Sweetheart's Dance

This one's kinda long, folks. Hope I made it interesting enough that you can follow through to the end.- thanks

It had been two weeks since the end of the world. That was right, wasn't it, two weeks? If she were to stop someone in the hall and ask them, that was what they would reply.

Funny, it seemed like longer than that. To her it seemed like it had been a two weeks and _two years_ since the end of the world.

* * *

Kara moved to sit up from her laying position on the floor of the supply closet. She unscrewed the top on the liquor bottle next to her and took a long gulp. She could feel a finger lightly trace circles on her shoulder from behind her and listened to the unfamiliar voice as he spoke.

"You're actually quite good at that, Starbuck." The guy laughed.

What was his name? Whitaker? Whitman? She knew that he worked in navigation.

"I've seen you fly." He continued. "You're pretty good at that too."

"Thank you." She said coldly. She said it coldly enough that he should have gotten the point, but apparently he didn't, so she continued. "We've been in here ten minutes, maybe you should leave."

"What?" He whispered out like he couldn't quite believe what she just said, his finger dropping from its place on her skin.

"What don't you get? You can go now." She turned her head around to look his body up and down. "We're done here."

He made a disgusted snort as he stood up, pulling his pants back on. "Gods. Everybody was right about you. You really are a bitch."

"Ah, sweetheart." She called after him as he left the room. "Breaks my heart to hear you say that."

Her heart. What if she didn't really have one? They say that in combat, in order to survive you have to emotionally detach yourself from everything and everybody. What if she had done too good a job?

_'What if this is who I really am, Zak?_' She thought. _'And neither one of us ever noticed because you were there, making everything better?'_

She loved Zak because she could be another person when she was with him. The person that he mistakenly saw her as. With Zak, she wasn't poor, emotionally crippled Kara, who had an irresponsible and oftentimes absent artist father that had irresponsibly and absently left her alone in the care of her bitter and crazy non-artist mother. She was Kara, Zak's girl, she was somebody else. And she liked that, it was easy. Zak made everything easy. She should have known it would end. Life is supposed to be hard. Wasn't that what her mother had told her?

* * *

She first started dancing with Zak when she came on board the _Galactica_. Technically that shouldn't have been possible since Zak was already dead by the time she ever set foot on this boat. It wasn't really him, she knew that. The real Zak couldn't dance, and every time they had tried she wound up with bruises on the tops of her feet from where he had stepped on them. This person, this apparition, this….whatever he was, was a wonderful dancer.

The third week she had been on _Galactica_ she had found an old maintenance bay that nobody ever used anymore. It held old supply wagons, spare turbines, drones. Things like that. She just needed to find a place where she could think without a thousand eyes staring at her.

The stupid XO, Colonel Tigh, had told everyone about her association with the Adamas. And she would catch people looking at her, like they didn't quite know what to make of her. She was quiet at times, pushy and brazen and rude at others. And they wondered if she was any good. Was she a good soldier? Could she hold her own in a cockpit? Or was she just getting special treatment because she had been screwing the Commander's son before he died? She had only needed two weeks in a Viper to put those questions to rest.

"Hey beautiful." He had called out to her when she entered the bay.

"Hey yourself." She smiled back, not all that surprised to see him.

"You like it here?"

"I'm gettin' used to it." She replied.

"It's good that you're here." He smiled. "You hadn't been out in the sun for weeks anyways. At least now, here on this metal ship in the cold, vast reaches of space you have an excuse."

"Hey. I have sensitive alabaster skin, Adama. We can't all be as naturally, beautifully tan as you are."

"True." He laughed, and then he held out his hand to her. "Care to dance."

As she took it she was amazed at how real he felt. The feel of his hand in hers, the sound of his humming in her ear.

_Little drops of water, falling on the sand….._

* * *

_Little drops of water, falling on the sand. See the rain is pouring down, come on take my hand._

_The lightning strike across the sky, brightening up my world.__ The thunder claps, but I'm not afraid, because you are my girl._

It was _their song_. She thought that it was funny, the way it had become their song.

They were on their first date. They had gone to some dinky little hamburger diner ten miles off base. That had been one of her demands. If she agreed to go out with him, the place that they went to had to be at least ten miles away. That way she wouldn't have to worry about the appearance of impropriety. Just the appearance, because it wasn't really improper. They were just having a hamburger. That was as far as she would let it go. Because any further than that just wasn't worth it. He wasn't worth risking everything that she had worked for. Even if he did have frakking gorgeous green eyes.

