only a matter of time before people started reaching their breaking points. When Lee came to ask me for some personal time, it looked like he had reached his. He looked …drained. He's been putting a lot on himself, and I think he's simply exhausted. It didn't seem unreasonable to let him have some time…"

Kara cut in. "Sir, with all due respect? There's a lot more going on than Lee being tired."

The Commander didn't look at her. She pressed on. "The last couple of days before he left, he wasn't himself. I mean, he got drunk, for one thing. He never does that. And he seemed to be in some dark place in his head, agonizing over mistakes or regrets, or something. I'm worried that he might, … I don't know… do something to himself." And she swallowed, having voiced a fear she had been reluctant to acknowledge. "Did you notice any of this, sir? Did you ask him about it?"

The Commander sighed. "I did notice that something seemed to be bothering him. And I asked him a question or two, but he didn't say much. I didn't want to press him about it. Lee and I…well, we've never been very good at talking to each other, Kara."

Yeah, join the club, Kara thought, then said, "Why don't I try to find him? I could take a Raptor…" She stopped. Adama was shaking his head.

"Kara, I think you need to give him some time right now. I think you— we—need to respect his privacy. If he's not back by tomorrow, I'll make some inquiries, try to locate him."

"Sir, I don't think this should wait until tomorrow! I really feel that he may need someone right now, and…"

"Kara, wait. There's something else. From the little that Lee said, I think…" He looked at her with his eyes full of a pained sympathy for her. "I think he's with a woman."

* * * * * *

Frakkin' moron. That's what you are, Kara Thrace. She was alone in the senior officer's duty locker, pacing angrily in the small confined space. Why the hell had she thought Lee might need her? Lee was apparently doing fine, probably lying in the arms of that Mystery Bitch right now, not sparing her a second thought. The bastard was probably….

A tentative knock on the half-open hatch door interrupted her angry reverie. It was Dee.

"What is it?" Kara said ungraciously.

"Permission to enter, sir?"

Kara shrugged. "Yeah, come in."

Dee approached her somewhat uncertainly. "Sir, I wanted to ask if you were going to try and find L...Captain Adama?"

Kara gave a noisy sigh. `No, I think Captain Adama is doing just fine and doesn't need anyone to go and find him."

Dee bit her lip. "I'm not so sure about that, sir." At Kara's annoyed glance, she drew a breath and continued. "I saw him the day before he left. He looked…terrible. Devastated, somehow. I had never seen him look like that, even after the Attack. I was worried about him, and I tried to find him when my shift ended."

"You tried to find him? Why would you…?" Kara stopped at Dee's flustered expression, and it hit her. The young communications officer had a thing for Lee. She wasn't totally surprised, indeed had suspected it for a few weeks. But it was absolutely the last thing she wanted to deal with now.

"You're dismissed, Petty Officer Dualla," she said coldly.

"Wait," Dee said drawing herself up determinedly. "Let me finish. I did find the Captain that night. Right here, as a matter of fact. He had been drinking. A lot, it seemed. I tried to talk to him, told him I was worried about him, asked him if I could help him, somehow. He asked me to leave." She looked a little hurt at the memory. "Told me I couldn't help him, that no one could help him. But then, he stopped himself, and said that wasn't quite true. But that the only person he wanted to talk to, wouldn't talk to him." Dee swallowed. "You."

Kara drew in her breath. Dee continued, looking at the floor. "I think he was surprised he said it out loud to me. He tried to laugh it off, saying he had learned not to expect anything from Kara Thrace, since she wouldn't be caught dead showing her sympathetic side."

Kara looked down. Her emotions were swirling, and she tried to figure out which one to give vent to. Bitterness won. "Yeah, well, I saw him that night too. And he certainly seems to have forgotten he said anything like that when he…" She trailed off, remembering how confused Lee had seemed that night. Wanting her, yet pushing her away.

"Lieutenant, I don't understand you." Dee broke into her thoughts, looking both angry and annoyed. "If I found out that he had said that about me…" she shook her head. "I'm worried about Lee. He's in some sort of trouble. But there's nothing I can do to help him. But you can. He is your best friend. Or so I thought."

Kara's face looked stubborn, images of Lee and the blonde still crowding out Dee's words.

"Don't you get it?" Dee continued impatiently. "I sit in the CIC and I listen to all of you as you fly out there. Lee is always so professional, so controlled, so much the leader. But his voice can't hide how much you mean to him. He can't conceal his panic when he thinks you're in trouble." She paused and her voice tightened a little. "He loves you. What are you doing here?"

Kara stared for a few long moments at the petite young woman. Then, "You're right," Kara whispered. "Thanks."

Dee nodded, then turned businesslike. "There's more you should know. I tracked Lee's Raptor on dradis when he left. He's on a ship called the Prometheus. Its residents seem to be kind of a rough element, at least according to the many people who have asked for transfers off there to other ships. Been a lot of reports of people getting attacked, even a couple of mysterious deaths that are being investigated. Also, there's a lot of shuttle traffic between the Prometheus and Tom Zarek's Astral Queen."

Kara was caught between wonder at Dee's thoroughness, and rapid calculation of the best course of action. Dee was right. She had to do something. Mystery Bitch or no Mystery Bitch, Lee's vulnerable emotional state, combined with this new info about the ship on which he had somehow landed, raised serious concerns about his three day absence.

Then her mind fixed on one name. Someone who could prove useful here. "Would you be able to get Tom Zarek on a secure line for me?" she asked Dee.

Dee gave a curt nod and moved to leave.

"Dee?"

Dee turned back to face her.

"I just wanted to say that… well, I couldn't have done what you just did. I'm not that noble. And I wanted to say—again—that I appreciate it."

Dee looked steadily at Kara. "Lee's a good man. He deserves a lot." She lifted her head a little higher, and left the room.

* * * * * *

"Zarek? Kara Thrace here." Kara stood in a corner of the hangar deck, the constant hum of noise keeping her phone conversation completely private.

"Lieutenant Thrace, to what do I owe this honor?"

"I need some information from you."

"Ah, I see. And why should I give you information?"

"Because," Kara said fiercely, "Ever since your good friend Meier held his gun to Lee's head during our recent little field trip to Kobol, Commander Adama has been looking for the least excuse to throw your ass in Galactica's brig for the remainder of your sorry life. If you help me now, you might earn some good will points with the Old Man. You sure as hell could use them."

A pause, then, "I'm listening."

Kara smiled grimly. "OK, then. What can you tell me about the Prometheus?"

"Hmm." Zarek hedged. "Can you be more specific with that question?"

Kara let out her breath noisily. "Lee went there alone three days ago, and no one has heard from him since."

"Captain Adama is on the Prometheus?"

"Yes."

There was such a long pause that Kara thought Zarek had hung up on her. Finally, "Stay at this phone. I'll call you on this line as soon as I know something."

For a half hour, Kara tensely paced near the phone, drawing annoyed looks from Tyrol, and curious ones from the rest of his deck gang. She snatched up the phone on the first buzz.

"Zarek?"

"Yes, it's me. I've spoken to some of my contacts, and it seems that not only has Captain Adama been seen on the Prometheus lately, but that he's grown a little too nosy about some of the activities there. There's a man named Phelan, who runs the ship, for all intents and purposes. The word is that Phelan is going to ensure that Lee Adama keeps his mouth shut."

"What activities are you talking about? What's going on there?"

"Lieutenant." Zarek sighed as if Kara was being hopelessly naive. "The Prometheus is the hub of the fleet's black-market."

Kara mouthed an `Oh' without making a sound. Then, her voice grew urgent. "Zarek, is Lee in danger?"

"Knowing Phelan, that's a very real possibility" Kara gave a sharp intake of breath, as Zarek continued. "But, listen, Lieutenant. If you go in there heavy handed, with a bunch of shoot `em up Marines, you may sign his death warrant, and probably be the cause of other people dying as well. The men on that ship are armed to the teeth. And the word is, they're trigger happy."

"Frak," Kara whispered. "All right, I'll go alone. But you have to tell me where I can find this Phelan. And I need details on the layout of that ship."

Kara's military training kicked in, her mind carefully calculating possibilities as Zarek gave her information on Phelan and the ship. When he finished, she said, "Okay, I'm set. And Zarek? I owe you one."

"Yes you do, Lieutenant. And don't worry. I'll be reminding you of that."

Forty five minutes later, after grabbing some small arms and her Caprican jacket—she knew she couldn't look like a Colonial officer for this op—Kara was piloting a raptor toward a small ship floating at the fringes of the fleet. The Prometheus.

* * * * * *

The docking area of the Prometheus had just one exit, funneling new arrivals into a large adjacent poorly lit lobby, where an odd assortment of sofas, chairs, and tables were scattered with little semblance of order. About a dozen people were there, some lounging, playing cards, others sorting through some stacked boxes. A low hum of conversation filled the room

A burly, unshaven man approached Kara immediately after she entered the room.

Now or never, Kara thought. If Zarek had set her up—a thought that had crossed her mind on the flight over—she was about to be well and truly screwed. Her right elbow surreptitiously pressed against one of the guns she had secreted under her jacket.

"What do you want?" the man asked suspiciously when he reached her.

So much for the social niceties. But Kara Thrace didn't intimidate easily.

"I'm here to see Harris," she said, using the name Zarek had suggested.

"What do you want from him?"

"I don't think it's any of your godsdamn business."

"If it's not my godsdamn business, then you can get the frak off this ship."

Kara stared at him for a minute, then adopted an air of grudging concession. "I'm trying to get hold of some Amaroxin. Tom Zarek suggested Harris might have some for the right price."

At the mention of Zarek, a measure of respect touched the man's eyes. He appraised Kara a moment longer, then asked, "Did Zarek tell you where to find Harris?"

At Kara's nod, he inclined his head, giving her tacit approval to leave. "Okay."

Damn, I do owe you one, Zarek. Kara took the closest stairs, ascended to Deck Three and immediately began to look for Corridor B. She had no idea in hell where to find Harris, but she knew where to find Phelan—Deck Three, Corridor B, according to Zarek.

She didn't have a clear plan yet how she might locate Lee. Mostly she hoped to see or overhear something that would provide some clue to his whereabouts. And the first place to start was in the vicinity of Phelan's quarters.

But once she reached corridor B, she saw the flaw in her plan. Unlike the other corridors she had passed, which rang with voices and bustled with activity, Phelan's corridor was deserted.

Frak, Kara thought. Hell of a lot easier to hide in a crowd.

She unzipped her jacket so her guns were more accessible, entered the corridor warily, and glided silently down the hall.. As the silence enveloped her, her nerves keyed up tighter.

Most of the doors she passed were shut, but a few stood ajar, and she cautiously peered into those rooms before passing them. Illuminated only by the dim lighting in the corridor, she couldn't make out much, but they appeared to be deserted storage rooms.

The silence was broken suddenly by the low hum of an elevator, sounding softly in the hallway about ten feet behind Kara. She froze momentarily, then slipped into the closest open storage room on her left.

She heard the elevator doors swish open and heavy steps start down the hallway toward her. In her darkened room, Kara pressed back against the wall, consciously quieted her breathing, and put a hand on her gun..

The footsteps came closer. They sounded odd, erratic in some way. When the figures passed her open doorway, Kara realized why.

There were three men—two large men on either side of a shorter dark- haired one, who was being held—no, pulled by the other two. His stumbling steps had created the uneven sound. The three figures were past the doorway in an instant, but Kara had clearly seen a gun in the hand of the man closest to her.

Her glimpse of the man in the middle had been brief and obscured. But it was enough to make her breath catch in her throat. His height, the color of his hair, and some indefinable something suggested it was the person she had worried over for the previous three days.

The footsteps stopped, and she heard a loud rap on the adjacent door. A muffled voice inside responded. Then, more clearly, she heard one of the men in the hallway. "We got him." A door opened, and the same man said, "In you go, flyboy."

Flyboy. It had to be Lee. It had to be.

Some people panic when hit with the flood of adrenaline brought on by a crisis. Some people lose the ability to think clearly. Some people give in to the urge to run instead of fight.

Those people don't become Viper pilots.

Kara's thoughts clarified, crystallized in a crisis. Her reactions seemed to speed up, her muscles obeying her instincts with lightening agility. It was what had kept her alive through countless dogfights.

And it was what was going to allow her—she hoped—to save Lee's ass.

With adrenaline coursing through her body, Kara took quick stock of her surroundings, scanning the dim gloom of the storage room, willing there to be a…yes. She saw it. A small panel on the back wall near the ceiling, probably an air vent. Within seconds she had shoved boxes under it to reach it, flipped out the knife she carried in a hidden pocket on the side of her pants, and was using it to pry off the metal screen. Successful, she noiselessly placed the screen on the floor, replaced the knife in its sheath, and pulled herself into the small passageway.

It had all taken her less than a minute.

No light from the corridor penetrated up here. In the pitch black, she pulled herself forward on her elbows cautiously, in the direction of the room where Lee had been taken. After about twelve feet, her hand touched an implacable metal wall in front of her.

Kara cursed silently, and traced her hand over the metal. Relief flooded her when her fingers touched a handle. An access panel, not a dead end, thank the gods. She turned the handle slowly and winced as it gave a small squeak. Then it was open, and a dim light fell on her. It came from a square of checkered light falling through a vent ahead.

Bingo.

Kara shifted on her elbows in the tight passageway, and managed to pull her gun from under her jacket. With its reassuring weight in her right hand, she shimmied forward soundlessly, getting to within about two feet of the vent opening. The space narrowed here, prohibiting her from getting any closer.

She was peering through the metal lattice of an air vent opening, high on the wall of a large room, cluttered with piles of boxes and half emptied crates. She could see a couple of men underneath her vantage point, sorting through a haphazard pile of electronic equipment. A little farther off, she glimpsed the corner of a solid wooden desk. She inched forward a fraction, and more of the desk slid into her line of vision, as well as the person standing in front of it.

Lee.

He looked like hell, Kara thought, wincing at his battered, bruised appearance. Clearly he had been in a fight, and from the looks of it, he had lost. Badly.

He was wearing his familiar pilot tanktops, but they were spattered with large, rust-colored bloodstains. Dried blood also covered his right hand, reaching up his arm. There was a nasty cut over his left eye, and blood rivulets had streaked that side of his face.

Despite the two large men securely holding his arms, Kara noticed Lee stagger a little, then shake his head slightly, as if trying to clear it. The effects of a concussion, from the looks of it.

Kara grasped the gun in her right hand tighter. Between the cramped space, and the heavy metal latticework in front of her, getting off a clean shot into the room would be almost impossible. Despite an overwhelming urge to try and take out the motherfrakkers holding Lee, she knew that by doing so, she ran the real risk of getting him killed. She bit her lip, knowing her only choice was to sit tight, and see how this played out.

A door opened on another side of the room, out of Kara's line of vision, and she heard a smooth voice from that direction say, "Captain Adama, so good of you to join us." A man then strode into her view, and seated himself at the desk directly in front of Lee, so that Kara could only see the back of his head. He reached for a bottle, poured something into a glass, then extended it to Lee. "Drink?" he asked him.

Kara could see the hatred on Lee's face as he silently stared at the man, who casually shrugged, gulped the drink himself, then set it down with a sigh.

Finally Lee spoke, his voice coldly furious. "Is she dead, Phelan?"

Phelan laughed. "Shevon? Of course not." He paused. "But I can see why you'd want her back. She's always been one of our best."

Watching this, Kara's eyes narrowed.

Lee stared at Phelan for a moment, then very slowly asked, "What do you mean, one of *yours*?"

Phelan leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head. "Our trade isn't limited to dry goods. A good `escort' like Shevon understands that it's about more than sex. They learn to listen, to smile.... to forgive. Before you know it, you're trusting them with everything. Your regrets… your secrets." He chuckled a little at Lee's stunned face.

