Asking For It

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Kara ditches Sam so she can watch Lee bareknuckle Helo. Lee, of course, takes it on the chin. (Everything sounds dirty this week!) Unluckily, 'Buck's got , so we get to sit through their whole tureen of bullshit that we already probably wrote a five-part fanfic about. Meanwhile, Laura and Bill hang out and are adorable, plus total potheads. Also, New Caprica was -- this just in -- radically sucky. Day 123 of the Colonization: Gaius sucks; Saul and Ellen are still heartbreaking; Chief and Cally drink poison/set themselves on fire/die horribly/over and over/for a bajillion years OR they are pregnant and whine their stupid asses off. YOUR CALL. Starbuck and Apollo fuck from like Thursday to Monday; Dualla and Anders sit around munching on Cheetos and -- to be fair -- going: "Fucking FINALLY."*

morning: even Adama can't stand the sight of Cally or Chief/banish them to New Caprica OR start their new family on the settlement (YOUR CALL); Starbuck and Apollo go 8000 varieties of Bareback Boomer after their gross liaison, and get married in a goddamn hurry to their respective beards/soulmates (YOUR CALL), and act all shifty/Scientologist about everything. Adama and Chief punch each other a lot, because "Galen" means "physician" and "Adama" means "scab-picker," but Adama turns it into a slow-clap moment, as you know his ass is wont to do. Then Lee and Kara enter the ring and, one assumes, make hideous hatefucking love in front of everybody. Sam and Dee are like, "OMG! So done with these dudes," and then get married and have lots of gorgeous muscled babies, because the only people that care about those particular douchebags at this point are the shippers. (And your recapper. YOUR CALL.)

Good: Lee and Kara actually say something about something, instead of whining and secret cutting. Also Ellen. Bad: No Cylon baseship threesome/Jesus fooferaw; and Cally and Chief continue to suck balls, even as they make more and more sense and become more and more goddamn sympathetic. Other: Great episode, wonderfully done, very effective. Nice way of uniting all the characters in story rather than just focusing on (my) favorites and ignoring everybody else. Like you should be doing.

(*Also: "…Fucking FINALLY." Because fucking finally.) Want more? The full recap starts right below!

Previously, everybody was awfully tired, so when they colonized New Caprica, everybody wanted to go down there. Tigh went with Ellen and more than half the crew; Kara and Anders went down; Chief and Cally went down. Then the Cylons came, and Adama eventually saved almost everybody. Lee went from being in love with Kara to marrying Dualla, his relationship with whom was always a bit of a joke to Kara. But he tried to make it work. Kara's own marriage didn't go quite so well, and after her abduction and imprisonment by Leoben, she asked for a divorce.

Now there's a pair of people boxing under bright lights: it's Apollo and Helo. Last seen fighting over whether or not they should commit genocide on Helo's wife's people.

Eighteen months ago, the morning after breaking ground on New Caprica, Apollo woke up naked, on the ground. He was alone.

Helo and Lee circle each other; Lee remembers dancing with Kara the day they broke ground on the settlement; how he kissed Dualla on the wing of a Raptor one morning, in the bright sunshine.

Starbuck climbs off Anders and thanks him, saying it was just what she needed. She immediately starts getting dressed, and he snits that he's glad to be of service.

Sharon cheers Helo on at the match, as he hits Lee again and again.

Starbuck can't find her shirt and is getting more and more frustrated. She needs out. She's running late. There's a dance. Anders finds it, but holds it out of her reach. "Kara, I want you back. I want our marriage back. I want a real marriage." And if she's not ready for that? "I don't know. Then I guess you'll never be. Maybe because I'm not what you really want after all." That is precisely two-thirds of the point. Good on Anders. Why is he here? ["For me? Is that reason enough?" -- Joe R] She stares at him and grabs her dogtags: "I'm late for the dance." She'll need her dogtags for the dance; Sam already said he doesn't want them anymore. At the door, she grabs his boots and hurls them inside. He lies back as she slams the door behind her.