Before they got out of the car he pointed to the odometer. "10.2 miles." She remembered him saying. "Am I awesome or what?"

Later, she couldn't help but laugh as she looked across the table and saw him smiling at her. Looking at her like he was entranced, like the sight of her eating onion rings was the most amazing thing he ever saw.

"You know what we need?" He grinned at her. "We need a song."

"Gods, Adama. You really are trying to make something out of this, aren't you? We do _not_ need a song. People who have been married for fifty years have a song. Not people who are only halfway through their first date."

He smiled as he caught her slip. "So this _is _a date. You'd never admitted that before." He raised both of his hands to silence her as he saw her try to cover what she had just said. "You see? I'm wearing you down. It's a gift I have, well, me and my brother. My father taught it to us. Works well on my mother. The two of us just wear her down, and she _always_ crumbles. And _she_ even knows its coming. How _you_ ever thought you had a chance of resisting my skill is beyond me."

She laughed so hard the soda almost came out of her nose.

"So what's it gonna be, Kara? What should be our song?" He winked at her.

"Oh, I don't know. How about…….. '_You're Gonna Have To Go Home Tonight and Get Yourself Off Because It's Never Gonna Happen With Her'."_

"Is that a heavy metal song?" He deadpanned as she dissolved into laughter again. "That's not really my kind of music, didn't think it was yours either. You strike me as more of an easy listening girl. Ya know, spend all day punching and yelling and cursing at the new recruits and then go back to your quarters and put on some harp music. That kind of stuff."

"Shows how much you know." She smiled. "I like the piano."

"Oh, yeah?" He looked over to the other side of the diner. "Come on."

She let him take her hand as he led her over to the jukebox in the corner of the place that looked like it was just as old as the building that it was standing in.

"Gods, Zak. Even if we did have a song, we're not this cheesy. All the music in here is over twenty years old."

"There. That one." He said pointing at a selection. "E-3."

She closed her eyes and smiled as she saw his choice. It must be a sign. There was no way it could be anything other than fate that the first song he picked was the one that her father had used to sing her to sleep.

It was that moment that she fell in love with him.

Ten minutes later he drove to a music store and bought the CD. That song was what was playing that night when she frakked him for the first time in the back seat of his car.

* * *

Lee came up to her as she was doing her preflight. "You know who Lt. Whitley is?" He asked.

Whitley. That was his name. "I think so." She replied. "Works in navigation, big guy?" '_Not that big.'_ She thought holding back a laugh.

"Yeah, that's him." He answered eyeing her intently.

"What about him?"

"He's spreading a rumor that you're a lesbian."

She smiled at him. "I'm not."

"I know you're not." He replied seriously. "I know for a fact that you're not, and I just don't want the rumor mill going full tilt about this."

"At least this will put the rumor that I'm frakking you on the back burner for a while." She laughed. He didn't seem to get the joke. "Seriously, Lee, as big as this boat is it's still a small place to be. There's always gonna be rumors. Anybody stupid enough to believe them is not anybody that I care about." She said going back to her checklist.

"Can you think of any reason why he would be doing it?" He asked.

"No." She lied. "I've never spent more than ten minutes in the same room with the guy. So I can't think of anything I could have done to piss him off in that short of a time."

He smirked. "Oh, I don't know about that. I have total faith in you. I've seen you piss people off in ten _seconds_ before."

She laughed and then watched as his face got serious again.

"You would tell me if there was anything, wouldn't you Kara?"

"Of course." She lied again.

Later that night as she laid in her bunk with her legs crossed in front of her, she smoked her cigar. She breathed it in and out, letting the taste of it fill her mouth, wishing for about the millionth time that they made a cigar that tasted like Zak Adama.

'_Go on.'_ She thought. '_It won't hurt. You're too far gone for it to hurt.'_

And she numbly put the cigar out on the skin of her inner thigh.

* * *

"That was a beautiful kill, Starbuck" Boomer called to her from the deck as she stepped down the ladder from her plane.

"Thank you very much. I do seven shows a week and matinees on Monday, Wednesday and Friday." She laughed, accepting pats on the back from her fellow pilots.

"THRACE!"

She should have known he wouldn't let this go.

"There a problem, Captain Adama, sir?" She said amused as he came to stand right in her face.

"You better believe there is. Get in my office, NOW." He pointed toward the hangar exit.