Any spurt of jealousy Kara felt at having her fears confirmed about Lee sleeping with another woman was overwhelmed by her rage at the way Phelan was mocking him. The bastard had set Lee up.

Still held by the guards, Lee glared at Phelan. "How much did she tell you?" He spit the words out through clenched teeth.

Kara heard a door open again—the same one Phelan had entered minutes earlier—and saw Lee's eyes go to it. His face registered anger, betrayal, and loathing. In a moment Kara understood why, for a petite blond woman crossed into her line of vision, and slid up seductively behind Phelan at his desk.

"Everything," the woman said.

Shevon. The beautiful blonde whose rapt attention on Lee had caused Kara such spasms of jealousy days earlier. So the Mystery Bitch truly IS a bitch, Kara thought. But she could find no pleasure in the knowledge. For nothing was worth the pain of seeing Lee's humiliation played out before her like this. He had trusted Shevon with whatever painful secrets he hadn't been able to tell Kara or his father.

And Shevon had betrayed him.

She was speaking again, without looking at Lee, her hand trailing down Phelan's face. "Yes, I shared all your interesting revelations about Gianne."

Clearly enraged at the betrayal, Lee tried to break away from the guards, but they tightened their grip on him.

Gianne The name stirred a memory within Kara. Lee had once brought a girlfriend by that name to Zak's place to meet them. Dark- haired, soft-spoken, and sweet-tempered -- the polar opposite of herself, in fact. Kara still remembered the strange tightness in her chest when Lee had introduced them. They had shared a pleasant, though slightly strained evening, with the gregarious Zak doing most of the talking. When they had left, she had bitched a bit to Zak about Lee's new girlfriend. Gianne wasn't a good match for Lee, she had said. She had no understanding of life in the Fleet. She wasn't strong enough, she wasn't independent enough. She wasn't … "Good enough?" Zak had finished for her. "Maybe no one is good enough for Lee." And then he had flicked an odd look at Kara. Suddenly self- conscious, Kara had dropped the conversation.

Phelan was speaking again. "I'm not trying to embarrass you, Lee. You're alive because I could see you through Shevon's eyes." He glanced up as Shevon moved away from him to sit in a nearby chair, crossing her legs seductively. "And what I saw seemed... reasonable."

Lee shook his head in disgust. "Like Fisk? Did you work out a little deal with him, too?"

Phelan's voice hardened. "Fisk was a pig. We had an arrangement, but then he tried to force us to renegotiate."

"So you killed him."

In her hiding place, Kara gasped silently, her eyes widening. Fisk had been the XO of Pegasus, and his mysterious death had been the talk of the fleet over the last three days, ever since his dead body had been found. Found in the most macabre way imaginable, actually. His body, floating in space, had collided with one of Cloud Nine's shuttles, en route to the Rising Star. The wireless had buzzed with eyewitness accounts describing—in lurid and sensational detail—the way his corpse had suddenly splayed itself across the large viewing window of the luxury shuttle.

Fisk's body had been duly retrieved by one of Pegasus's Raptors, and for a day speculation was rife that Fisk had somehow gotten himself accidentally vented into space while on a drunken binge. It wasn't until the coroner's report was leaked to the press two days ago that the truth was revealed.

Fisk had been shot in the head three times. The murderers had apparently thrown his body out an airlock in an attempt to dispose of the evidence in the vastness of space. It was their bad luck—and that of the passengers on that shuttle—that the corpse had instead drifted directly into the fleet, and in a one in million shot, had collided with a ship.

Lee must have somehow discovered a connection between Fisk's murder and Phelan's men, Kara realized. And thanks to that bitch, Shevon, Phelan had been told everything Lee knew.

But Phelan was shaking his head now in response to Lee's accusation. "I didn't kill Fisk," he said. "He did." He jerked his thumb behind him and to the left. Propped against a pile of boxes, Kara could just make out the shadowy figure of a slumped man. Even from her distance, it was immediately clear that the man was dead.

She pulled her eyes back to Phelan when she heard him speak again, this time to Lee's guards. "It's okay. Let him go."

Lee jerked his arms to his sides the moment they were released. He stared coldly at Phelan as the man continued talking in a pleasant, even tone. "Look, Lee. I can provide you with the murder weapon, fingerprints, whatever it takes so you can legitimately close your books on Fisk's murder."

Lee took a deep breath. "Then what?"

Phelan leaned back again. "Just look the other way. Forget what happened. Forget what you saw. Forget you know anything about the Prometheus. And in return, we'll forget anything that happened between you and Shevon." He gestured to the woman, whose mouth lifted in a small, faintly mocking smile.

Lee gave Shevon a long, hard look, then turned back to Phelan with his jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. Kara grew distinctly uneasy watching him. Her heart had leapt when she heard Phelan offering Lee an out. Come on, Lee, she had urged him silently. Promise him anything. Lie. Just make sure you walk out of this room alive.

But Lee stayed implacably silent. Phelan's voice took on a note of impatience. "Look, despite the President's feel-good trade policy, the fleet needs us. When rationing gets too tight or a supply shipment runs late, we're the pressure valve. We provide. Without us, people would have nowhere to turn. The fleet would tear itself apart."

But Lee was shaking his head at Phelan's rationalizations. "And it doesn't hurt that you get to live like kings while everyone else starves," he said scornfully.

Phelan's voice was cold now. "After the Cylon attack, fairness became an abstract concept. I'm talking about survival."

Lee pulled himself straighter, and locked eyes with Phelan. "Then you never should have killed a command officer," he said softly.

Oh, Gods! No, Lee! Kara pleaded silently. Now is a very bad time to get all principled and heroic!

Phelan's voice was icy and low. "Is that a threat?"

"I came alone, but Galactica tracked me on dradis. They know all about the Prometheus by now."

Kara felt suddenly sick. Lee had hoped—expected—that his extended absence without a word of communication would have worried them enough to look for him. But she and Adama had let him down. She, because of her stupid jealousy and pride. And his father, from some misguided reluctance to intrude on Lee's privacy.

But she was the more culpable one, she realized suddenly. For if she had any sense at all, the Commander would have known about the Prometheus by now. The instant Zarek had told her that Phelan was a threat to Lee, she should have gone to Adama and told him. He had the right to know, as Lee's commanding officer.

He had the right to know as his father.

She had totally, completely frakked this one up.

Lee was continuing. "Remember what I said about commitment?" he looked scornfully at Shevon, then back at Phelan. "If I know my father, he'll send in a full Marine squad. All they'll need to vent you into space is an excuse."

Shevon put her hand to her mouth, "Oh my Gods."

Lee turned and walked slowly up to the nearby guard. He nodded at the gun the man was aiming at him. "So go ahead."

Kara gave an soft gasp, her throat constricting with a sudden fear. What was Lee doing? Did he want to get himself killed?

Phelan was leaning forward, "Wait a minute…"

But Lee was leaning into the guard's outstretched hand now, pressing the man's gun deeper into his own chest.

"Come on," Lee said fiercely. "what are you waiting for?" His voice rose, "Do it. DO IT!" Watching him, Kara felt sudden tears sting her eyes. She fumbled with her own gun, but knew there was nothing she could do now but watch helplessly, her heart in her throat.

The room was still for a long tense moment, Lee's heavy breathing the only sound. Kara held her own breath, hoping, praying… The guard holding the gun to Lee's chest threw a glance at Phelan for instruction.

And at that moment, lightening fast, Lee pivoted, grabbed the gun from the man's hand, shoved him aside, and aimed it at Phelan.

Phelan was on his feet now, yelling. "I made you a fair offer!"

Lee nodded. "You're right," he said scornfully. "And maybe I should compromise. See both sides." His voice was low now, filled with self- loathing. "Back off like I've been doing all my life…"

"You better decide…" Phelan said slowly. Then he suddenly reached down, as if he was going for a weapon, and...

The room exploded with the sharp crack of a gunshot.

Kara had an instant of pure terror.

Then Phelan gasped and fell awkwardly backward, tipping over his chair, hitting the floor with a loud crash.

And Lee stood, breathing heavily, gun hand steady, eyes shadowed.

The other four men were raising their own guns when Shevon's voice cut through the tense silence. "No, don't!" She nodded toward Lee. "He's right. Galactica will come for him."

As the men hesitated, still stunned, Shevon moved over to Phelan's body and checked his pulse. She looked up at Lee, who had his gun trained on her.

"You son of a bitch. So, am I next? Are you gonna kill me?"

Lee's voice was low, struggling for control. "I just want to know the truth, Shevon. Did you know Gianne? You said you did."

Shevon's voice was contemptuous. "You said her name first. I just ran with it."

Lee shook his head. "No. No, you knew things about her. That's why I trusted…" He stopped himself, his face confused and angry.

She gave a derisive laugh. "Look, we had dug up some information about you, okay? When I met you I said I knew *someone* you had been close to on Caprica. Then I just waited for you to fill in a name. As soon as you said `Gianne,' your eyes told me everything. Then it became a game—to get from you all the information I needed in order to use you." Her voice was cutting. "I've done this before, Lee. Many times. I'm very good at reading men. You were easy."

Lee stared at her coldly. "But Paya? You hinted that she might be…"

Shevon cut him off scornfully. "She's my child, of course. I couldn't believe you were stupid enough to think she might be Gianne's. Did you really think that somehow your long lost kid survived an attack that killed fifty billion people? Conveniently giving you a chance to work out some of that guilt you've been carting around?" She shook her head disbelievingly. "I knew you only kept seeing me because of Paya. So it was to my advantage to help you keep your fantasy going."

Secreted high in her cramped air vent, Kara's face was ashen. She shouldn't be hearing this. Lee's secrets should have stayed hidden, his alone, until he was ready to tell her. She felt sick, like she had been caught spying on him when he was at his weakest, his most vulnerable, and most humiliated.

Never, ever, would she let me know that she had heard any of this. She owed him that much.

Shevon had left Phelan's body and moved to the front of the desk, stopping just about three feet in front of Lee, who had turned to keep his gun trained on her.

"I found out a lot about you in the last few days, Lee. I learned you're a coward, for one." Her dispassionate, dismissive hatred was more chilling than a screaming fit. "And from all you've told me, it seems pretty clear that Gianne didn't leave you." She paused and leaned a little closer. "You pushed her away."

Lee's face drew back as if she had slapped him. Kara closed her eyes, unwilling—unable—to watch this any further.

A sudden sharp sound made her eyes fly open again. Shevon had kept her eyes locked on Lee's as she taunted him. But now it was clear that it had mostly been to distract him. Just out of Kara's line of vision on the right, the hand of one of the guards had appeared, and slammed a pistol butt into the back of Lee's head. Kara's eye had opened to the sound of the impact, and she watched Lee stumble onto his knees, one hand reaching out to grab the desk, his gun hand swinging around. But his attacker was too fast, kicking Lee viciously in the head, knocking him out.

Lee fell heavily to the floor, sliding out of Kara's view behind the desk.

It had happened so quickly that Kara gasped. The guard who had hit him was now dragging him away to the right, apparently toward the room's exit, followed by Shevon and the other men.

Frak, Frak, FRAK! Kara couldn't see them anymore, as they had moved out of her line of vision. Her gun was cocked, and she fought down an urge to just start firing into the room. The fact that they had knocked him out instead of shooting him outright was hopeful. And shooting from her awkward position could just make things worse.

She strained to hear their voices.

"You can't shoot him. It'll be Fisk all over again. You guys totally frakked that one up." Shevon's voice.

"I'm not going to shoot him," protested the guard. "I have a way to make this look like an accident. We take him down now and put him out the airlock alive. But then we send out his Raptor after him, with the hatch controls jammed. If they find it, it'll just look like an accident. Like it malfunctioned in flight and vented him into space. No one could pin it on us."

A silence, then another voice. "Shevon, it'll work. And we don't have many options here."

Shevon's voice came, slightly hesitant. "I didn't think we'd have to kill him." Kara was surprised to detect the faint sound of regret. "I don't want to be a part of this, all right?" The sound of footsteps, and Shevon crossed back into Kara's line of vision, but only briefly, as she was heading for the door she had entered by. Kara heard that door open, then Shevon's final words drifted back into the room.

"Do whatever you feel you have to do, Weller. But as far as I'm concerned, Lee Adama left this room alive and well. Whatever happens after you leave here isn't my responsibility. And I don't ever want to know about it."

The door closed with a soft click. Almost at the same moment, she heard a man say, "Come on, Maddox, help me with him." Then another door opened, and shut.

Kara was already scrambling back through her narrow passageway, her heart racing. Lee had hoped someone would come to his aid. And so far, she had done nothing to help him, merely listened voyeuristically while his long buried secrets were dug up and mocked by a vengeful bitch.

But it wasn't too late. It couldn't be too late.

She reached the storage room, and dropped as quietly as she could back to the floor. Gun in hand, she stole to the doorway, then cautiously peered out. Hearing nothing, she moved swiftly into the corridor, gun extended, ready to fire. Two quick glances revealed the frustrating truth.

The corridor was empty. Lee and his captors were nowhere in sight.

Chapter Four

*Think, Kara, think!*

She exhaled to slow her breathing, while rapidly ticking off her options.

Confront Shevon? No, it'd take too long. Lee had only minutes.

The elevator? Small airlocks would be located on the bottom deck. She closed her eyes to focus all her attention on listening for the sound of humming machinery. Nothing.

Stairway, then. She gave a quick glance toward the direction from which she had entered the corridor. Too many people that way-- people who would notice an unconscious man being carried.

Which meant. She took off at a run toward the other end of the hallway, which led to a dimly lit, narrow utility stairwell. She leaned over the railing, gun pointed, trying to peer down into the well. Intense relief flooded her when she caught a glimpse of her quarry rounding the bottom stairway four floors below.

Lee was still alive.

She started down the stairs, her left hand pulling out her other gun in one smooth motion so that both hands were armed. She ran quickly, but quietly, knowing she needed to retain the element of surprise if she was going to have a chance of getting both Lee and herself out of this mess.

She slowed her pace as she neared the bottom floor, listening intently before she cautiously rounded the final corner. The stairway was empty, but the exit door was about a foot ajar. Hearing nothing, Kara carefully pushed it forward, and moved into the corridor ready to fire.

No one was there.

Panic rose in her again but she shoved it down fiercely. They couldn't be far.

She heard their voices as she approached the second alcove that branched off the corridor. Staying in the shadows, she stole up to the alcove's entrance soundlessly, hands tensely holding both guns at the ready.

"Damn it, Weller, it has to work!"

"I've done it three times. I'll try it again, but it's not working."

Peering in cautiously, she could see two men standing outside the thick, glassed wall that protected the ship from the airlock beyond it. One was punching numbers into the security keypad mounted ten feet from the door into the airlock. The other had his gun pointed in the direction of Lee, who lay sprawled motionless a few feet away.

"Frak it! Phelan must have just changed it again. Bastard didn't trust us."

The other man was quiet for a moment, before saying, "Beach."

"What?"

"Beach would have the new code. He and Phelan were checking on the ship's security yesterday."

"Where is he?"

"Hangar bay, I think."

"Well, go get him. I want to get this done before he comes to." He gestured toward Lee.

Perfect, Kara thought. She would take on both of them if she had to, but much preferred the odds of taking on only one.

She ran lightly back down the corridor some eight feet and slipped into the shadows of an adjacent alcove just in time. Seconds after she had ducked into it, she heard the man's jogging steps pass her. The instant he exited into the stairwell, she was once again in the corridor, her hand tucking one gun away while she moved swiftly back toward the other man.

Entering the alcove soundlessly, she stole toward him. He had his back to her, trying out combinations in the security keypad, and holding his gun down casually.

Kara got to within five feet of him before he realized someone was there and started to turn around.

"Drop the gun," Kara said in a steely voice, her gun aimed at this head. "Or you're getting a bullet in the head."