Looking down on the floor, Kara watches the fight. She remembers waking up with Apollo, on New Caprica; she heads downstairs to the ring. Kat's urging Lee on as Kara approaches Sharon: "If it isn't the Fighting Agathons, huh?" Sharon tends to Helo before the round and notes that Starbuck's running late as usual. "At least I got here in time to watch you kick the CAG's ass!" Kat advises Lee on the round; Helo wows about how Lee's really coming after him. "He's a tough little fracker, I'll give him that." The Fighting Agathons are very hardcore but sweet with each other. Cottle watches the round begin, cutely shadowboxing with himself. Dualla and Adama approach as Sharon and Starbuck watch. "Look at that," marvels Kara. "A couple months ago you would've had to roll him into this ring." Sharon nods without taking her eyes off Helo. "Not anymore. You know, with a cooler head, he might have half a chance." Kat and the crowd cheer, shouting Helo and Lee on.

Lee remembers Main Street on New Caprica, how he walked through the crowd with his uniform disheveled, and how he saw Sam and Kara holding hands, and how he pushed past her, heart breaking.

Tigh counts him out. Leaning on the ropes, he stares down at Kara, nearly knocked out. "Come on," she whispers, urging him to stand up. Kara wants to see Lee keep fighting and never give up. Kara Thrace loves Lee Adama. Cottle judges Lee too hurt to continue and calls the match for Helo. Apollo fights it but eventually leaves the ring. Tigh calls the match.

Off to the side, Starbuck approaches Apollo, congratulatory and nasty in equal amounts, as usual. "Good fight. Bit off a little more than you can chew, huh?" He ignores her. "Oh, come on, Lee. Don't be that way. Stick around. The night's young!" He finally looks at her, saying she'll have to enjoy it without him. "Pulling your tags out so soon?" They were never just dogtags to Kara. "I'm done, Kara," he says wearily. Dualla watches them, her face a dark line. Starbuck drops her tags into the box: "I'm not." He stands up a little straighter. "Now who's biting off more than they can chew, Captain?" She gets in his face: "Not me, from where I'm standing, Major." He pulls his tags back off and drops them in the box, then shoves past her. She clears her throat, watches him walk away, and wonders what's going to happen .

Credits. 41,422 souls in the Fleet. 17 months ago, or 8 months before the Occupation. Raptors flew overhead, building the settlement. Dualla and Lee walked down the street, marveling at their progress on New Caprica. Dualla had been down to the surface since the Groundbreaking; Lee never went back. "I'd still rather sleep in a warm bunk every night then muck around in this muck." Dualla grinned. "Bunk's gonna be plenty warm tonight. He said yes." Apollo was excited to hear it: the Admiral approved Dualla's transfer to the Pegasus. They were going to be together. So of course Kara and Sam walked up. "You two just don't know how to keep a secret, do you? So what, are you guys here to see Baltar put a shovel in the ground?" Anders quoted the invite: "Join the celebration as we break ground for a better tomorrow." They laughed about how stupid it all is. Dualla spoke up, pushing it just a tad: "There's an open bar." Starbuck laughed, and pointed at Lee: "You gotta let your better half do the talking for you, she gets right to the point!" She grabbed Dualla around the shoulders and dragged her toward the bar, friendly and laughing. Lee and Anders stared at each other. "Let's go find us a better tomorrow!"

Elsewhere, Roslin sat down beside Adama, laughing at him for playing in the sand. He hadn't touched ground in a very long time. He wanted it in his hands and under his feet. "It's not sand, it's alluvial deposits. This used to be the river mouth." Now, though, it was all dried up. "You just had to take off your shoes and play in the alluvial deposits. How romantic," she murmured, with a sidelong glance. He kept playing with the sand, adorably, and finally looked up: "That's a nice color on you." She glowed, in her lovely red dress, and they agreed how nice it was to see each other. It was about a month since she tried to steal the election, and he talked her out of it. She'd never really needed him that bad before.