They walked together down the hall in perfect sync, except for when she had to step aside to bypass all the people that he pushed out of their way.

When they got to his office she thought that she should open with a joke. "You redecorate in here, Lee?"

"What the hell did you think you were doing out there, Lt?" He screamed.

"Killing the enemy, sir." Kara seethed out. "Was that wrong? You'll forgive me, I've been a little out of it. I know it's been a coupla weeks since the _gods damn apocalypse_, so the rules may have changed, but we are still doing that, right? Your new friend the President hasn't implemented a policy of giving them milk and cookies now, has she? I am still allowed to kill Cylons if they come calling at our door, aren't I?"

"Not if it means getting _yourself_ killed. There are other ways to do this besides offering yourself up to death on a silver platter, you know. That was one of the most irresponsible things I have _ever_ seen anybody do in a plane!"

"I'm sorry that I didn't have the Appropriate Responsive Action to an Imminent Threat manual in my cockpit, sir. I'll try to do better next time."

"If you survive next time." He said coldly as she scoffed at him. He paused before speaking again. "What's this really about, Kara?"

"Gods." She sneered, rolling her eyes at him. "We're at war… and I'm a warrior. Next to sex, combat is the most instinctual thing in human nature. Leave it to you to overthink it."

"I kind of have to since you're not thinking at all. And you know what? You're right. We are at war, which means that we're in an impossible situation here, Kara. Things are tough enough. I can't have you going around frakking everything up with your crazy-ass stunts."

"I didn't think you'd mind, Captain. Since the only reason you're still around is _because of_ one of my crazy-ass stunts."

"What is this, Kara?" He said harshly. "What? You think this will make things better? If you die in your plane like Zak?"

"You son of a bitch." She pulled her fist back to hit him and he stopped her with a cold glare.

"Don't even try it. You may have knocked down Tigh because the drunk bastard can't stand up most of the time anyways, but I'm not that easy. And I hit back." She saw his glare shift from deadly to concerned to sad, all in a matter of seconds. "Gods. When I came to this ship, all I had with me was a change of clothes. I'd only planned on being here one day. Well, plans changed. I was only supposed to be a window dressing, but now, I've got to be so many things to so many people. I've got to be an advisor to the President, a leader to these pilots, a son to my father, and I've got to be a friend to you…… which isn't always easy, Kara. But that's what Zak would want me to do. And sometimes I think that all of this will take more than I have to give." He paused, drawing a steadying breath. "But I'll do it. I'll be all the things that people need me to be. But I can't DO IT if you self-destruct."

"Captain?" Another voice called from the open door. Kara turned to face Dualla, but Lee kept his back to her.

"Yeah, Dee?" He said.

"I'm sorry, sir. Your father asked me if you could come to CIC, but I'm sure it could wait if you're in the middle of something."

"No. Dee." He said looking at Kara again. "We're done here." And he followed after Dualla.

* * *

She was sitting in their diner when she heard the bell on the door ring. She had turned around to face him and give him a piece of her mind for making her wait _45 damn minutes, _when she saw that he wasn't alone.

"Kara. This is Lee." Zak said wrapping an arm around his brother's neck. "He just got off of an eight month deployment on the _Columbia_, so let him unwind a little bit before you lay into him for making me late."

"Hey. I was sitting on that tarmac an hour ago. If you had shown up _there_ on time, we wouldn't be late _now,_ would we?" Lee laughed.

Gods. Those frakking eyes again, blue this time instead of green. They must get their eyes from their mother. Kara had seen pictures of William Adama in military history books and all she could think now is how Mrs. Adama must be the palest damn woman in all of the universe.

"Sit down." She said to Lee, narrowing her eyes at Zak. "Just because I won't be speaking to your brother for the next twelve hours, that doesn't mean that you and I can't talk."

They talked about everything. They talked about the crappy-ass job that the latest defense contractor had done refitting all the old Mark-5's. They talked about auto-landings versus hands-on.

He thought it took away the danger and imprecision of human error. She thought that the danger and imprecision was the best part.

And five minutes in, she wondered if this was some sort of sickness. Some sort of disease that doctors would name after her and put in obscure medical journals. This weakness that she had for Adama men.

* * *

"I don't get it." Lee said coming to sit beside her in the mess hall.

"What don't you get?" She asked amused. She could see by the serious look on his face that he wasn't in the mood to joke, but it seemed that her only joy in life these days was playing with him.

"I don't get why you would schedule yourself for three back-to-back rotations."