He froze, his gun still hanging downward.

"Believe me, I would love *nothing* better than to blow your brains out," Kara hissed. "So don't give me an excuse. Drop it. DROP it!"

He dropped the gun.

"Kick it over here. Now turn around and open your jacket." He obeyed her. "Turn completely around. Now pat down your pockets."

Satisfied he had no other weapons, Kara bent down to pick up the gun he had kicked toward her, tucking it into her waistband.

"Now, move to the wall over there," she ordered, gesturing to her left.

Keeping her gun trained on the man as he backed to the wall she had indicated, Kara moved to Lee's sprawled, unconscious body. She crouched down next to him and shook his shoulder urgently.

"Lee. Lee! You gotta wake up now!"

She chanced a quick look down at his face. Nothing.

Damn it! The head blow he had received, coming on the heels of his earlier concussion had really knocked him out. Kara shook him a few more times, then realized she was going to have to do this the hard way.

Keeping her gun aimed at Phelan's henchman, she took Lee's arm in her left hand and began to drag him toward the corridor. If she could just get him to an elevator, she could find a place to hide with him until he came to.

"What the hell you gonna do? Drag him back to the launching bay?" the man scoffed.

Kara didn't waste any breath responding to him. She was strong, but Lee was heavy, and she was struggling to pull him as fast as the urgency of the situation required. She was also preoccupied with keeping her gun leveled on the first man, while also covering her back against the return of the second. Her head looked backward, then snapped forward again. Back. Forward. She was panting now, her muscles straining with Lee's dead weight.

Not the most graceful rescue, to be sure. But they were going to make it. Once she reached the corridor, the elevator would be only fifteen feet away, in the opposite direction of the stairs. She could pull him that far. She shot a glance back again. No one there. They were almost to the corridor. Her head turned back again to eye the man by the airlock.

Suddenly, the cold muzzle of a gun pressed into the base of her skull, and a hand clamped around her neck.

"Don't move," a quiet voice said menacingly.

She stopped, her breathing loud and labored.

"Drop the gun."

"I'll shoot your friend," Kara said harshly, desperately, her gun trained on the man she had disarmed.

The safety clicked in her ear, as the hand around her throat tightened.

"Guess what?" the man said in almost a whisper, "I don't give a shit. Never liked him anyway. And then I'll just kill you. And your friend will still go out the airlock."

Kara still hesitated, then let out her breath and reluctantly lowered the gun. He kept his hand around her throat while knocking it from her hand. The other man approached them to retrieve it and strip her of her remaining guns. "Get over there," the man behind her said, and gave her a rough shove back toward the airlock entrance.

"Good timing," the first man said, as they dragged Lee over near Kara, keeping their guns on her as they did so. "But where's Beach?"

"I went to Phelan's quarters and sent Antony to get him. Didn't want to leave you here alone in case he came to. I figured you wouldn't be able to handle it on your own, Maddox. Guess I was right."

"Oh, frak off," the first man grumbled, as they released Lee's wrists and moved back to the access keypad.

Kara was standing ten feet from them, next to Lee's limp form. Feeling painfully vulnerable without her guns, she relied on the last weapon she had left--her bravado. Arms on her hips, eyes flashing, voice coldly furious, she laid into them.

"You're going to be signing your own death warrant if you do this, you know. Lee is the son of Commander Adama. Commander-of-the-whole- frakking-fleet Adama. I know the Old Man. He will *never* rest until he finds out who did this to his son."

The second man scoffed. "It'll look just like an accident. We can find lots of people on this ship who'll swear they saw Captain Adama take off in his raptor tonight. Hell, we can easily doctor the logbooks to show that. They'll never pin it on us."

"You're wrong. He's going to find out." Kara kept her voice low and angry, struggling to hide her desperation. "And he's gonna kill you."

"Shut up," said the man irritably, "And back off. If I were you, I'd be thinking more about your own death. You're going out the airlock too, you know. Save your last words for him." He waved his gun toward Lee.

Kara's arms were twitching with adrenaline and frustration. Her options were closing off. She contemplated just charging the men. Better to die in a blaze of gunfire, with a chance at inflicting some harm herself, than suffocating in the cold vacuum of space.

She looked down at Lee beside her. He was pale and unmoving, his arms sprawled out like some discarded marionette. Her throat tightened. If she charged them now, he'd die alone.

No. I'm not going there. Not yet.

They were both still alive. This wasn't over.

She crouched on the floor next to Lee, stretching out her leg so she could bend down over his face, laying her cheek against his, her mouth near his ear. She snuck a glance at the men. They were still ten feet away. One-Weller, she believed-was trying out random combinations at the access panel. The other, Maddox, leaned against the wall near him, gun pointed casually in their direction.

Keeping her cheek pressed to his, Kara shifted her face a little so that her mouth touched his ear. Her hair slid over her cheek, effectively hiding their faces from the men.

"Lee," she breathed into his ear, whispering so low that the men had no chance of hearing her "Lee, it's Kara. It's me, Lee. I need you to wake up now, all right? Lee. Lee! Please come back to me, Lee." She swallowed hard. "I don't think I can get us out of here on my own, and I really, really need you. I need you, Lee. I need you."

She kept this up for several minutes, to no avail. Finally, despite her best efforts, her voice began to tremble. She swallowed back her fear, closed her eyes, pressed her cheek closer to his, and reached down to grasp his limp hand. "Lee. Please, Lee."

"Kara."

His hoarse whisper sounded softly in her ear.

Her eyes shot open, and she stole another glance at their captors, who were conversing, keeping only vague watch on them.

"Don't move!" she said urgently into his ear. Then she turned slightly, her hair still masking their faces from the men and stared into his open eyes.

"Hey," she whispered with a tiny smile, relief washing over her in waves.

"Hey," he whispered back, and winced.

She turned her head again so that they could whisper softly and inconspicuously, their mouths touching one other's ears.

"Can you move?"

He squeezed her hand in reply.

"Good," she whispered. "But let's keep them thinking you're still out. Here's the sitrep. We're in the lower deck of the Prometheus. Phelan's men plan to put us both out an airlock. And I need some help figuring out how to keep them from doing it. There's two guys here, but a third is going to show up any moment with the access code to open the lock. And then we're screwed."

"Weapons?" Lee breathed the question into her ear.

"We've got none. They took my guns. They've got about four between them."

His hand twitched again. Her hand was over his, clasping it, both hands resting on her right leg, which was stretched out next to his body. His hand began to move slowly, gently tugging their clasped hands a couple of inches down her leg. Then his finger, hidden under her hand, gave her leg a soft tap. His gentle whisper sounded in her ear.

"Did you forget this?"

Holy Frak. Her knife. She *had* forgotten. Lee must have felt it under his hand.

"Can you get it to me without them noticing?" Lee said softly into her ear.

Kara hesitated, then whispered back.

"Not you. I'll do it."

"No, Kara. Listen. They think I'm still out. They're going to be more careful with you. I can surprise them."

She bit her lip. He was right, but she hesitated. She didn't want to give it to him, she admitted to herself. She wanted the knife in her own hand. She wanted-needed-to have control in a crisis.

But, this was Lee. She trusted him. Even with her life.

"Okay," she breathed into his ear. Then she turned her face, resting her other cheek on his, so that her eyes were free to see down their bodies. Their clasped hands were still on her leg, above the knife. Very slowly she turned her leg inward, moving it closer to Lee's body, keeping it hidden from the men guarding them. Her finger reached out to lift the pocket flap on her lower thigh. She felt Lee's fingers reaching in and fumbling for the knife. She shifted her leg farther over, worried their actions might catch the attention of the two men. Lee carefully slid the knife out of her pocket, and she felt him move his own leg very slightly to slip the knife under his thigh.

At that moment, Beach arrived.

Kara sat up, taking care to drop Lee's hand so it was right next to the spot where the knife was hidden under his leg. She stole a look at his face. His eyes were closed, his jaw slack, his face blank.

Beach barely spared them a glance, merely went to the keypad, and began punching in the numbers.

"What the hell took you so long?" Maddox grumbled.

"We had to sabotage his Galactica Raptor and send it out first. It needs to be found drifting near their bodies."

The door behind Kara gave a soft click as it unlocked. Kara's mouth went dry, and her body tensed as she was met by the chill of the unheated air in the space in front of the airlock.

The three men all had their guns drawn now, and were advancing on them. Maddox grabbed Kara's left arm to pull her through the door. She began to struggle against him.

The trick, she knew, was to struggle enough to keep the men distracted, keep them focused on her, but not get them so worried that they'd try to knock her out.

The other trick was pretending she only wanted to get away from Maddox, not fight him. She wanted his thoughts focused on holding onto her. Not on protecting himself.

So Kara thrashed. She tried to yank her arm away. She used her leg strength, pulling away like a recalcitrant mule. And she sounded as frightened and as loud as she could-gasping, pleading, cursing. Maddox was cursing as well, straining as he dragged her about ten feet into the air lock area. She was vaguely aware that the ruse was working. Both Beach and Weller were watching her struggle, even as Weller absently reached down for Lee's arm to drag him after them.

Lee suddenly exploded into action. His arm flew up as soon as Weller touched him, the knife in his right hand sharply arcing over his head to plunge itself into Weller's chest.

At the same moment, Kara stopped pulling away, and suddenly pivoted, throwing all her weight behind the powerful right hook she smashed into Maddox's face. A second later she had kneed him viciously in the groin. As he gasped and lurched backwards, she went for his gun.

For a few tense seconds they struggled for it. Her fury aided her, as did his obvious pain. Triumphant, Kara finally yanked the gun away from him, but a moment later she heard a loud crack, and she staggered, feeling as if someone had just given her a sharp, hard shove in her shoulder. She stumbled forward to her knees, her left hand painfully breaking her fall, her right hand still pointing the gun toward Maddox, who had fallen back a few wary feet from her.

As she fell, she was aware of a strangled cry behind her. Lee's voice. She threw a panicked glance back at him.

Lee was leaping at Beach, who had his gun pointed straight at her. She heard the thud of their bodies crashing together, and watched as the two men rolled on the floor just inside the entrance to the airlock, each struggling to gain the upper hand. Then Lee was on top, his left hand holding down Beach's right, both straining for control of the gun in Beach's hand. Suddenly Lee's right hand with the knife flashed up, then sharply down. With a hoarse shout, he stabbed it into the man's throat.

Kara's attention had been completely focused on Lee, until she realized with a shock that Maddox was using her momentary inattention to dive for the gun again. Acting on instinct, fueled by adrenalin, she fired directly at him-once, twice, three times. He staggered and fell on top of her, dead.

And then, all was still.

Kara became conscious of the cold floor under her, the ringing in her ears from the gunshots, and the sounds of labored breathing from both Lee and herself. She pushed Maddox's body off her, feeling a little sick.

Then she looked over at Lee. He was still on Beach, slumped over a bit, head down, the hand holding the knife white-knuckled and clenched. Weller's bleeding body lay a few feet behind him. He looked at his hand for a moment then extended it, and deliberately unclenched his fingers. The knife clattered to the floor.

Then he looked up and met Kara's wide eyes. Instantly he got up and moved to her. She met him halfway, and they caught one another and held on.

They stood there, embracing, saying nothing, for what seemed like minutes, as their breathing gradually slowed. Her nerves were tingling with the same adrenalin rush she experienced every time she flew a mission against the Cylons; every time she succeeded in blasting the bastards out of the sky before they could kill her.

She felt intensely, completely alive.

And filled with gratitude, because Lee was alive too.

But then she became aware of another feeling. A sharp pain in her left shoulder, rapidly building in intensity, and stabbing downward into her arm.

"I thought he had shot you," Lee said against her hair.

"I think he did," Kara said.

Lee pulled away then and looked at her sharply. She tried to reach up to take off her jacket but her left arm wasn't cooperating. Lee carefully peeled it down her arms, then drew in his breath at the blood seeping from her left shoulder. "Oh, Kara."

"Oh, *frak* it!" Kara said, looking down at her left shoulder, grimacing at the intensifying pain.

"It's still bleeding," Lee said, and he put his palm down to apply pressure. Kara gritted her teeth against the pain, and then became aware that her body was shivering.

"Let's get out of here," Lee said, turning with her toward the door.

Kara stopped him. "We need the guns."

He nodded, bending down to retrieve Beach's and Weller's, while she pressed her own hand on her shoulder to try to slow the bleeding. Lee dragged both bodies to where Maddox lay, and after a moment's thought, he reached down and stripped off two of their jackets.

Kara was standing just outside the airlock door waiting for him. She was bending over a little, one hand on her knee, the other pressed hard against her shoulder. Lee joined her, clicking the airlock door shut behind him.

"Let's find someplace safer than here."

She nodded without speaking and let him lead her down the corridor. A little past the elevator, they found an unlocked utility room with a sink. He closed the door behind him, just as Kara, grimacing, slid down the wall to a sitting position.

Looking around, Lee found a shirt someone had left draped over a box. He ripped it into strips, wetted one in the sink, then sat down at Kara's left side.

"Let me see it," he said softly.

She removed her hand, and he wiped the blood away, then gently probed the wound with his fingers.

"Bleeding's slowed down a lot, which is good. No exit wound, though, so it's still in there. Must hurt like hell."

She nodded. "I've had worse, though," she said, and consciously worked to unclench her teeth. "I just need to stop thinking about it. So let's talk about something else. How fast can we get to the hangar bay? I'm not going to feel better till we're piloting a Raptor away from this frakked up ship."

Lee leaned back on the wall, close to her. "I can get us there. As long as we're not stopped."

Kara looked at him. "Stopped? Wait a minute. I thought we just killed all the bad guys. Are you telling me there's more?" At his nod, she snickered a bit. "Good Lords, Lee, you certainly made an impression here in a few short days."

He smiled at that, then grew serious. "They're running a pretty lucrative black-market on this ship. A lot of people are involved, and they're willing to do just about anything to keep it going. I found out yesterday that they killed Fisk, the Pegasus XO. Apparently he had been involved, but then had a falling out with Phelan. Phelan's the leader of the black-market, who I.well, he's dead now."

Yeah, I know, Kara thought. But she said nothing.

"Phelan put out the word yesterday that he didn't want me leaving the ship. So his men are probably on the lookout for me. Also, I was nosing around, questioning a lot of different people for a couple of days. People may recognize me."

"Frak," muttered Kara. "Can we find a comm link, so we can patch a call through to Galactica? Any in the hallways, or someplace else we can get to?"

Lee was shaking his head. "No. Phelan seems to have removed or disabled all the public ones."

"So the only way out of this mess is getting to my Raptor."

Lee nodded.

Kara let out a sigh. "Okay, let me see if I've got this. I'm shot. We're both covered in blood. But we need to look inconspicuous, and make our way to the hangar bay. Meanwhile dodging the people on the ship who know who you are and will be trying to stop you. And then we have to get our Raptor. Which hopefully isn't being guarded." She raised her eyebrows and looked at him. "Is that it?"

Lee considered. "Yeah, that's about it."

"Oh, well, that's good. Here I was thinking it might be *hard*."

He started laughing then, the first real laugh she had heard from him since the morning before that disastrous Cloud Nine visit almost a week ago. The sound made her laugh as well. He turned to her, surveying her face, still smiling. "I don't think I told you how good it is to see you, Kara. And you know, maybe I just take it for granted that you're gonna be there when I need you but, I gotta ask." He shook his head in wonderment. "How the hell did you end up on the bottom deck of the Prometheus, about to be thrown out of an airlock with me?"

"Well, you know," Kara said nonchalantly. "I thought it might be a nice opportunity for some quality time together, just floating around in space, you and me ."

He raised his eyebrow at her.

Kara looked down and was quiet for a moment.. "You were gone from the Galactica without a word for three days. I got. worried. I came over and did some snooping around. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to hear about the airlock plan."