Roslin finds Adama, standing at ringside, and explains that her father was an "avid fight fan," so she loves boxing. That doesn't surprise me in the slightest: "I love a good fight," she says. Dualla works on Lee, while Starbuck wraps her hands. "I heard about your so-called 'dance.' Accidentally, I might add." Adama apologizes, explaining that the dance is a private tradition. "There's a lot of frustration aboard warships. Arguments become grudges, then end up being feuds. This allows them to let off some steam out in the open so everybody can participate. Rank doesn't matter. As long as you throw your tags in the box, everyone's fair game." (You couldn't do this, say, around the time they started holding secret courts and airlocking each other?) The current match ends, and Tigh calls up the dancer: Hotdog. Roslin asks if he threw his tags in, and Adama laughs. "No. No, I wish. All the frustrations that I have..." Are in my pants. I'd like to see Roslin and Adama go a few rounds. Tigh asks Hotdog for his dance partner; Hotdog names Starbuck. I wonder why? What's he got to work through with her? Helo grins at Kara, the Karl And Kara Show. Kat shouts her name, Helo urges her up and she climbs into the ring. They begin to fight.

Kara remembers standing in Main Street with Sam, watching Lee's face as he got closer. Silently begging him to understand the story she's been telling him for years. She remembers how he pushed past them with an angry word, and how she stood there, ashamed, and almost cried, and let him go.

In the ring, she finally drops Hotdog. Lee and Kara stare at each other. Their fight's still coming.

Commercial. Gaius Baltar broke ground on the settlement of New Caprica, to the sound of applause and cheers. Jammer was there, and Duck. "Thank you. Let this day be remembered as the day we broke ground for our new tomorrow." A new tomorrow without fear or terror or problems: a new presidency for a new world. A chance to rest.

At the makeshift bar for Groundbreaking Day, Anders was telling a story about handcuffs and drinking straws, to Tigh's loud approbation. Saul caught his wife's eye, and they smiled sweetly at each other. No more catting around, no more ambiguity, no more jealousy. A second honeymoon. Later, they sat together, alone. "Did I ever tell you how glad I am I married you?" She smiled at him. She was beautiful. "Not once." He grinned, and said he'd save it for a special occasion; they kissed.

Now Tigh stands in the middle of a boxing ring, watching them bleed for each other, all alone.

Sam sat at the bar on New Caprica. Kara was half-lit, careening into him giddily. They laughed, and kissed. And Lee watched them.

Roslin and Adama stood near the dance floor, listening to Gaeta go on and on. He was fresh and excited about his new job, working with the President, innocent, stumbling over himself, recognizing the new Finance Minister, tearing off to talk to him. Adama and Roslin chuckled, and Adama pulled out the joint they'd stashed when he ran up. "Oh, my Gods," Roslin breathed, mirthfully. "I didn't think he'd ever leave!" They agreed Gaeta's a good kid, and leaned back, against the dance floor. "You say this stuff grows around here?" She nodded, and looked closely at him, phrasing her request in the form of a little real estate discussion. "In the mountains north of here there's this little stream that comes down into this lake the water is so clear it's like looking through glass. I'm thinking of building a cabin." Up in the mountains it wasn't so dry. You could rest. Adama finished the joint: "That's good." She nodded, happy, relieved to be on New Caprica, with him. "Mmm. It is good." It was all good; all of it was good. The settlement, the Groundbreaking, the new life. It was good.

Roslin shouts her approval at a "beautiful combination," in the middle of a fight. A deck hand approaches and asks Chief what he missed. "Grisky, you done that bird already?" Grisky whines. "Gyro's giving me trouble. Come on, Chief! I'm the only one over there." Chief smiles, chills out, waves it off. "Frack it, get yourself a drink." Adama stares at him from down the line. "Ship down, Chief." Chief smiles, chills out, waves it off: "Yeah, we'll get it tomorrow. I'm figuring I'll give 'em a little R&R." Adama stares at him and remembers that feeling.