She paused before answering. "Well, normally I wouldn't, but Stingray and Hooligan were playing 'skateboard' with a maintenance cart and Stingray twisted his ankle and Hooligan bruised a rib."

"So we're two pilots short for a while." He commented.

"Yeah. And you were on Colonial One and I didn't feel right asking anybody else to do it soooo….."  
"Alright." He said putting his elbows up on the table. "Here's what we'll do. You take the double shift, I'll take the third one."

"That's not necessary, Lee. You've got plenty of other things to do. I'm fine doing it by myself."

"When will you sleep?" He asked quietly.

She waved her hand. "I'll sleep when I'm dead." She laughed.

He looked at her sadly. "That soon?" He said to her before she got up disgustedly and left the table.

* * *

"I love him." She had almost cried as she said it. "And he says this is what he wants."

"I know you love him. I'm not suggesting that you don't. And I know that he loves you." Lee looked at her and lightly put his hand on her shoulder. "But is that enough? Is that enough, Kara? Because there is more to marriage than love. There's compatibility, and equality, and the knowledge that you are both on the same path. If you don't have those things, then all the love in the world isn't gonna make your marriage work. Just ask my parents." He stopped. "I've known you for over a year, and I don't think you are, Kara. I don't think you are compatible, or equal, and the gods know that you aren't on the same path."

"What the hell do you know anyway?" She seethed at him. "You've always known that this is what you wanted to do."

"Yeah, I did." He whispered back at her. "And so did you. You've always known that flying is what you wanted to do, what you were _built_ to do. But Zak hasn't. Hell. I don't even think he knows it now. I don't even think this is really what he wants. If it were, wouldn't he work harder to make it happen? He's been doing this his whole life, Kara!" He yelled, starting to pace the room. "He won't even try to find his own way, he'll just discover what someone else wants out of him and convince himself that this is what he should do. And when you're the son of William Adama there aren't that many ways to make daddy happy."

"Stop. Please stop, Lee." She reached up to touch the side of his face. "I know you love him, and I know you're just trying to do what is best for him, but please stop."

"I'm trying to do what's best for you too, because I love you too." He said taking her hand. "How do you think you'll feel when this all falls apart? How will you feel when he starts resenting you because he's always playing catch up?"

* * *

"I swear to the gods. If this turbine doesn't stop catching I'm gonna take a sledgehammer to this thing and turn it into scrap metal." She yelled as she stood in the hangar and looked over the machine again.

Cally winced at her shouts. Everybody did, actually. She had been shouting all afternoon, going on extended tirades about the clutter on the flight deck.

"Is it really necessary for this hose to be here at all times?" She had screamed.

"Yeah. As a matter of fact." Tyrol had coldly answered back. "Since you seem to like your planes to have fuel in them."

She had almost taken a swing at him for that. But instead she went over to the malfunctioning turbine that Jammer and Cally had been working on.

And she was still there, two hours later, praying silently to the gods that there be at least one thing in her life that she could fix.

"Maybe if we rewired the starting mechanism? Maybe that would stop it from skipping." Jammer said.

"Turn it on again." Kara harshly ordered. "Let me listen to this thing."

When he turned it on, it was fine for awhile and then twenty seconds in she heard the groaning, metallic clicking again. "Frak it! This stupid frakking thing." She said as she reached in her hand to somehow try and remove whatever the offending problem was.

She didn't really feel anything. It didn't really hurt, but she quickly pulled her hand out anyway. The first sign that anything was wrong was when she felt something wet trickling down her arm.

"Starbuck?" Cally had whispered, looking at her hand like she was going to be sick.

"Oh gods." Kara said numbly as she saw her whole right hand covered in blood.

* * *

"You're lucky, Lt. Damn lucky." Doc Cottle said as he finished up the twenty third stitch on her right hand. "Looks like your good fortune extends past the card table. If you'd reached in just a little bit further, you'd have lost your hand."

"I'll keep that in mind for next time." She said, and he looked at her sadly at her remark.

She had been in such a trance as the Doc had been working that she didn't know that Lee had come into her curtained off section of the room until he spoke. "You okay?"

"Fine. Doesn't even hurt." She said turning her head to look at him. "Well, okay, it hurts a little, but the magic pills should kick in at any second and then I'll be just fine."

Lee wasn't satisfied with her glib answer. "She okay?" He asked Cottle.

"Her _hand_ will be just fine." Cottle corrected him. "I'm almost done here. She can leave in about 20 minutes."