He didn't press her for more details, just looked at her steadily for a minute. Then, "Thank you," he said, softly.

She nodded, a little embarrassed, then gave him a self-mocking grin. "Actually, I owe you one. My first attempt to rescue you was a disaster. If you hadn't woken up when you did." She shook her head. "There's no way I could have taken out all three of them on my own." She raised her eyebrows expressively. "So, you saved my ass, too."

He inclined his head in acknowledgment of her thanks, then reached for her hand, enfolding it within his. They sat quietly for a minute, before Lee stirred and gazed down, bemused, at the bloodstains covering his arms and shirt. "You're right about the blood, though. Hard to be inconspicuous, looking like this." He looked at her face, a smile playing on his lips. "Do I look as bad as you?"

"Well, I don't know how I look, but you -I have to say -look like hell."

"Oh, thank you." He moved to get up again, then suddenly staggered, putting his hand out to catch himself on the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain.

"Lee?" Her voice was sharp.

He didn't answer for a moment, then slowly opened his eyes and straightened himself.

"I'm fine, just stood up too fast, I think." He crossed back to the sink, got a few more of the clothing strips wet, then returned and crouched in front of her. "I'm going to clean some of the blood off your face."

"I can do that!" Kara said, annoyed.

"No you can't, so be quiet," he said firmly. "You're not lifting your arms. Now, close your eyes. "

He took her chin in his left hand and began gently but firmly scrubbing the dried bloodstains off her face. When he finished, she opened her eyes and made a face at him. "I feel like I'm five."

"Well, behave yourself, little girl, and you might get a fun little ride in a Raptor." He slowly got up and went to the sink to wash off his own bloodstains. She watched him scrubbing at them, including the long-dried ones she had noticed on him much earlier in Phelan's quarters.

"Lee?"

"Hmm?"

She swallowed. "Why did you come to the Prometheus? And why did you stay so long without contacting anyone?"

He stopped scrubbing and sighed, leaning his hands on the sink, looking down. For a long moment he didn't say anything. "I did try to contact my father yesterday," he said finally. "After I had pieced together what happened to Fisk. That's when I learned that someone had disconnected the comm line from.well, where I was staying." Kara felt a stab of jealousy at this veiled reminder of Shevon.

"So I headed to the launching bay to get my Raptor," Lee continued. "And I got jumped by someone. It was just one guy, and I got away, but I knew I needed to get off the ship. But I had to.help someone else. who I thought was in danger as well." His jaw tightened but he didn't provide more details. "But I got jumped again, this time by a few of them. They kept me locked up for a day, then hauled me in front of Phelan."

Kara nodded. She was staring down at her right hand, clenching and unclenching in her lap.

Lee sighed, still leaning on the sink. "There's actually more to it than that. But.it's a long story."

"That's fine, no big deal, just kind of curious." Kara said, with feigned nonchalance.

Lee was silent for a moment, still not looking at her. Then he said hesitantly, "It's a long story, but.it's a story I'd like to tell you sometime. If you'd like to hear it."

Kara's throat was tight. "Yeah. If you want to."

"I think I do."

Then he straightened up, and gave her a little smile over his shoulder. "But for now, let's just focus on getting off this ship." He came over for her inspection. "Am I more presentable?"

She nodded. "Good," he said. "Let's use these jackets I took. They should cover up some of the blood on our clothes." He reached out his hand to help her. "Can you stand up?"

She nodded, gave him her right hand, then clenched her teeth as the pain shot through her again when she moved. Leaning motionless against the cold wall for a time had helped dull it, but shifting to a standing position brought it back with a vengeance.

He watched her, his eyes concerned. "If you want, I can help support you as we walk." Kara shook her head. "Come on, Kara, I can see this is hard for you. Let me."

"I can make it," Kara snapped. "I'm fine, Lee."

"Uh-huh. Sure you are. Well, we're going to rest when I say we rest. No arguments."

He turned around and leaned over to pick up the jackets. But doing so seemed to disorient him, for he suddenly slipped, and had to catch himself with one hand on the sink. He pulled himself up, drew a deep breath, then turned back to her, only to find Kara staring at him, concerned and annoyed.

"What *I'm* worried about is that concussion you obviously have, Lee. You were knocked out for a long time, and you're still acting kinda loopy. That thick skull of yours might have a fracture, with internal bleeding, and you should be."

Now it was Lee's turn to cut her off dismissively.

"Don't worry about it, Kara. I'm fine."

"Uh-huh. Sure you are."

They both stared at each other, annoyance in their faces. Then Lee's mouth twitched and they both laughed.

"Okay," Lee said. "We'll both keep the fussing to a minimum. But I'm reserving the right to keep an eye on you." She raised her eyebrow at him. "And you keep an eye on me," he conceded. "Fair enough?"

She smiled. "Okay."

Lee helped her get the jacket on, then put the other on himself. He slipped his hand into the pocket and withdrew it, holding her knife.

"I thought you might need this back," he said quietly, reaching down to slip it into the scabbard still in her pocket. She caught his eye as he straightened.

"It's strange," he said, and cleared his throat. "I've never stabbed anyone before. It's different. More. personal than shooting someone. I don't know.more primal, I guess."

"Lee, don't beat yourself up. You did what you had to do.."

He looked at her. "No, Kara, that's just it. I don't feel badly about it. His eyes hardened. "It felt. *good.*"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Prometheus was not an especially large ship, but it took them over an hour to make it to the hangar bay. Aided by Lee's familiarity with the ship and the lateness of the hour, they met few people as they stuck to neglected stairways and utility corridors. But numerous times they were forced to double back on hearing voices ahead.

Each called a rest once, concerned about the other. Kara was finding it more difficult to ignore the searing pain in her shoulder, and her growing concern about the difficulty she was having even moving her left arm. She was also worried about Lee. His face was growing paler and his walk a little shakier.

During the second of their rests, she looked at him, as he leaned his head wearily against the wall he was sitting against. Dark circles shadowed his closed eyes. "When did you last sleep?"

He gave her a tried smile without opening his eyes. "It's been a while."

She shook her head. "Look at the pair of us. Even if we can get to the raptor launch pad, which one of us are we going to trust to fly the damn thing?"

He smiled a little again, then after another minute of rest, his eyes snapped open. He rose, helped her to her feet, and they continued their slow trek.

Finally, though, they were close to their objective. Ahead was the reception lobby that led to the hangar and launching bays. It was quieter than when Kara had come through hours earlier, but they could still make out a few voices.

They crouched under a nearby metal stairway.

"Any other way we can get to the Raptor?" Kara asked.

"No, they set it up this way to keep an eye on anyone coming or going."

"What about if we wait a few hours? See if it clears out more?"

Lee turned back to look at her, his eyes sliding to her left shoulder, where a bullet was still lodged. Her eyes in turn scanned his pale, clammy face, and the ugly bruise over his eye.

At the same instant they both shook their heads and said, almost in unison, "You need a medic."

Lee smiled. "Okay. What's Plan B?"

They were silent for a minute, each too exhausted to come up with even the semblance of a brilliant idea.

Finally, Kara sighed, "We could just try the medical emergency tack. We certainly look bad enough to carry it off convincingly."

Lee nodded. "So you lean on me, I keep my head down, and we just blow past them, saying we need a medic. And if we're stopped.." He hesitated.

"We blow `em away," Kara said grimly.

They checked that their guns were easily accessible.

"Ready?" Lee said.

She nodded and slipped her right arm over his neck, clenching her teeth at the wave of pain the move produced in her other shoulder.

"You okay?" Lee asked gently, looking at her face.

"Yeah," she gasped. Then she realized he was still looking at her intently, his face very close to hers.

"Kara, if anything happens, I want you to know."

"Stop it, Lee!" she cut him off abruptly. "Nothing is going to happen. Not to you, and not to me. So, whatever you have to say, just tell me on the Galactica." She looked at him fiercely, willing it to be so.

He hesitated, then smiled at her. "Okay."

They took a deep breath, and together, stepped toward the reception area.

They almost made it. There were five men in the room when they came walking quickly in. They kept their heads down, Kara gasping in obvious pain, Lee holding her close, and saying solicitously, "Don't worry, honey, we're almost to the hangar bay. We'll get you some help."

A man stepped to intercept them. "What's this?"

"She fell down a flights of stairs." Lee said fiercely without looking up. "I need to get her some help. Please get out of my way!"

The man hesitated, then stepped aside.

Kara exulted inwardly.

But, two steps before the exit into the hangar bay, they were caught. "That's Adama," she heard one of the men yell, and suddenly Lee's right arm was grabbed, and he was pulled away from her. At the same moment, her wounded left arm was violently yanked backward, and the searing pain of it ripped through her body, forcing a sharp cry from her. The intensity of the pain made her both dizzy and nauseous, and she had to draw in great gulps of air to keep herself from blacking out.

She stumbled as the man holding her arm suddenly let go. Lee, swearing, had thrown himself on him. Then Lee himself disappeared under three other men who tackled him. In a fugue of pain, she pulled her gun out to help him, but felt herself grabbed around the neck, and a gun barrel pressed against her head. Tears of pain and frustration pricked her eyes as she struggled to see what was happening to Lee.

"Drop your WEAPONS!"

The words boomed into the room from the doorway. Gasping, Kara struggled to turn and see who had yelled them. Her heart leapt.

Commander Adama. Flanked by eight fully armed marines, their guns leveled at their assailants.

The cavalry had finally shown up.

Chapter 5

Days later, Kara would hear the whole story of how a glowering Commander Adama came to be standing on the Prometheus now, with those blessed, kick-ass Marines in tow.

It had begun with Lee's unmanned Raptor, sent out by Phelan's men. Galactica's dradis had tracked the erratically drifting Raptor within minutes of its launch. Kara would hear later how the CAP had been sent to investigate it, and how they had soberly reported on its broken hatch door, and its ghostly cockpit, yawning open to the cold emptiness of space as the ship slowly rotated, drifting aimlessly.

She would hear how they had realized that the Raptor's numbers matched the one Lee Adama had piloted from the Galactica three days earlier.

And she would hear how the Commander had looked, when he had been given the news.

He had entered the CIC moments after Lieutenant Gaeta had received confirmation that the empty Raptor was Lee's. With Colonel Tigh off duty, it fell to Gaeta to break the news to the Old Man. Onlookers later whispered about the Commander's reaction. How he had simply stared at Gaeta for long moments, without moving, his face rigid, impassive.

Then he had cleared his throat, and his voice had come out hoarsely. "Have you spoken with the ship the Raptor was launched from?"

"Yes, sir, the Prometheus. They confirmed that Captain Adama launched the Raptor from there about thirty minutes ago. And, sir…." Gaeta's voice had been as quiet and controlled as ever, but his next words came very slowly. "They also have three witnesses who state that the Captain wasn't… wearing…a flight suit. I'm sorry, sir."

Adama had drawn a small, sharp intake of breath, and his mouth had tightened to a thin, pained line, as he continued to look fixedly at Gaeta. Then, he had leaned forward slightly as if in physical pain, his hands reaching out to grip the console in front of him. His face had suddenly looked ravaged. Heartbroken. Old.

"Has the CAP found his b…seen him near the Raptor?" He had rasped out the question.

Gaeta said, very quietly, "No sir, they've made no visual ID on anyone, yet."

The CIC had been absolutely still, Kara was told later, the only sound the soft whirring of the dradis screens. Adama had slumped slightly, struggling with his breathing, hands white-knuckled from gripping the console.

Then the Commander had looked up, and his eyes had blazed with a fierce rage.

"Call the XO to take over here, Lt. Gaeta. And have an armed Marine squadron meet me in the Raptor launching bay in ten minutes."

"Sir?" Gaeta had said, questioningly.

Adama bit out his next words. "I'm going to that ship."

But Kara knew nothing of that yet. She stood in the Prometheus, waves of blissful relief overriding the throbbing agony in her left shoulder, enjoying the beautiful sight of Commander Adama in a towering rage.

"I said, lower your weapons!" he shouted again, and the Marines moved in to disarm the men. Two Marines stepped to Kara's side, and two others began grabbing the men who had tackled Lee, still hidden under them on the floor.

"Starbuck, are you all right?" The Commander's eyes had softened as he moved toward her, though his body was still rigid with tension.

"I'm fine, sir, but Lee…"

At the very instant she said Lee's name, the last of his assailants was pulled off him by the Marines. Commander Adama looked down, and for the first time since entering the room, saw his son.

Lee was lying still, breathing heavily, his pale face marked with the bruises and bloodstains of his last hellish twenty-four hours. Blood trickled from a fresh cut on his mouth.

Then he opened his eyes slowly, and his gaze locked on his father's. He let out a small sigh. "Dad."

The tension suddenly left Adama's body, and his face crumpled very slightly when he saw his son. Lee struggled to rise, and his father reached down his arms to encircle his son's chest, pulling him to his feet.

And then he held him, in a long, fierce embrace. Lee leaned heavily on his father, his body sagging, as if realizing he could finally allow himself the luxury of letting go, knowing there was someone else now who would take care of him.

Kara watched father and son, then looked away, feeling like an intruder on their emotion. She was once again acutely conscious of pain. Not only the excruciating physical pain in her shoulder, but an emotional pain as well, an aching loneliness at her core. Watching them had brought back a sudden memory of her own father, holding her after one of her mother's vicious tirades. Her eyes prickled with unshed tears.

When Adama finally pulled back, Lee staggered slightly, and Kara said quickly, "He's had a concussion, sir."

Lee gave her a weary smile, "And *she's* got a bullet in her left shoulder."

Adama's eyes leapt to her shoulder, then her face, and the warm concern in his eyes was almost her undoing.

"Kara," he said gently, while releasing one arm from Lee and reaching out to her, He pulled her tenderly toward him, his face soft, paternal. Holding each of them close, he said, "Let's get you both back to the ship."

And while the Marines finished disarming and handcuffing the men, Commander Adama led his children back to the waiting Raptor. And brought them home.

* * * * * * * * * *

A week later, in the hangar bay, Kara scowled as she idly checked through supply lists on available repair parts for the Vipers and Raptors. It was dull work, perfect for grounded pilots, but she couldn't—and didn't try—to keep her mind from wandering.

Commander Adama had begun an investigation into the running of the Prometheus the day after their dramatic rescue, and not a few former residents were already on their way to a closer acquaintance with Tom Zarek on the Astral Queen.

She and Lee had spent some time in sickbay, forced to listen to Doc Cottle scolding them for their stupidity. Both were damned lucky to escape without any lasting damage, he declared, and he seemed to take perverse pleasure in grounding them from flying for at least two weeks.

Cottle had kept Kara in sickbay after Lee's release, which irked her competitive nature. Lee hadn't tried to hide his own amusement at her grousing. He showed up the day after his own release, and stood smirking a few feet from her, listening as she annoyed Cottle into finally signing her out.

"All right, get the hell out of here," Cottle grumbled, as he finished scrawling his name on the form. An unlit cigarette bobbed between his lips. "But you," he pointed at Kara. "Don't play with guns anymore. And you," he jabbed a finger at Lee. "Make sure she doesn't give you any Starbuck love taps on that skull of yours."

Kara made a face at him, muttering "oh, frak off," under her breath. But she sighed in relief as she fell into step with Lee, heading toward the officers' duty locker.

"So, you up for some boxing?" Lee teased.

"Only if you want your ass kicked." Kara flashed her huge grin.

Lee let out a laughing sound of protest. "You know, Lieutenant, you just guaranteed that we're going a few rounds once you don't have a sorry-ass excuse of a sore shoulder to fall back on."

Then, as they turned the corner of the corridor, his voice got a little more serious. "How does it feel?"

"It's fine," Kara said determinedly. And she raised her left arm a couple of times while flexing and unflexing her hand to demonstrate her mobility. The accompanying wince of pain she hid almost totally.