"Will she be able to fly?"

"Not for another 48 hours. The painkillers I gave her took care of that." Cottle answered as he walked away.

That left just her and Lee, who apparently thought it was his duty to stare her down.

After about forty five seconds she had had enough. "Whatever you're gonna say, I wish you'd just say it, because that whole 'wearing you down' thing that you Adama boys are so good at just doesn't work on me anymore." She sneered.

"Why'd you do it?" He asked softly.

"Cause the damn thing was pissing me off."

"That's why you felt the need to stick your hand in a moving turbine, because it pissed you off?"

"I didn't '_feel the need'_ to stick my hand in it, I just did. I just wasn't thinking."

"There isn't anything more to it than that?"

"No. Of course not."

"You know what, Kara?" He said lifting his hand to rub his eyes. "I just don't have the energy to not believe you anymore."

She rolled her eyes at him, but felt a distinct pang of sadness at his defeated words.

"Well, it's obvious that you aren't gonna be of any use to your air group for a couple of days, so I talked to my dad. He's giving you 48 hours leave, effective now. There's a shuttle in two hours. Go to the _Rising Star_." He turned to walk away before calling back to her. "And come back with your head on straight."

* * *

"What the hell do you mean?" She had screamed when they told her.

"It happened an hour ago." Major Markinson said to her in as calm a voice as he could muster as he stood with her in her classroom. He saw her beginning to shake.

"So he's just gone?" She whispered, not believing that the gods could hate her this much.

"Yes. It was a total loss. The plane exploded in midair." He saw that she was trying to hold back tears and softened a bit before he continued. "Lieutenant Thrace….Kara, there was no way he could have survived. No way that you would have wanted him to. If it's any consolation, he didn't suffer, he didn't feel any pain."

"Thank you." She breathed out, her voice catching in her throat as tearless sobs escaped her body.

"I've never seen you like this, Starbuck. Can I take this to mean that the rumors were true? That you and Zak Adama were more than teacher and student?"

She turned away from him. "Please don't lecture me." She said softly.

She heard him wince slightly. "I wasn't going to." He paused. "We've already contacted his father, and his mother. Can you think of anyone else?"

"Does his brother know?"

"I'm pretty sure that his mother will tell him. But we could set up a call to the _Atlantia_, just in case you wanted to talk to him."

"No. No, this should stay within the family." She closed her eyes and whispered. "And I'm not family."

"I'm very sorry for your loss."

* * *

Zak had never seen her cry. She had never had to. The life that they shared together had been a happy one. She should have known then and there that it wouldn't last. Nothing that good is ever real. Besides, the person that she was with Zak Adama didn't need to cry. She didn't have pain, or scars, or insecurities. Those were all flaws that had no place in the out-of-time-and-place world that she had with him.

But Lee had seen her cry. She wondered if she should feel guilty about that. If she should feel like she was betraying Zak because she shared this intimate act with his brother and not with him. The only thing that made it better was knowing that she was crying _over_ him. So he was a part of it somehow. That took away the sting of her betrayal a little bit.

She knew it was Lee when he knocked on the door. Hell, she knew it was him _before_ he knocked on the door.

"It's open." She yelled. "Come on in. Nothing of any value in here anyway."

He walked through her door and immediately closed it behind him.

"Hey there, Flyboy." She whispered sadly. "What'd you have to do to get them to give you shore leave?"

He leaned against the closed door and looked at her, his blue eyes overflowing with pain.

She looked back, willing those blue eyes to be green. "Don't say anything. Just don't say anything."

He shook his head and slowly sunk down to the floor.

"What if it's my fault?" She bitterly asked a few minutes later, when her violent, body-shaking sobs had ceased. "What if he didn't just do it for your father? But for me too?" She had added the last part so that he wouldn't know, wouldn't catch on that it really _was _her fault.

"It's my fault too, Kara." He said not looking at her. "He did it so that he wouldn't be the only man in his family to not fly a Viper."

He became harder that day. She heard from acquaintances that he became more concerned about rules and regulations and policies. He worked diligently, obsessively, almost like he had to do the work of _two_ young Adamas in Colonial Fleet uniforms. She never saw him smile again. Not a real smile anyway. Not the way that he smiled that first day in the diner.

She became harder too, colder and drier. Like her skin had been replaced by a casing of clay. But clay could still shatter, if you dropped it hard enough. It was tougher to do that with skin.

* * *

She sat in an empty conference room on the _Rising Star_, thinking that this was the shortest R&R that she had ever taken.

She looked at the clock. 21:47. Let's see. She left _Galactica_ at 18:35, which meant it had taken her……3 hours and 12 minutes to get arrested. It wasn't exactly a record, but it was still pretty damn impressive.

_Reckless Assault_. What a crock. It wasn't reckless. She had meant to hit every one of those bastards.

"Lt. Thrace?" The guard said to her as he opened the door. "Your commanding officer wants to see you."

"Yeah?" She said. "Tell Captain Adama not to bother. I've had enough of his frakking disapproval for one night."

"It's not Captain Adama." The guard said as he open the door further to reveal the Commander standing before her.

"Uh-oh." She laughed. "I'm in _wicked_ trouble now."

"You think this is funny, Starbuck?" He said harshly as he sat down across from her at the table.

The laughter faded from her face quickly as she realized that the tone of his voice conveyed more worry than disapproval. "No, sir. Not funny, just………I just don't understand what everybody is getting so worked up about. It's not the first time a soldier has ever gotten into a barfight. Hell. It's not even the first time _this_ soldier has gotten into a barfight. I really don't see why it's necessary for the Commander of the Fleet to get in a Raptor and come all the way over here just to give me a good dressing down. It's not the end of the world. That's already happened."

His face fell as he lowered his eyes to the table, unable to look at her. "You're on a collision course, Kara. You're becoming dangerous."

That was too much for her to take. "_I'm in that cockpit everyday. I've never missed a shift. I DO MY JOB!"_ She sneered at him.

His eyes rose up to meet hers resolutely. "You think I'm worried about your performance when you're on duty?" He strongly whispered. "No. I'm worried about your behavior when you're not."

"Sir-."

The look on his face stopped her from trying to explain this away.

"We could do it, you know." He stood up, looking at her. "Lee and I. We could find a way to muddle through if you died. We would be sad, yes. And not a day would pass that we wouldn't miss you, just like we miss Zak. But we would survive." He paused, trying to find the breath and the strength to continue. "But if we ever lost you because…. if you were ever not there anymore because you had done something to yourself? Well, there would just be nothing left, Kara. We would both just have to find a dark room somewhere and hole up for the rest of our lives. And we wouldn't miss you at all….. because we would hate you too much for leaving us like that."

"I don't….I can't." She looked away, unable to face him.

"I'm not having Lee take you off rotation." He said coldly as he turned away. "We need all of our pilots too much."

He left her sitting in the room.

* * *

When she got back to _Galactica_ an hour later, she had expected to be taken to the brig. But there were no guards waiting for her, so she figured she had some time before the fallout caught up with her. There was _nobody_ waiting for her, in fact. There wasn't really _anybody_ in the landing bay. Except for Cally, who glanced at her sadly. As Kara walked by, Cally spoke to her quietly.

"Prosna was my friend. I miss him a lot. Sometimes I feel that way too."

She looked at Cally dumbfounded. That was great. The last thing that she needed was a little girl knuckledragger to feel sorry for her.

So why did her words bring her comfort?

She made her way to their maintenance bay, hoping that nobody saw her on her way there. She needed a dance.

He was waiting for her when she got there. "Quite a shiner you got mucking up that pretty face of yours, Kara."

"Yep."

"Wanna talk about how you got it?"

"Nope."

"Okay." He held out his hand to her. "Shall we?"

_Little drops of water, falling on the sand. See the rain is pouring down, come on take my hand._

She smiled and took his hand. "I figured you'd be here." She whispered in his ear as he moved them around in circles. "You always seem to be where I need you to be."

He chuckled slightly. "That's the great thing about figments of your imagination, Kara." He whispered back. "They go where you go."

* * *

"You can't have her." Lee had hissed out. "I won't let you."

William Adama looked up from where he had been crying on the couch of his former living room. "Who, son? Who do you mean?"

"Kara." Lee seethed. "I mean Kara, and don't call me son."

William looked worried over to where his ex-wife sat in the chair across from him. "Lee. I don't know what you're thinking, but it's not like that. I'm not _attracted_ to Kara."

"What? No, Dad. That's not what I meant. I meant I won't let you take her away, to _Galactica_ You've already taken away enough from us. I won't let you take her too."

"Lee, honey." Caroline Adama said softly. "This isn't the time or the place for that."