But he caught it, and though he smiled a little, didn't comment.

They reached the officers' locker and Lee swung open the hatch door. "You're off duty the rest of today," he said, but when he noted her smug smile, added, "But don't get too excited, since I put you back on, starting tomorrow."

"Thanks so much, boss," Kara good naturedly grumbled, opening her locker and shoving in the extra clothes Lee had brought to sickbay for her the day before. "And since I'm grounded, I suppose it's going to be lots of lovely paperwork for me."

Lee grinned. "No, actually, I've got you working as an assistant for Col. Tigh for the next week."

Kara swung around at him, mouth open, ready to yell or swear or both. He threw up his hands in self-defense. "It's just a week!"

"What the *frak* do you think…" She was almost spitting out the words, but stopped when Lee burst out laughing.

"Oh, Lords, your face! I'm kidding, Kara!"

She smacked his arm at that, but couldn't help laughing as well. She sat down on her rack, and he leaned on the edge of the table in front of her.

They both grew quiet. Lee's fingers softly and nervously tapped the table as he looked down at his feet. Kara felt a stir of uneasiness.

Finally, he cleared his throat, and said quietly, "When we were on the Prometheus, you asked me why I had gone there. I told you it was a long story. I'd really like to tell you about it, if you want to hear it."

He looked up at her, then, His face was open, vulnerable, but his eyes were shadowed with sadness.

He was asking her to hear his confession.

Kara's body tensed. She looked down, breaking his gaze. `Oh frak,' she thought. `I can't do this right now. I can't. I just can't. 'A kind of panic rose in her. She hated this kind of shit. And he knew that. Confessions *sucked.* Why rip scabs off wounds that were better left alone?

`I'm his friend,' a voice inside her warned. `He's asking me. This kind of crap is what friends do.'

But she was stabbed by the thought that if she heard his confession, she'd have to hear about Shevon.

She'd have to hear Lee describe how and why he had gone from kissing her, to frakking another woman.

And she didn't want to know. She didn't want to hear it. She wanted to forget the whole damn thing had happened.

Her panic and guilt began to mingle with anger. `Damn it,' she thought. `He shouldn't have asked me to do this!'

The silence lengthened. Then, finally, gazing down at the general vicinity of her toes, Kara took the easy way out.

"You know, Lee, I'm *really* tired right now. And anyway, the Doc said you should be resting your head. You know, with the concussion and all? How about if, um, we do this another time. Okay?"

Silence. She chanced a glance up at him.

He was still leaning against the table, but had turned his head a little away from her, and was looking fixedly at a nearby locker. His face had closed up. He didn't say anything for a long minute, then turned back to her, his eyes unreadable. In a flat voice, he said, "Yeah, sure. I understand. We'll do it another time."

He held her gaze a few moments longer, his eyes challenging her. Accusing her.

Then he gave a slight, self-mocking smile, shook his head, and said stiffly, "Right. I'll see you later."

As he turned to go, Kara found herself saying, "Wait, Lee."

He turned back. "What is it, Kara?" His voice was flat, his face impassive.

She bit her lip. Part of her wanted to take it back. But she didn't have the guts. "Nothing, just—I'll see you later, okay?"

"See ya." And he was gone.

* * * * * * * * * *

Since then she *had* seen him—hell, she saw him every day—but always with other people around, at briefings, in the rec room, in the locker. Once she had headed to the gym, only to stop outside the hatch when she glimpsed him alone inside, attacking the bag with a barely controlled fury. She had been tempted to march in and chew him out for it. `Frakkin' idiot', she thought. He shouldn't be pushing himself so hard yet. But she didn't say a word, merely backed away before he saw her.

He had been curt and snappish with the pilots. They had grumbled about the CAG's pissy mood, most chalking it up to his frustration over being grounded.

Kara said nothing. But she and Lee avoided being alone together, through unspoken agreement.

And Kara missed him.

She knew it was her fault. He had asked her for something, and she had refused him because she was a coward . Afraid of hearing what she didn't want to hear.

Afraid of finding herself saying what she didn't want to say.

Would his confession lead to one of her own? Would she find herself talking about Anders? About Zak? About all the frakked up and painful memories that she didn't want to revisit, at all?

No. Better this way. He'd get over it. Or so she tried to make herself believe.

A sudden commotion broke into her reverie. Three Vipers were returning from flying CAP, and the deck came alive with activity. She idly flipped through her supply lists again, then happened to glance up at the catwalk above the deck.

Commander Adama was there, leaning on the rails, watching the activity below. They caught each other's eyes and smiled.

Needing a break, Kara laid down her papers, stretched, and climbed the steps to join him.

"How are you feeling?" the commander asked.

"Fine. Shoulder's much better. But Cottle's still acting like a mother hen, refusing to clear me for flight duty yet."

Adama smiled. "You and Lee will be out there soon enough."

They leaned together on the catwalk railing in companionable silence.

Then Adama gave her a sideways look. " I never got a chance to thank you, Kara."

"Sir?"

He was looking down now at his clasped hands on the railing. "For worrying about Lee."

She shot him a startled glance, struck with an uncomfortable sense of having her mind read. He continued, "When he was on the Prometheus for three days without a word."

Oh, *that.* Kara couldn't help feeling a slight, but satisfying smugness. She *had* been right to worry.

He gazed thoughtfully on the activity below. "After you left my quarters that day, I thought about what you said. You asked me if I had noticed anything wrong with him. If I had talked to him about it."

He gave a pained smile. "I told you I thought we should respect his privacy."

She nodded, remembering.

"It was a cop-out," he sighed, looking back at his hands. "And I realized that a few hours after you had left my office." He shook his head. "I didn't talk to Lee because…well, I don't really know how to do that, and I wasn't sure if he wanted me to.

"But your concern about him brought me up short. Got me thinking. It *was* unlike him not to have contacted either of us. So, I started asking the questions I should have asked already. And I found out the same information you did."

"You talked to Dee?"

He nodded. "And Zarek. Dee told me you had contacted him. When I called him, he told me what he had told you. We evidently used similar `persuasion' techniques on him."

She smiled at that.

"In fact, the moment I finished speaking to him I headed to the CIC, to get a Marine team together for the Prometheus. That's when Lieutenant Gaeta told me that the CAP had found Lee's empty Raptor." His face twisted a little with the memory. "I thought I was too late. I might have been too late."

She nodded sympathetically.

"But, Lieutenant?" And now his voice was stern.

'Lieutenant.' Not `Kara.' She stood up straighter, faced him, and braced herself.

"I am disappointed about something. When you went to the Prometheus to find Lee, it was because of information that Tom Zarek had given you. Information that suggested Lee was in danger. Isn't that right?"

Kara's smugness faded instantly, replaced by a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. "Yes, sir."

"That was information that I should have had. And you didn't tell me." Adama was giving her the `Look' now, the one everyone on Galactica feared. His mouth was thin, his eyes boring a hole through her.

"No, sir." She swallowed. "I'm sorry, sir."

"Why didn't you?" he demanded.

"Zarek said I should go alone, and um…" Her voice trailed away. "I just wasn't …thinking." `How's that for weak, half-assed excuses,' she thought to herself, wincing.

The commander still stared sternly at her.

"You're one of my officers, Starbuck. I need my officers to *think.*"

Kara squared her soldiers. Gods, she hated this. "Yes, sir."

"You also put your own life in danger, without telling anyone where you were going. It almost ended with you and Lee *both* dead."

He continued, his voice quiet but firm. "We can't lose both…" He stopped himself and sighed. "I can't lose both of you." His face softened imperceptibly.

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir." She said in a small voice, but meaning every word.

His posture relaxed, and Kara gave an inaudible sigh, released from the intense gaze that had immobilized her. When Adama spoke again, his voice was gentler. "You screwed up. But, you were there to save his life." He gave her a little smile. "Makes it hard to stay mad at you when you go and do something like that."

He turned and leaned on the railings again.

`Lecture over,' Kara thought, and let out her breath in relief.

But Adama was continuing. "I've noticed that you and Lee both can forget to *think* when it comes to each other."

Kara's eyes widened. She had no idea how to respond to *that*, so she didn't, merely leaned on the railing again herself, watching fixedly while Chief barked out orders to a crew member below.

Adama gave her a sidelong glance, then continued. "The military life is a life governed by rules. One of those rules forbids the mixing of personal relationships within the command structure. It makes sense, because it can impair judgment. It's hard to order someone you love into combat. Hard to risk the life of someone you can't bear to imagine losing."

The commander gave a little smile. "I should know," he said dryly. "My son is the CAG."

Kara couldn't help smiling. He chuckled a little, as well. "Admiral Cain busted me on that. That's one reason she transferred Lee to the Pegasus. Was she right in questioning my judgment?"

He sighed, and shook his head. "In the old world? Absolutely. But we're not living in the old world, anymore. And there's not many of us left, now. I've been thinking, lately, that the old rules, the old patterns…maybe they can't apply anymore. Maybe we need to be willing to make changes.

"We need to survive, obviously. But it can't just be about survival. We need to stay *human.* We need to support each other through this hell we're stuck in. And maybe the best way to do that is to break with the past, get rid of what doesn't—or can't—work anymore."

He smiled at her again. "Maybe it comes down to this—that we all need to start caring for each other more than we used to."

She nodded slowly, and he looked away from her and cleared his throat. "You and Lee…you seem to have helped each other a lot since the Holocaust."

Kara's mouth curved up a little, and she couldn't resist teasing. "I thought you said we didn't *think* together."

Adama chuckled. "Well, yeah, I've noticed that too. But I've also seen you working well together. You help each other relax. You make each other laugh. That's important now."

"I guess what I'm saying is that, whatever happens now, among those of us left, well, we'll find a way to make it work.."

Kara bit her lip and shook her head at what he was implying. "I don't know, sir. It's …complicated ….A lot of old stuff from the past…" She let her remarks dribble away.

"Hmm," he mused. "Maybe it's time to let the past go, and figure out who we're going to be *now.*"

She was silent, the fingers of her right hand twisting her ring back and forth on her thumb. He reached for her arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. "I haven't been very good at taking my own advice, Kara. But I'm going to start trying, and I hope others can, too."

She sighed, not meeting his eyes.

He gave her arm a final pat. "Good talking to you, Starbuck." He turned to go, then hesitated and turned back. "You know, if anyone happened to be looking for Lee…"

Kara shot him a startled glance. He continued, looking innocent. "… They'd probably find him in his rack. I happen to know he was ordered to rest a little. He's been overdoing it."

"Doc Cottle ordered that? I bet Lee didn't like it," Kara joked, hoping to deflect attention from her sudden awkwardness.

"No," Adama said. "His father ordered it."

Kara raised her eyebrows quizzically, and he gave a self-deprecating smile. "I *asked* him, actually. Said I thought he was pushing himself too hard, considering his recent injury. I told him I was *worried* about him." He paused. "I think he only agreed because he was so surprised to hear me say it. It's not something he's heard much from me over the years."

He smiled ruefully at her one last time, then left.

`Damn the Old Man.' Kara thought. But her feet, almost unbidden, had begun moving.

His words had pushed her exactly where she had wanted to go for days, but hadn't had the courage. She was going to Lee.

Chapter Six

Lee was alone in quarters, lying on his rack, his hands laced under his head, his eyes staring at the ceiling. He turned his head as Kara entered, clanging the door shut behind her. His gaze fixed on her warily, annoyance clouding his face.

She folded her arms over her chest and frowned at him. "Look, Lee, I'm sorry, okay? I've been .insensitive."

`Frak it,' she thought.. Despite her good intentions, the words had come out sounding belligerent instead of contrite.

She took a deep breath and consciously softened her tone. "But I was wondering if, well...if you'd like to.you know.. talk."

Lee raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn't move. "Talk?"

Kara looked at him. "Yeah. Talk."

"You want to *talk."* It was a statement, not a question.

Kara blew out her breath in a sigh, then reached up to tug at her ear self-consciously. "Well.it seemed like the right thing to say," she mumbled.

Lee looked back up at the ceiling, and perhaps despite himself, a smile touched his lips. "Wow. Kara Thrace wants to talk to me. Dredge up feelings, discuss deep stuff, maybe analyze some dreams together?"

"Lee," Kara said warningly, but her mouth quirked upward as well, relieved to hear the teasing note in his voice.

"No, really," protested Lee. "This is very sweet. You want to talk to me."

Kara gave an exaggerated sigh. "You're not making this easy on me, are you?"

He swung around now into a sitting position on his bunk. "Actually I'm just savoring the moment, here." His eyes were mischievous.

She smiled, relieved at the warmth they seemed to have regained. She crossed the room and parked herself next to him on his rack, then leaned over to dispose of her boots, tossing them towards her locker. "Okay," she said, business-like as she sat up again. "I'm here, and I'm listening. Go ahead. Talk."

Lee was silent for a moment, then shrugged and said nonchalantly. "Well, *I* don't really have anything I want to talk about. How about you?"

Kara made a face and smacked his arm. Hard

"Ow!" he protested, rubbing it. "You're gonna hurt me."

The words stirred a memory in Kara, and her face suddenly grew serious.

"You know, actually, there *is* something I want to talk to you about, Lee. And it's been bothering me ever since the Prometheus."

She turned to him, her eyebrows lowered now, her voice tense. "You should know, Lee, that you never, *ever* tell someone who's pointing a gun at you to pull the trigger. Because you know what?" her finger jabbed toward him. "They will! And that's a quick-and stupid-way to get yourself killed. You scared the *shit* out of me when you did that. Don't *ever* do that again."

Lee was staring at her, confused, uneasy. His eyes narrowed.

"How did you know about that?" he asked very quietly.

She stared back, her eyes wide, her brain frozen. `Oh, frak'.

There was a long, tense silence between them. She gnawed the corner of her lip, desperately searching for any plausible explanation she could give. Besides, of course, the truth.

He was still staring at her, his blue eyes looking almost betrayed.

Her mind drew a blank. She closed her eyes and sighed. "Lee, I'm sorry I haven't told you this yet. But, when I came looking for you, I saw you being taken into Phelan's quarters. I. well, I was worried, damn it! And I wanted to make sure they didn't do anything to you, so.so I got into an airvent that let me see into his quarters."

He was staring at her, and she flinched at the emotions that played over his face at her words. Confusion, amazement, anger, shame. He let out a long, slow breath, and looked down. "How much did you hear?" he asked quietly.

"Not much," she lied quickly. He looked up at her, fixing her with a disbelieving look. She sighed. "All of it," she admitted with an apologetic look on her face. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

He nodded slowly, looking back down.

"And here I was worried about *telling* you the whole story," he said softly, with a self-mocking grimace.

"Lee, I didn't mean to hear any of it.." But he put up his hand to stop her.

"No, Kara, stop. It's not your fault. You were trying to help me. Hell, I'd be dead if you hadn't been there. It's just that, I need to wrap my head around the fact that.that you know about all this crap already, all this crap I wanted to talk to you about."

"There's a lot I don't know, actually. And." She drew a deep breath. "If you still want to talk about it, I want to listen."

His head was bent, his thumb tracing his lips.

"Why *did* you tell that guy to shoot you?" Kara asked him quietly. "It was a pretty risky bluff."

Lee sighed and slid himself back on his rack, so that his legs stretched out, and his back leaned against the wall.

"Maybe it wasn't a bluff," he said quietly.

Kara opened her mouth to speak, then immediately shut it again. She slid back next to him, shifting so that her right leg pressed warmly against his left. Then she reached out her hand and laid it gently on his arm. "Go ahead," she said.

He leaned his head back. "I was feeling pretty reckless, and angry, and disgusted with myself for.well, everything. I almost didn't care if he shot me at that point. Maybe I did it because I wanted to find out. just how much I wanted to live."