"Then when, Mom? Huh? When?" He screamed. "Gods know when we'll ever see him again. He couldn't be bothered to come when we were all still alive, what makes you think it's gonna be any better now that one of us is dead?"

"Lee!" Caroline started to sob.

"I won't let you take her."

"It's what she needs, Lee." William said defensively. "It's killing her to stay here. She needs to get off this planet, needs to be somewhere that she doesn't think of Zak at every turn."

"You just met her five days ago." Lee said. "You don't have the right to tell me what she needs. You didn't even know what your own sons needed." He paused. "Or, I don't know. Maybe you'd be a great figure in her life. Gods know you were always a better father to perfect strangers than you were to your own _flesh and blood_."

"Please stop." His father whispered sadly, looking to the floor.

"I won't let you take her, so go. Get out of this house. Go back to your ship, back to your _home_. Cause it is your home, isn't it, Dad? That twisted piece of metal, hurtling through space was more your home than anyplace that your _family_ everwas."

"You're being unfair, Lee." His mother rose to meet him. "Your father isn't perfect, that's true, but he's hurting just as much as you are right now."

"That's good. He should hurt. Because he lost two sons this week. Zak's not the only one of his sons that died. Because I am dead, Dad. I'm dead to you."

"Oh, gods, Lee." Caroline sobbed, crumpling down to the chair. "Please don't do this."

"He wouldn't be dead, did you know that, Dad? He wouldn't be, if you had just once asked him 'Son. What do you want to do?' Do you have any idea how that would have changed things? If that had happened we wouldn't all be sitting here, bitter and angry and broken. I'm not saying that we would still be a family, because gods know that you did some other _rat-bastard_ things as well, but at least we wouldn't be like this: dead but still breathing."

"So that's it, son?" His father said looking back up to him. "I killed him? Will that make you sleep better at night?"

"What makes you think I sleep at all anymore?" Lee cried, taking long, choking gulps of breath. "He was always yours. He loved Mom, sure, loved her more than anything, but he always did what he thought would make you happy. He always thought you were a god. Always thought you were Zeus reincarnated. He always belonged to you, and it killed him. And I won't let Kara belong to you now either, and have it kill her."

"It's not your choice. It's hers. And it was Zak's too. We all have a path, Lee. The one we choose to take."

"Go! Leave us alone." Lee screamed. "I hope you die out there, scared and alone. Just like Zak did."

"Stop talking, Lee." Kara said softly. Lee turned, startled. He didn't know that she had been standing in the doorway behind him. She walked towards him and moved to put an errant lock of his hair away from his forehead. "I want you to listen to me, and listen very carefully, cause I'm only gonna say this once." She closed her eyes and took a breath, steadying the resolve that she knew it would take to say this. "If you ever talk to your father that way again, you'll never talk to _me_ again." She sobbed. "Understand?"

She saw his face crumple, but he made an almost imperceptible nod.

She looked down on the Commander where he sat. "Come on, Commander." She said. "Let's go home."

He looked up at her with just the barest hint of a heartbreaking, sad smile.

She wondered if it was some sort of sickness, this weakness that she had for Adama men.

The Commander rose from his seat and leaned over to place a small kiss on his former wife's forehead as she still sat sobbing in her chair. Then they walked to the front door.

"Kara?" Lee breathed out.

Kara turned back to him and slowly shook her head. It was the last time that she saw Lee Adama before the day the world ended.

_

* * *

_

_Three little Cylons in the air….watch their metal burn and flare._

It wasn't quite as catchy as _Little Drops of Water, _but it served its purpose in battle. Its purpose being to get them worked up. And she was worked up.

She had been twiddling her thumbs in the Alert Room when the call for action stations came over the P.A. She had almost hollered with joy. As she ran down the ladder onto the flight deck she saw her CAG getting into his Viper.

He shouted at her pointedly. "Don't get dead, Starbuck."

"I'm not making any promises, Adama." She had laughed back.

She had meant it as a joke, but she saw the look of terror on his face as Jammer helped him put on his helmet.

And now she was in her ship, doing her second favorite thing: Killing Cylons. It was second only to dancing with Zak.

_Three little Cylons in the air…._ Whoops, now there were only two little Cylons. Thanks to Apollo.

She moved in perfect tandem with him. Knowing what he was doing when he banked left so that she could take the shot that took out the second one.

And now the third one was breaking off and bugging out. She didn't even think before chasing after it.

"Hey, Starbuck, what are you doing? He's bugging out." Joker had called out to her.