Kara swallowed. "You weren't sure?"

"Not right then," he mused, remembering. "But when that gun was pressed in my chest, when that guy could have killed me with one twitch of his finger, I suddenly thought of what you said to me."

"Me?"

He smiled at her surprise. "Yeah, you. You told me we had to focus on the people we have left, not the ways we frakked up the lives of people who are dead. So, I thought about my father." He shot her a sideways glance. "I thought about you. And.I grabbed the gun."

"You had me pretty scared."

"Yeah. Me too."

They were silent for a minute, then he sighed and said, "The story actually starts a couple of years ago." He looked over, as if gauging how much she wanted to hear.

She nodded at him. "Go ahead."

"There was a woman I dated, named Gianne. You met her, actually," he shot her another glance.

"I remember," Kara said.

"We had been together for about six months. I enjoyed being with her, but." he shrugged. "I could tell she might be feeling more for me than I was for her. And I felt guilty about that, wondered if I might be stringing her along.

"But it was comfortable, and I didn't want to hurt her, so I let it keep going.

But then." Lee winced at the memory. "Then she got pregnant. And when she told me, I just. panicked. I felt trapped. I tried not to show it, I tried to look happy, say the right things, but .she could tell. She asked me point black if I was ready to marry her, and I. didn't say anything. And then she started to cry." Lee's voice was tight.

"I said something stupid, like we needed to talk about a lot of things still; that we just couldn't decide anything yet. But she knew. She knew I didn't want to marry her. She went into our room and just starting grabbing her things and throwing them in a suitcase. And then she ran out the door. And." He stopped, swallowing.

"And I didn't go after her." He paused for a long moment.

"It was two days before I even tried to reach her. And it's *that,* Kara, that I hate myself for." His voice was low, filled with self- loathing. "That I waited that long. That I couldn't get past my own fears to try to be there for her. To try to understand what she was going through. I owed her that. And I let her down."

Kara moved her hand to his shoulder and pressed it comfortingly. He was silent for a long time, until she whispered, "What happened, then?"

"By then she had disappeared, and I couldn't find her." Lee took a deep breath and slowly shook his head. "Her family lived on a different colony, and I had never met them, so I didn't know how to reach them. And her friends weren't talking to me. I left a lot of messages with them, even wrote her some letters and sent them to her friends, pleading with them to send them on to her. I don't know if she ever got them, but if she did, she didn't answer.

"I kept this up for about three weeks, until the day I got the call from my mom telling me that Zak had just been killed."

Kara hadn't expected this sudden turn to the story, and drew in a pained, startled breath..

"For a while all I could think about was Zak's death." Lee's voice was hoarse now. "I kept wondering if there was something I could have done or said to have kept him from even going to the Academy in the first place. Whether I should have tried harder to convince him that it was not the life for him. I kept thinking.that there had to have been something.something I could have done.to keep him from *dying."*

Kara looked down at that, feeling the tears pricking her eyes, but she blinked them back furiously to keep herself focused on Lee. He was still talking, almost oblivious to her.

"But pretty soon, all the crap I was feeling got rolled up and focused on one target. It all got turned into an absolute, raging fury at my father. In my head, he became responsible for all of it- Zak dying, even the way I hurt Gianne. Somehow I made that *his* fault too. Because he hadn't been a good father to Zak and me, and *that* was the whole reason, I told myself, that I was scared to become one.

"So I blamed him. It was *all* his fault." Lee let out a sound of self-disgust. "Easier than to take responsibility *myself."* He reached one hand up to rub his eyes.

"So I hated him. Oh, gods, I hated him. For all his sins, real and imagined. For Zak. For the ways he had hurt my mother. For Gianne. For the baby. Hell." Lee exhaled sharply. "I was even mad at him for taking you away."

"Me?" Kara's voice was startled. "What do you mean?"

"You transferred here right after Zak's funeral. It was like you were on his side."

"Lee," Kara breathed. "I wasn't picking sides."

"I know that, now. But that was how I felt." He looked down, and his voice softened. "I missed you. I wanted to see you, talk to you. But I couldn't, because you were here. On *his* ship."

Kara sighed. "Did you ever find Gianne?"

Lee didn't answer for a long time, then he shook his head. "No. Though I didn't try too hard after Zak died. Too wrapped up in my own anger."

"But one day, about eight months after she left, I woke up and thought, `I wonder if I'm a father?'"

"And then I couldn't *stop* thinking about it. For some reason, I imagined it was a girl, and I kept wondering what she looked like, and if she was happy.

"It's weird, I had never paid much attention to babies before, but suddenly I seemed to notice them everywhere. And as the months went by, I kept looking for babies who would be the same age as *my* baby.

"After a year or so, I was looking into the face of every toddler I saw, trying to see an echo of myself."

He was breathing heavier now, the words coming from him faster.

"Every time, I saw a little girl that age, it felt like I had been punched. I'd just get overwhelmed, sick almost, with the regret, and the guilt. Guilt for Gianne, yeah, but even more, guilt for what I had done to this kid. I was haunted by the idea that somewhere I had a child that I would never know, because I had been an idiot. I had done something to her far worse that anything my father had ever done to me. I had denied her the right to ever *know* her own father."

He took a long shuddering breath, Kara's hand was on the nape of his neck, gently stroking it. She felt him struggling to control his emotions. "It got so painful I finally started avoiding being around any kids."

Another long silence. "She'd be close to two, now." Lee finally said, in a voice close to a whisper.

Then he exhaled sharply. "Listen to me," he said fiercely. "I'm a frakkin' idiot.

*"If* Gianne didn't have an abortion. *If* the kid was a girl. And *if * that girl miraculously survived the Cylon Attack. *Then*.. she'd be about two."

Kara heard the raw pain in his voice and sensed that he was close to losing it. Feeling him trembling, she reached her arms around him and laid her cheek against his shoulder. He stayed silent, but his body continued shaking. Then she heard a small sniff. She shifted her head a fraction, peeking up under her lashes to see his face.

He was staring straight ahead, and tears were slowly sliding down his face. Her heart ached for him, but she sensed it was better to say nothing, and let his grief run its course. She shifted her eyes away, not wanting to intrude on his naked pain.

But she tightened her hold on him, and let him weep.

After five minutes or so, he reached up and dragged his palms roughly across his eyes, while letting out a long breath.

"Thanks," he said quietly. Kara released him, rolled her neck to unkink it, and leaned back against the wall.

"It's okay," she said with a little smile.

He took another deep breath, and resumed his story.

"I met Shevon on Cloud Nine, the day I was supposed to meet you and the others in the bar."

Kara tensed up at the woman's name, but fixed her eyes straight ahead and tried to focus on being Lee's friend, on letting him talk, on listening.

"Looking back," Lee continued, and his voice was filled with self- disgust. "I don't know how I let myself think that Paya was actually my child. I mean, Shevon was right. I was *stupid."*

He shook his head, frowning at the memory. "That day had been an annoying one. I was dealing with lots of officials from different ships, everyone wanting to bitch about one thing or another. I was fed up, and tired, and dying to just go to the bar and relax.

"And that's when I saw Shevon. She was just. standing there, smiling at me a little, as if she knew me. And there was.this little girl. next to her. And I couldn't stop staring at the girl. `That's how old my daughter would be right now,' I thought. And then this little girl looked up at me, and.she had blue eyes."

Lee stopped there, and swallowed. "And it came again, really sudden, and hard, this. wave of regret and guilt. I hadn't seen any small kids since the Cylon Attack, actually, and I had forgotten that sick feeling I always got."

He drew another deep breath. "So there was the little girl playing, and I just couldn't tear my eyes from her. Then Shevon said hello. She must have picked up immediately that the way to get to me was through Paya." He gave a sharp, self-derisive laugh.

"She called me by my name. She said she knew who I was, had heard good things about me, and that she needed some medicine for Paya. And could I help?

"I gave her the name of the person on Cloud Nine responsible for medical supplies, then tried to excuse myself. She must have gotten nervous that I was leaving, so she said there was something else she needed to talk with me about. She said that she had known someone-a friend of mine-on Caprica.

"When she said that, she had this look on her face. like she knew something about me, but felt sympathetic. Like she felt sorry for me." He sighed in disgust, and shook his head. "She was good."

"So I asked her--who? And she just *looked* at me. And all I could think was-Gianne, it had to be Gianne. So I said her name, and Shevon hesitated, and then said something noncommittal.

"But seeing the little girl-Paya-somehow I convinced myself that Shevon *had* to be referring to Gianne.

"I remember feeling stunned. We went up to her room and talked. And I started telling her about Gianne, and asking Shevon questions. But in hindsight, I did most of the talking. At one point, I probably asked something about Paya, and she hinted. she hinted that Paya was Gianne's." Lee ran an agitated hand through his hair.

"It was only hints, she never came out and said it. But I looked into Paya's blue eyes, and I believed it. Oh gods, I believed it. I told myself that maybe Shevon didn't want to come out and say it because she was afraid. Afraid I'd take Paya from her if she told me the truth..

"After a while, Paya fell asleep, and I tried to leave. I told Shevon it was late, I had friends waiting for me. But then she started crying, acting desperate and needy. She talked about everyone she loved having died, and that Paya was all she had left, and that she couldn't lose her. And she was crying, and holding on to me.." . "Yeah, that's okay," Kara cut in suddenly. The hand she had placed comfortingly on Lee was now tensely held up to stop him. "I don't need all the details, Lee." Although she tried to keep her voice light, there was a definite edge to it.

Lee shook his head. "Nothing happened. My head was spinning, and I needed to get away, and just think through this. I wanted to talk about it with. someone."

Kara winced at that, recalling her reaction to him in the bar.

"But as I was leaving, she asked me again for help. She said she couldn't stay on Cloud Nine anymore, but wasn't sure how to transfer to a different ship. And she said she needed help with special medicines that Paya needed, medicines that couldn't be gotten through normal channels. But that someone named Phelan on the Prometheus might have a way to get what Paya needed. And would I please help Paya?"

Lee shook his head, remembering. "I told her I'd get back to her, and then I left, finally, to meet you at the bar." He exhaled sharply. "I must have acted pretty strange when I met up with you guys."

"Yeah, you did," Kara said. "But...I didn't help matters, I guess."

He shrugged, "Well.no." She was grateful that he refrained from pointing out that she had, in fact, been an absolute bitch.

"I think what bothered me the most about what you did," Lee said. "Was the way you talked about how I was so perfect, and didn't make mistakes. It felt like you knew, somehow, and you were throwing it in my face."

Kara made another pained face, remembering.

"When we got back to the Galactica," Lee continued. "I thought about talking to my Dad about it all, but..how would I have done that, exactly?"

He put on a mock-sincere voice: `You know, Dad, you might have had a grandchild by now, but I drove her mother away because I am so *frakked * up.'"

Kara reached out again to rub his shoulder sympathetically. Lee clenched his jaw. "We had gotten to the point where I thought I had earned some respect from him. And I really, really didn't want to lose that.

"I don't think I slept that night. But at some point during the next day, I thought I had worked out what I should do. That if Paya were mine, then I needed to take responsibility for her, maybe even bring her here. And that maybe.maybe that meant taking responsibility for Shevon, too."

Unseen by Lee, Kara raised her eyebrows.

But Lee was continuing, "She seemed like she needed someone, and she was the only mother that Paya knew. How could I take her away from the kid?

"And somehow it seemed to offer a weird sense of justice. That if I did this, then I would have paid for what I had done to Gianne. That accepting the responsibility for these two, really committing myself to them, would be the way I could make it up to her.

"But something in me was panicking at the thought of it, of committing myself to some kind of relationship to Shevon. And that's probably why I got drunk. Which is how you found me."

He feel silent, as they both remembered their aborted passion in this very room. The tension between them grew suddenly thick. Self- conscious, Kara stilled her hand on Lee's shoulder. All her nerves were suddenly focused on her leg, still pressed up against Lee's.

His voice was soft, and a little hoarse when he began talking again. "When we were interrupted and I left, it wasn't because I didn't want ." . "Stop, Lee," Kara said, embarrassed and a little angry. She shifted slightly so that neither her leg nor her hand were touching him. "It's fine. I understand why you acted that way that night. Just.*forget* it."

Lee looked down at his hands in his lap. "No," he said finally. "I'm not going to forget it, because we do need to talk about it. It's not what you think, but.."

He glanced at her, and stopped, noticing the tension in her face. "Okay," he said softly. "Maybe we should wait to talk about that part." He reached out to touch, but she flinched, so he drew his hand back, and sighed.

"When I got up the next day," he continued after a moment. "I realized I had to go to Shevon and try to figure all this out. So I asked my Dad for a short leave, just for a day or two. I should have told him why, but. I don't know. I couldn`t.

"But I could tell he was worried, and it made me uncomfortable. So I said something about a woman on Cloud Nine that I needed to talk to. He looked a little surprised, but I figured it would keep him from worrying about me.

"Shevon told me to meet her at the Prometheus. She said some friends there had found quarters for her and Paya.

"It was a weird couple of days with her. I wanted to do what I could to help her and Paya. Shevon acted like she really needed me, and I felt responsible for them. And it felt .right, I guess, to act like a provider for Paya. Act like a father.

"So, I got the medicine Shevon said Paya needed. There was a waiting list for it through official channels, so I did it illegally, through Phelan's black market. I didn't like doing it, but I told myself that that's what a father would do.

"I realize now that their idea was to get me so sucked in, that I'd keep my mouth shut for fear of being implicated. I could tell the people on the ship were sleazy, but Shevon said they were her friends, so I let it go.

"I talked to her about Paya and her maybe coming to the Galactica, but she seemed reluctant, so I didn't press it."

Kara inwardly flinched. She had been tense ever since Lee's story had shifted to his time with Shevon. She knew she *could not* listen if Lee began discussing the various ways he had fraked the whore who had betrayed him.

She bit the corner of her lip, then threw out what she hoped would be a diversion. "How did you find out about Fisk?"

He glanced at her, as if realizing where she didn't want the conversation to go. He nodded, and followed her lead. "I saw Fisk the day I arrived on the Prometheus. He had just arrived in an Raptor as well, and was talking to the man I learned later was Phelan.

"I didn't think anything of it, until the news hit the fleet a few hours later that Phelan had been found dead.

"Something just seemed strange about it, so I started asking questions-of crewmembers, residents. Trying to find out if anyone had seen anything suspicious. I stayed on the Prometheus longer than I had intended because I felt compelled to find out what had happened.

"The more I probed, the more I realized that the ship was essentially Phelan's own little kingdom, and he had his own private army doing his dirty work.

"But I didn't have anything solid to tie him to Fisk's murder. Until late the second day, when I found a mechanic who begged me to get him off the ship. He told me he had seen Phelan's men throw Fisk's body out the airlock, and he was terrified that if they knew what he had seen, that they'd kill him too.

"So I promised him I'd get him off the ship. That's when I started trying to get a call through to the Galactica, and couldn't. And then, someone jumped me when I tried to get back to my Raptor.

"By that point I knew I *had* to get Shevon and Paya off the ship. I was terrified that Phelan would go after them to get to me. I was grabbing Shevon's stuff in her quarters when the door burst in, and three of Phelan's men jumped me. I could hear Paya crying, and I tried.I really tried to help her, but the bastards just." His hoarse voice tailed off. "I couldn't protect her."

"It looked like you tried pretty hard," Kara said. "You were awfully battered when I saw you later."

He shook his head, as if rejecting her sympathy. "They knocked me out, and I woke up in the pitch black, and realized I was in some sort of makeshift cell. I was there for probably an entire day. Felt that long anyway. No one came in. It was just me, alone in the dark."

He got silent again. "It was a long night," he finally said, in a voice close to a whisper. "All I could think of was that Paya and Shevon might both be dead, and that it was my fault. And then.well, it was a good night for revisiting *all* my sins.

"By the time Phelan's men came, and brought me to see him, I was ready to kill somebody. Or ready to get killed. Maybe both.

"And then.I found out Shevon had used me, and that she had lied about Paya being mine." Lee's voice became hard, and Kara knew his anger was directed as much at himself as it was Shevon.

"I hope someone shoots the bitch," Kara said fiercely. "At least she's on her way to the Astral Queen."

Lee was silent for a minute, then he shook his head. "I didn't mention her name to either my father or the investigating officer."

Kara's mouth dropped open, and her eyes blazed as she turned to him. "Why the hell not?"

Lee hesitated. "Because she's Paya's mother. And despite being a bitch to me, Shevon is a good mom to Paya. I saw that. And she's all Paya has. I can't take that away from her. I'm not her father. But I owe Paya *that* much."

A memory nudged Kara, but she hesitated. She hadn't a shred of sympathy for Shevon, but maybe it would help Lee to know what she had suddenly remembered. And it was Lee who was important, here. She turned to him.

"Shevon didn't want you killed, you know." Lee turned his head toward her. Kara bit her lip. "It was Phelan's men who decided on it, not her. She seemed kind of upset by it."

Lee nodded reflectively. Then he leaned back and sighed. A lot of his earlier tension seemed to have left him, now that he had related his long tale. He turned his head to give her a half smile, and reached out to entwine his hand in hers.

"Thanks for listening," he said softly.

Kara nodded, and squeezed his hand. They were quiet for a few minutes. The dim room was peaceful, with just the ticking sound of a clock, and the distant sounds of people conversing in nearby corridors.

Kara finally broke the silence. "So, this is `talking,' huh? And you *like* doing this?" A smile tugged at her lips.

Almost against his will, Lee began to laugh softly.

"No, no, I can see us doing this often," she continued, moving her hand out of his and turning to him with a wide grin. "You know, maybe once a week, we can meet right here and we can *`talk.'* It's good for me."

"Ah, don't kid yourself," Lee said with an answering smile. "We'll be back to our old selves tomorrow. You'll be giving me shit. I'll be yelling at you. We'll both be as repressed as ever."

Kara chuckled, then they grew quiet again, and she looked down, reaching for something profound to say to him.

"We've all frakked up in our lives, Lee," she finally said, with a sigh. "We've all done awful things to other people. It doesn't make you an evil person. In fact," she looked at him. "Since you've been on this ship, you've been a pretty outstanding person, actually. You put your life on the line for other people all the time. Every one of your pilots would go through hell and back for you. The president." Kara snorted and gave the faintest suggestion of an eye- roll. *"She* thinks you walk on water. And your father.you may not see it, but your father doesn't just love you. He respects you, as well. A lot."

Lee was looking down at his hands. After a moment he nodded slowly. "Thanks," he said quietly. "It's been really .good to talk with you about all this crap."

Kara gave a soft sigh of relief. It was good knowing she hadn't screwed this up. That simply by being here, by listening, she had helped him.

Chapter Seven

A gentle peacefulness seemed to envelop them. Kara was aware of feeling .safe.

Unbidden, a thought drifted into her mind. Maybe she could unburden some of her own secrets to him. She felt a quick stab of fear at the thought. She bit her lip, fighting down a sudden urge to confide in him, to say things she might later regret having said.

Lee seemed to sense her turmoil. He gazed at her appraisingly, then reached over and touched her leg. "Hey. Anything on *your* mind? I owe you some listening."

Kara leaned back on the wall again, folding her arms tightly across her chest. Maybe, just maybe. she could do this. For Lee. Because he asked.

"I don't hate kids," she finally said, seemingly out of nowhere.

She sensed his confusion, "That thing I said at Cloud Nine bar," she continued. "That I hated kids. I could tell it bothered you. I don't, for what it's worth."

Lee nodded. "Then why'd you say it?" he asked.

She drew her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them tightly. She could feel a trembling starting within her, and needed to physically hold herself together. When she finally spoke again, her voice was very low.

"Because my own childhood was pretty frakked up. My mother used to. hurt me." Kara unconsciously balled her hand into tight fists. "She told me that I . deserved it. I believed her."

Lee let out a small sound, of both outrage and sympathy. But she was afraid to look at him, for fear that her tenuous control would break completely if she saw the warm sympathy in his eyes.

"I never thought I would want kids, though. Me, as a mother.can you imagine? But.but," she swallowed. "It should have been my choice, damn it. And on Caprica.." She took a deep breath, fighting for control. "On Caprica, the Cylons did something to me."

"What? How?" Lee said, and she caught the pain in his voice.

"I was shot, and I woke up in a hospital of some kind. There was a doctor, and I didn't realize until later that he was a Cylon. And he . cut me open when I was sleeping and took." She could barely get the words through her constricted throat. "He took something, I think.he took my ovaries, from what I overheard." She reached one hand up and rubbed her eyes furiously.

"Oh, Kara," Lee whispered. Now it was his turn to put his arms around her and enfold her, pulling her close. He leaned his head on her hair, making quiet, comforting sounds. Her head rested against the hollow of his throat.

In the midst of her emotional turmoil, she was amazed how comforting it was to let go like this, and let someone else be strong for her. She closed her eyes and let the tears fall for a few minutes, leaning against him, letting him rock her gently, while one hand cradled the nape of her neck.

Finally, she sniffed, and reached up to rub the back of her hand against her nose. But she didn't try to detach herself from his embrace. She loved the solid, comforting warmth of him.

Anyway, there was one more thing she needed to get off her chest. And not seeing his face made it easier.

"Also, I screwed up on Caprica," she started hesitantly. "I made a promise to someone. And I broke it."

"Who?"

"To a guy I met there. Sam Anders. Remember, I mentioned that the Caprica Buccaneers were part of the resistance movement? Anders wanted us to stay and help them.

"They were just a handful of people, really, fighting against ridiculous odds. But they were gutsy. And once they found out about the Cylon farms." Her voice hardened. ".And how the Cylons were using human women in their sick experiments.well, they decided to take out as many of them as they could. But, instead of staying and helping them, Helo, Sharon, and I just.left." There was self- loathing in her voice now.

"And when we were about to desert them, to escape from Caprica, I looked Anders in the eye and gave him my word that I would come back to rescue him.all of them." Her voice grew tight again. "And I've barely tried. He....all of them, really.they deserved a hell of a lot better than that."

Lee was still holding her, but his body had stilled, and his cheek no longer rested on her hair. He cleared his throat. "Is Anders the one you gave your dogtag to?" There was the barest hint of an edge in his voice.

She didn't move from her position leaning against his chest, but her eyes narrowed slightly. "How did you know about that?"

"Kara, come on," Lee snorted. "I noticed you were missing a dogtag the first day I saw you again. I've noticed it a hundred times since."

"Why didn't you ask ?"

Lee edgy voice rose suddenly. "Ask? *Ask?!* Are you forgetting what happened the last time I asked you to tell me about Caprica?" She could feel the muscles tensed in the arms he still held around her.

She bit back something angry, and instead squeezed her lips together, hoping he would let this drop.

Then Lee drew a breath, and when his voice spoke, it was quiet, controlled, and cold. "So.you slept with this guy, huh?"

She yanked away from him then, tossing his arms from her contemptuously. "Oh frak off!" she said furiously, stabbed by the similarity with the last time he had accused her of sleeping around. "It's none of your frakkin' business, but for your information, it wasn't just sleeping together. I fell in love with him!"

Lee eyes widened slightly, and he drew in a sharp breath. "You.you fell in love with him?" She caught a flash of something in his eyes. Pain? Regret?

"Yes!" She glared at him, breathing deeply. Then after a few moments, she let out an angry huff, and looked down. "No. I *thought* I did. Maybe he thought I did. But.everyone's emotions were pretty raw. It was." She hesitated, then looked up at him, angry. "It was nice, for a change, being with someone who knew *nothing* about me. No history we had to get past. No *judging* going on." Her eyes blazed at him.

Lee was staring at her intently, his eyes slightly narrowed. Then he slumped a little and looked away. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

They were still sitting on the rack, but now two feet separated them. She was angry, hurt, and emotionally drained by the last few hours. She lifted a weary hand to rub her forehead. "Okay," she finally said, proffering her forgiveness. Then she leaned back against the wall again.

Lee said nothing for a bit, and when he spoke again his voice was hesitant and quiet. "For me.with Shevon?.it was the opposite feeling. Making love to her was a relief *because* she knew the worst.the very worst thing about me-knew what I had done to Gianne and to our child. It was nice, for a change, not to feel like I had to hide that."

Kara swallowed and looked away, squeezing her eyes shut. She didn't want to hear this. The swirling emotional waters they had both been treading in suddenly felt like they were rising up to drown her. She couldn't take it anymore. If Lee said one more word about Shevon, or any other woman he had frakked, she would..

"When I was with her." Lee began again.

"You know what, Lee?" Kara's voice ran over his, loud, sharp. She was on her feet now, her arms held up, as if defending herself. "I can't. do this anymore. I'm *done.* You've talked. I've listened." She was breathing hard, and a faint note of sarcasm crept into her voice. "I've done the *friend* thing here..."

"The `friend thing?'" Lee spit out. "Well, thanks a lot. Sorry it was so *painful* for you."

"That's not what I meant!" She paused, trying to control her anger. "Look, Lee. You wanted me to listen. I listened. Maybe it was a good thing for both of us. But, I can't." She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, exhaling sharply through her nose. "I'm *not* going to sit here and listen while you tell me what you were thinking while you frakked some woman a few days ago. I don't want to hear about how she made you feel, or what you talked about, or where you put your hands, or."

"It isn't like that, Kara!" Lee was on his feet too. "And if you'll let me finish .." He reached for her arms, but she jerked away.

The voices of a group of chattering crewmembers drifted past the closed hatch door.

Lee clenched his fists and looked down. "Look," he said in a quiet, tense voice. "The shift is ending, and other people are going to be in here soon. Come with me to the CAG's office. It's private, and I want us to talk, just a little more."

Kara was shaking her head, her arms folded across her chest. She bit out the words. "I don't..want.to talk. anymore, Lee."

"Well then, don't talk, just listen!" His frustration flashed out again. "There are a few more things I need to tell you. And if I don't do it now, I may never do it. And I *need* to."

She was still glaring at him, but her eyes looked unsure.

He took a deep breath. "Kara, please? Meet me in the CAG's office in a few minutes. I'm asking you..Please?"

She stood stiffly. His eyes grew gentle, pleading. He reached for her arms again, let his hands linger, then brushed past her and walked out the hatch door.

`Damn it!' Kara thought, five minutes later. She was standing outside his office, shaking her head in annoyance at herself. She took a deep breath and swung open the door.

He was standing in front of his desk in the middle of the room, waiting for her.

She took only one step in the room, clanged the door shut behind her, put her hands on her hips and glared at him. "I'm here."

"Kara, listen. I'm sorry about Shevon," Lee said without preamble. "I have no excuse for it, except some weird sense that she was my responsibility. And I know I accused you not long ago of sleeping around, and I'm sorry about that too. I have no right to accuse you of *anything.*

"But that's not what I want to talk to you about. I want to talk about what happened between *us,* the day before I left for the Prometheus.

His voice was low, now, a little hoarse. "Ever since I landed on this ship a few months ago, I can't tell you how many times I've thought about doing.what we started doing that night. It was...wonderful. And you need to understand why I didn't let it continue."

He was breathing deeply, his hands clenched at his side. "It was because.I started feeling that I was betraying Gianne all over again."

She stared at him in confusion. "What?"

He swallowed. "I told you that I was in a strange place in my head that night when I was drunk. And I was feeling so guilty about Paya. oh *frak,* I mean, who I *thought* Paya was, anyway. and I was feeling horrible about how I had treated Gianne. And then I had this weird sense that Shevon and Gianne were the same and.."

The words were tumbling out of Lee now, as if he feared he'd lose his courage before he got them all out.

"And then I was holding you, and oh my gods, Kara, all I wanted to do was make love to you." He took a deep breath. "But when we got interrupted, all of a sudden I had this flashback, and I remembered Gianne crying when she left my house, crying because I couldn't love her the way I should, the way she needed me to."

"And the reason I didn't.the reason I couldn't commit myself to her, was because." He stopped short, his blue eyes fixed on her, and Kara was shaken to see the same look in them that she remembered from the night they had kissed. Filled with guilt, with grief. Desiring absolution.

He swallowed, and broke her gaze. "It was because of.you," he said, very low.

Kara swallowed. "Me?" she whispered.

He didn't meet her eyes, just stood stiffly five feet in front of her, but his face was twisted with anger. Anger at himself.

"You were with Zak, and it was crazy, but I couldn't stop thinking about you. I kept hoping that maybe you two would break up, and that you'd come to your senses, and you'd see that you were far more suited to *me* than to him."

He ran his hands through his hair, tense and agitated. "It's horrible. I mean, he's dead now, and I feel so guilty. I've hated myself for feeling that way."

He looked up at her again, his eyes haunted. "But I wanted you, Kara. I wanted to be with you. If I became a father, or married Gianne.. it would have made it so final. That I could *never* have you. And I just .wasn't.ready to let that go. So when she told me, I hesitated. And she saw it. And maybe she guessed why."

He was breathing hard now with his emotional confession. He slumped a little, and leaned on the desk behind him, looking down at the floor.

Kara's hand had flown to her mouth at some point during Lee's words. Her heart was pounding, her mind was whirling, but she knew what she had to do. He shouldn't have to step out on that emotional precipice alone.

`Lee," she whispered. Then she swallowed and said it a little louder. "Lee."

He looked up, his expression pained.

Kara paused, gathered her courage. "You weren't the only one."

"What?" he whispered, and leaned forward a little.

"I loved Zak. I did! He was funny, and warm, and he loved me so much. Loved me for me, not because I was `Starbuck.' And I was happy with him."

Her breath was coming faster, and she knew she wouldn't be able to hold her tears at bay much longer.

"And then I met you. And I knew . I knew that ." her voice was shaking. She stopped, fought to control it.

"Knew what?" Lee whispered again.

"That I had met .the wrong brother first." And a sob broke from her. She turned away from him and leaned against the wall, struggling to keep herself from completely falling apart. She had a fist up to her mouth, and felt tears wash over it. "Zak," she whispered. "Zak, I'm so sorry."

After a minute, she took a deep breath and turned back to Lee. He hadn't moved, but his figure was still slumped against the desk, and his face was buried in his hands.

Then he looked up, and they gazed at one other. Tears streaked each of their faces, and the room seemed charged with emotion. Grief, guilt, but also..relief. On getting this out. On finally admitting it. On asking forgiveness.

Lee was looking at her intently. "Kara," he finally whispered, and he pulled away from the desk to begin moving towards her.

But something within Kara snapped. The flood of emotion suddenly submerged her. As she watched Lee move towards her, she became, quite suddenly, overwhelmed by panic.

She was afraid. Afraid of losing Lee. Her best friend. The Lee who teased her, and kicked her butt, and flew with her like he was her missing half. The Lee who sometimes made her laugh, and sometimes made her furious, but who made her, ultimately, a better person.

"Wait," she gasped out when he had taken only two steps toward her. "Stop, Lee!" She backed up a few feet until she hit the wall behind her, and held up her hands .

He stared at her, confused and hurt.

"I can't," Kara gasped out. "I can't do this with you. We can't be more than friends. It's just not going to work."

"Why?"

"Because." She winced, struggling to put words around this sudden panic that had arisen in her. She grabbed at the most likely explanation. "Because I can't lose your friendship. What happens if we change things between us, and it ends? And it will end, Lee, because I am crappy at relationships. And when it does, our friendship will be over. And I can't lose you.I can't, because.." Her mouth twisted. This was difficult for her to say. "Because I *need* you too much."