"Yeah." Frosty had interjected. "He's scared shitless. He won't be coming back."

"Yeah. Not until he brings about thirty of his friends with him." She screamed back.

"We'll be long gone by then, Lt. Let it go." Lee said calmly. She wanted to turn around and point her guns at _him_ for sounding so calm about it.

"We letting Cylons go now? Is that it?"

"You've been given your orders, Starbuck. Come on back."

"Frak this." She hissed. "Not today."

_One little Cylon in the air…….__ Little drops of water………Come on bastard, turn around, turn around and just try to take a shot at me. Please take a shot._

"What the hell are you doing, pilot?" Lee screamed at her. "You are way beyond the red line here. Break off _right frakking now_!"

She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of space, to the sound of the oxygen hissing into her helmet, to the sound of her instruments clicking on her console.

And when she opened her eyes again she wasn't there anymore.

She was at their diner, their song playing on the jukebox.

"I'm not really here." She stated as he walked towards her.

"No you're not." He whispered as he stroked her cheek. "You're still in your cockpit, and you have to go back there soon. But I brought you here to tell you that you can't do this, you can't come with me. You have to stay."

"Zak…." She whimpered.

"Do it as a favor to me, do it because you love me. Because I love them, just as much as I love you…..and you can't leave them there like that."

She closed her eyes. "But I don't want to stay. It hurts too much. It never hurt with you."

"And that's why you never loved me like you should have. It takes a special kind of love for that, Kara, to let the hurt seep through."

"Gods, why did it take the frakking end of the world for me to truly grasp what I had already lost?" She asked kissing his cheek.

"Sometimes it takes losing almost everything to realize how little you had left in the first place. But you didn't lose everything, Kara. They're still there…..and it's not betrayal that you don't want to be alone, because I don't want _him_ to be alone either."

"Can we have one more dance?" She whispered softly.

"No." He whispered back. "We can't dance anymore, Kara. It's time to move on." He paused, kissing her forehead. "And it's time for you to go back now."

"KARA!" Lee was screaming at her when she opened her eyes and found herself back in her plane. "BREAK OFF NOW, DAMN IT! COME ON HOME."

She took a breath and veered her control stick from the path that it had been on. "Roger that, Apollo. Starbuck breaking off R.F.N."

She wasn't sure, but she swore that she could hear his relieved gasp coming in over their mikes as they made their way to the landing bay.

* * *

She walked to their maintenance bay, fighting the urge to cry until she knew she was alone. And gods know she would be alone a lot now. Zak had never seen her cry, but Zak wasn't gonna be there anymore, so it didn't really matter if she did it or not.

When she opened the hatch, she hadn't expected him to be there.

But he was. And he turned around to face her as he heard the door shut.

She smiled. "I should have known you couldn't stay away." She laughed. "I just wear you down, Adama. How you ever thought you could resist is just beyond me."

He laughed too. A little throatier than she remembered, but it was still that Adama laugh.

"Care to dance?" She asked.

He smiled as he held out his hand, and as she took it and let herself be pulled into him, she noted that it felt different somehow, better. His hand rested more heavy in hers as he brought both hands to lay over his heart, his breath felt warmer in her ear.

_Little drops of water, falling on the sand. See the rain is pouring down, come on take my hand._

"Hmm. You're really outdoing yourself this time, sweetheart." She whispered as she let him move her in tiny circles around each other. Then she pulled back to look in his eyes.

It was then that she noticed that, this time, the Adama eyes that looked back at her were blue, not green.

"Lee?" She breathed out heavily, the air stopping in her lungs, her heart ceasing to beat as he gripped her hand tighter in his.

"Yeah, Kara." He said sadly, bringing their hands up so that he could kiss her palm. "It's me."

Zak had never seen her cry. But his brother had. So she didn't feel ashamed.

She dropped her head to his chest, right above his heart, and sobbed. Cried the most shrieking, agonized, anguished, body-convulsing sobs that you had ever heard. And just when she thought she would die because she didn't have any water left in her body, she cried some more.

Her legs buckled from underneath her and she fell to the floor. The weight and pull of her despair was so total that as he held onto her he had no choice but to go down with her. And as she cried she heard his voice whispering in her ear.

"It's okay, Kara. It's okay. Everything will be okay." His voice caught in his throat. "Just don't leave us."

She loved Zak because, with him, she could be another person.

Maybe she would love Lee because, with him, she didn't have to be.


End file.