His eyes softened. He didn't move any closer, but his voice was gentle. "Come on, Kara. Don't you think we've been through too much *not* to stay friends? I mean, think about it. We've screamed at each other, and stayed friends. We've said horrible things to each other, been furious, hated each other, and we've stayed friends. Hell, we've punched each other in the face, and stayed friends. And for that matter, we've already kissed each other, on two different occasions, and we're still friends.

"At times it seems we've tried our damnest to end our friendship, but we haven't been able to. *Because* we need each other. And I promise you, no matter what, we are always going to stay friends."

But Kara was still shaking her head, consumed by a more shadowy, less articulate, but far more frightening fear.

"No, Lee," she said again, fiercely, glaring at him in her intensity. "We can't do this! We *can't* change things between us."

A hurt bewilderment filled his eyes again, and he took an involuntary step backward. "Kara." he said, and his voice was raw. "Why are you saying that?"

And now Kara totally lost it. Long-buried, shadowy fears found shape in a torrent of words, which flowed out of her in one long, incoherent jumble, accompanied by a flood of tears, and punctuated with fingers jabbed furiously in Lee's direction. "Because Zak *died,* Lee! He died because I *loved* him. And I felt so bad, and so guilty, because he wanted so much to be a Viper pilot. But he wasn't good at it. He wasn't as good as you, or me, or his father. And I couldn't tell him that! I couldn't tell him the truth, because I didn't love him enough to tell him the truth. Or maybe I loved him too much to tell him the truth. But whichever it was, he's *dead.* He's dead because he was stupid enough to *love* me! And now Anders-he's probably dead too, and why? I'll tell you. Because he was *stupid* enough to love me too! And because I didn't love him enough to keep a promise to go back for him. And that's the kind of shit that happens to men, when I. when I *love* them and .I just can't, I just can't love you.." She gave one last sob and buried her face in her hands.

A long silence followed her words. Finally Lee's confused voice broke into it. "You think something's going to happen to me, that I'm going to *die,* if we get into a relationship?"

"Yes!" She flung the word at him, and gulped down a few more shaky breaths.

"Kara?" he said, and now his voice sounded calm and infuriatingly grown-up. "Do you know how incredibly superstitious you sound?"

She wiped away a streak of tears clouding her vision, and glared at him.

"But, if that's what you're worried about, I think I can guarantee you that you're not going to kill me. I mean, you've saved my life a couple of times already. Kind of a wasted effort if you were going to kill me, don't you think?"

She was still glaring at him. She took another shuddering breath that suddenly turned into a strangled laugh. "Don't make me laugh about this, Lee. I'm serious!"

"I can see that," Lee said, nodding gravely, but his blue eyes flashed mischievously. "But actually, I think if anything, that you're in more danger than I am. I mean, I have *seriously* wanted to strangle you when you've started back-talking me at pilot briefings."

She couldn't control her gasps of laughter, now, and Lee's laughter joined hers as she leaned weakly against the wall, rubbing her eyes with her hands.

She was quite unexpectedly washed with a sense of exquisite relief. A buried, unconscious fear, never fully articulated before, had no sooner taken full shape before it had evaporated, blown away by Lee's practical common sense.

Their laughter quieted. Lee was still standing about four feet from her.

He waited until she raised her head and looked at him. Then he slowly and deliberately began to walk towards her. Her breath quickened as he kept his gaze locked onto hers. There wasn't a trace of laughter on his face now.

He stopped a foot away. They stared at one another for a few long moments, their chests rising a little quicker with their nearness.

"We could stay `just' friends, Kara. It's true." His voice was husky. "But tell me something. If that's all we want, why is it, then.that we tend to do *this* ." He leaned in closer, then even closer, bringing his face to within just a few inches of hers, as he braced his arms on the wall on either side of her head. ".whenever we talk to each other?"

His breath was warm on her face. His eyes stared deeply into hers, then shifted to focus on her lips.

Her tongue darted out nervously to touch her top lip, which caused him to draw in a sharp breath. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. "Why do we do this, Kara? What do you think?"

Kara could feel herself trembling. She didn't reply, just breathed in his scent. Warm, masculine, familiar, yet... heady.

"I don't know, Lee," she finally whispered, and then her lips curved ever so slightly upward. "Thinking is your skill, remember?" She pushed her hands back against the wall and leaned toward him, so that only an inch separated them. She flicked her eyes upward to look into his darkened ones. "That, and uh. talking."

His breath hissed out at her nearness. "And what's *your* skill, Lieutenant?" he asked huskily, a faintly teasing challenge in his voice..

Her eyes shifted to his parted lips, and she caught her own breath as she watched his ragged breathing, so close to her now. Then she leaned in the final inch.

"This," she breathed out, and touched her lips to his.

They started off tenderly, tentatively, their lips feather-soft, moving gently, playing with the light pressure.

Then Kara traced her tongue on his lip and he moaned softly against her mouth. His hands were still braced on the wall on either side of her head, and he leaned in on her until her back was pressed against the wall, then he leaned in some more, so that his body was completely pressed up against hers.

She moaned at the feel of his body, so close, so hard. That was his cue to release the wall and take her head between his hands. He reached up to pull the ponytail tie out of her hair, then his fingers played in the hair that fell down around her face, before lacing them through it on either side of her head to hold her still for a deeper kiss.

Without the solidity of the wall behind her and the warmer pressure of Lee's body holding her up, Kara' knees might have buckled by this point. She twined her arms around his waist to keep herself steady, and began using her palms to knead his back through his tanks.

He trailed warm kisses down the underside of her jaw and her throat, as she arched her neck and sighed out with pleasure. Then his lips moved back to her mouth, as his hands left her face to slide down her back, caressing gently until they stopped at her waist.

His fingers slid under her tanks and lightly caressed the bare skin, staying just at her waist. She breathed in sharply. "Oh, *Lee.* " She could feel him smiling against her mouth as his fingers danced at her waist and the small of her back , simply tracing her skin with an erotically light touch.

She was breathing in short, fast gasps now, and suddenly was overwhelmed with the desire to feel his skin on hers. Her own fingers reached for his tanks, and lacking his patience for the slow burn he was teasing *her* with, she pulled them up and over his head in one sharp movement.

He had stepped back slightly and bent his head to allow her to pull them off, and as his arms came down again she sighed out her pleasure at finally being able to touch that body of his.

As he recaptured her lips, she trailed her hands from his neck, down his chest, toward his waist. Her fingers swirled patterns on his skin, and she smiled as he gasped slightly, moaning against her mouth.

His own fingers had inched up under her tanks again and were now skimming her rib cage, still using the same erotic, feather-light touch. She moaned again, deeply conscious of the heat of his body pressed against hers. She whispered, "Lee, take my shirt off."

"Be patient," Lee murmured, alternately kissing and nipping her jaw line. "I want to go slow. I've been waiting for this for a long time." And his fingers continued their maddeningly slow, erotic dance.

Kara growled against his mouth. "Oh, frak patience." She slipped out of his grasp, and yanked off her tanks, pants and underthings in about five seconds, before grinning cheekily at him and slipping back into his arms

Lee gasped, and his eyes widened. "Oh, Kara." She smiled at his expression. His eyes seemed to caress her body, his hands following his gaze, gliding over her skin like she was a precious work of art. "Kara, you are so..beautiful."

"Thank you," she purred. "And *you're* overdressed." And she reached down and tugged off his pants, while he laughed at her impatience.

Then they reached for each other, and he wasn't laughing anymore. Their mouths met, and they kissed each other long and deep as their hands began a tender exploration of each another's bodies.

He still seemed intent on exquisite, drawn-out sex, though. But Kara wanted him. And she wanted him now.

She put her hands on his waist and pushed him away slightly, drawing a soft growl of frustration from him. She held him two inches away from her own body. "You know, Lee.." She leaned her face in and kissed him. "Sometimes." She kissed him again, a little smile playing at her lips, and then her hands suddenly pulled him in, so that he was pressed up against the length of her.

She looked up into his eyes, now clouded with desire. "Sometimes I like it .hard and fast."

Lee groaned then in surrender, and pulled her down to the floor on top of him. Their hands were suddenly everywhere--exploring, caressing, stroking. They breathed each other in, tasted one another, delighted in making the other gasp out in pleasure.

The more they touched, and tasted, the more feverish they became. Their urgency was fueled by two years of long repressed desire, but perhaps even more so by the last few months of close contact. They had been stoking their passion with all the casual touching they had done in recent months. All the times they had held each other's gazes for too long. All the furtive glances and lingering hands. All the times they had leaned in too close. All the times they had wanted each other, but kept silent.

And now, the fire was devouring them.

And then. they were holding on to one another fiercely, moving swiftly, their cheeks pressed against each other as their rode their shared passion to its peak. They gasped out each other's names, then collapsed, their bodies intertwined.

They lay panting, her body languid on top of his, as they tried to regain their breath.

And Kara marveled at the exquisite rightness of making love to Lee Adama.

She knew that she intimidated most men. In bed or out, she was too strong, too assertive, too *much..*

But Lee was her equal, on so many levels. And this...this had been bliss. She loved the way they had unconsciously taken turns leading their lovemaking. Initiating and receiving, giving and taking-they had switched back and forth instinctively, smoothly-the way they flew together. It was like flying together.

Frak that. It was a hell of a lot better than flying together. It had been hot and sweaty and raw and delicious and so incredibly satisfying.

She suddenly began to laugh. A loud, throaty, raucous, Starbuck laugh.

Lee lifted his head, bemused. "*What* is so funny?" he demanded with a mock exasperated tone, one hand resting on her back, the other working its way through her hair caressingly. She rested her chin on his chest, and looked up at him.

"It's just.." She shook her head in admiration. "*Damn,* that was good." She raised her eyebrows, her mouth in a wide, satisfied grin.

"Well, what did you expect?" Lee said solemnly. "I *am* `Apollo,' after all." But this was accompanied by an incongruously sweet, self- deprecating smile.

Kara gave a hoot of laughter as she rolled to the floor by his side, and rested her head on his shoulder. "Well, Apollo," she said, and glanced down at their intertwined bodies, sprawled on the floor. "You couldn't even make it to the couch, huh?"

He growled a laughing response, "If I recall, Starbuck, *you* contributed a bit to that."

She threw him a cheeky grin, then laid her head back on his shoulder and sighed in contentment.

They finally did make their way to the couch, and fell asleep wrapped in each other's arms. At one point she awoke, and his enticing nearness made her unable to resist reaching out her fingers to caress his chest and arms again.

She smiled to herself, realizing that she had wanted to do this ever since Lee had gotten stranded on the Galactica. She still remembered the first day she had seen him in the communal shower, in all his naked glory. Her jar had dropped at the sight of his sculpted physique. And in complete violation of battleship etiquette, she had stared-frankly and unabashedly-for five seconds, as he twisted and turned under the streams of hot water. Who had have guessed his uniform hid *that?*

She hadn't stopped staring until he caught her eye, and, suddenly embarrassed, she had reluctantly torn her gaze away. But he hadn't seemed to mind. Out of the corner of her eye, she had caught a smirk crossing his face, and then his eyes had enjoyed their own frankly appreciative look at her body. Then they had each studiously kept their gazes fixed on the water swirling out of the drains beneath them.

But now..now, she could play, and she let her hands caress his chest and arms. She had always loved strength, power, well-developed muscles. And Lee had them in spades.

Her enjoyment of his body grew so intense that she woke him. She was amused to see his eyes move from groggy to aroused in about three seconds.

"I was wondering," she said with smile, her hands splayed out on his chest caressingly. "If maybe the first time was a fluke?"

"Hmm, could have been," Lee said huskily, nodding his head seriously. "I guess there's only one way to find out."

He suddenly and smoothly rolled over on top of her. He gazed into her eyes, then bent his head to whisper into her ear. "And this time, we're doing it slow." He smiled at her sudden intake of breath, then let his mouth take possession of her.

The second time was even better than the first.

Hours later, they were awakened to the soft claxon of the morning watch sounding in the ship.

Lee stirred, stretched, then squinted at his watch. "We're going to have to get up," he said reluctantly.

She groaned and snuggled closer to his side. "Nah.let's just call in sick."

He chuckled, then reached over to move a strand of hair out of her face, looking at her thoughtfully.

"So.." Kara said. "Some evening, huh?" She smiled up at him.

"Yeah," he said gently, playing with her hair. "No regrets?"

She gave an inelegant snort in response, then reached out to tap a finger against his skull. "Thinking too much, again, Lee."

He smiled, then grew serious, holding her eyes.

He cleared his throat. "Kara. this guy on Caprica-Anders?"

Kara's eyes narrowed and her body tensed. "What about him?" she asked suspiciously.

"You promised him you'd go back and rescue him..him and all of the members of his resistance group, right?"

"Yeah," Kara said slowly.

Lee sighed. "Then you should."

"What?"

"Kara, if you let this go, if you break your promise, it's going to end up eating away at you. Take it from me." He gave her a wry smile.

She stared at him, suddenly gripped by an overwhelming sense of panic. Her eyes widened slightly, and her breath unconsciously quickened.

Lee was gazing at her intensely, thoughtfully.

"You don't want to go anywhere near those Farms, again. Is that it?" he asked gently.

She pressed her lips together to hold in her emotion, then gave a brief nod.

Lee's eyes grew gentle. "What about if I went on the rescue party with you?"

Kara's lips parted. "You would?"

"Of course I would."

She let out a long breath. "Then, yeah," she said slowly. "I think you're right. I-we-need to do this."

"Okay, then." Lee gave a businesslike nod. "We'll both start working on twisting my father's arm to approve it."

She gazed into his eyes for a long time, her face completely serious.

"What?" Lee asked, with a crooked, self-conscious smile.

"I love you, Lee Adama," Kara said.

He caught his breath. "I love you too, Kara Thrace."

The moment lingered. A pledge. A promise.

Sounds drifted past the hatch, breaking the spell. Lee stirred, then leaned in close to her.

"But, Kara?" He kissed her full on the mouth, then pulled away to look at her appraisingly, as a teasing light sprang into his eyes.

"Don't even think," he said in a low voice. "That I'm going to sit back and watch you and Mr. Pyramid Has-Been get something going again."

Kara laughed and leaned over to nip his chin. Then she moved her lips near his ear and whispered teasingly, "Maybe we could use him for a little two on one action..Ow!" She laughed in protest as he rolled on top of her and pinned her under him, his hands pulling her wrists out and immobilizing them.

"No way," he growled. "Because I." he tasted her mouth, then pulled back. ".don't like to *share.*" He let her hands go, and she reached up and ran her fingers through his short hair.

"No danger," she laughed. "'Cause I just found something out."

"Oh yeah? What?" he raised his eyebrows.

"How good you are in bed, flyboy. Gotta love a man who's that good with his hands."

He laughed and she reached up to pull his head down to kiss her.

Twenty minutes later, they were tossing tanks and pants to each other, scrambling to get dressed. They both tried to smooth down their tousled hair as they approached the hatch door. As she reached to open it, Lee stopped her. "Wait."

She turned her head to ask why but suddenly felt his hands gather the fabric of her tanks in order to pull her in and give her one last, long kiss. Then he released her and threw her an enticing smile.

"So, same time tonight?" he asked.

She stepped back, and lowered her lashes a little, smiling seductively. Her tongue touched her top lip as she considered. "Maybe." she said finally. "But only if we get to do more of that. *talking.*" She winked.

And left the room to his soft laughter.

She strode jauntily down the corridor, humming a little under her breath. Her body was loose, more relaxed than she could remember being in a very long time. She felt sexy, strong, and happy. A secret little smile played at her lips as she remembered the ways he had kissed her, the ways he had loved her.

`Oh, yeah,' she thought, as she turned the corner toward the officers' quarters.

`This' could be a very good thing.

-fin-