18 months ago, he poured Chief a drink, up on Galactica, and congratulated him on Cally's pregnancy. "I may be jumping the gun, but... heh! The first boy born on Galactica!" Chief looked down, and away, feeling like a traitor. "That's the thing I want to talk to you about, sir. Um, Cally doesn't want him born here. And neither do I. Not if he has a chance to grow up breathing fresh air." Adama handed him the drink, asked for clarification. "Well, we both would like to request to be relieved of duty and settle on New Caprica." They're NCO, they didn't ask for this. But Bill was losing people left and right, and like it or not, Chief and Cally were and are in some ways the heart of the Fleet, especially for Bill. "No, no way. You're both here for the duration."

The fight ends, and Adama hands Roslin his glasses. "Can you hold these? Thank you." The crowd quiets down as Adama gets up in the ring. "Chief," he blurts, and people start whispering. "Get your fat, lazy ass up here." Chief's like a son to him. Every attack, every criticism, every rude comment he hands out, it's pointed back at him: not Chief for being lazy, not Lee for being fat. Bill Adama, for letting it happen. Tigh watches as Helo wraps Adama's hands. "Make 'em tight," Bill says. In the other corner, Chief's reassuring Cally: "He's an old man, it's fine. He's not serious, anyways." Which is the problem. Tigh murmurs into the Admiral's ear: "Sure about this? It's your funeral." Is he asking for it? Or is he demanding it? The crowd cheers as Chief kisses Cally and climbs into the ring. Adama drops Chief almost immediately, lashing out with a powerful punch. Everybody is shocked. Adama looms over him. "Get up, Chief. We're just getting started."

Commercial. New Caprica: Main Street, where Chief told Cally all about the Admiral's decision, doing his Chief thing, making it sound good. Finding the light in things: "It's probably better to have the baby on Galactica anyways. You know, there's, uh, sickbay, doctors, medicine." Cally smiled at him, accepting it. "No, it'll be better. We'll be happier." He kissed her. They would be. They would have been.

Starbuck cheers for Adama as the fight continues.

At the Groundbreaking, everybody was square dancing. Trading partners. Dualla, Sam, Lee, Kara, flying out and back again, into the whirl. Ellen and Tigh kissed, in love. Kara came ramming into Anders at the bar, giggling and drunk. They laughed, and they kissed, and Lee watched, and caught her eye. Now he watches her, the new dance.

Nearby, Roslin stares, and remembers herself and Adama, snuggling behind the dance floor on New Caprica. Her head was on his shoulder, her arm thrown across his body. "Is this really it, Bill? Is this how we're gonna spend all the rest of our days?" Above and behind them, Lee and Kara danced with Dualla and Sam, and the rest of the settlement. Trading partners, round and round. "Maybe we should just enjoy this," Laura said, into Bill's shoulder. He looked up at the sky, suddenly bashful: "I am." Aww. She nestled closer. "No, no, I mean enjoy being here on this planet as long as it lasts. I mean, maybe the Cylons come back, maybe they don't, but for now, right now...we've got a break." He sighed, she listened to his heartbeat. "I've got people that want to get off the ship, move down here." She smiled to herself, knowing he'd just answered a question she never asked. "Can't say as I blame them. I mean, what are you gonna do?" What was he going to do? Laura doesn't even have dogtags.

Adama bends to shout at the Chief, on the floor of the ring. "This how you fight your enemies, Chief? This how you fight for your life? No excuses. Show me you're a soldier. Get up!" The Chief stands up, and finally hits back. Adama doubles over. Chief comes closer, really angry this time. He doesn't know what it's about yet. "Is that what you want? Is that what you want, Admiral?" When he comes close enough, Adama straightens up, pounding Chief. Everybody cheers; Kara is impressed. "The old man's got chops. He knows when to make his moves, when to hold back. I wish I could say the same for his son." This is how Kara is now. Dualla and Lee stare at her, grossed out beyond belief. The fight continues; Kara keeps yelling.

Kara sat, drinking alone near the dance floor. Lee approached with liquor, and she tossed her empty cup to the ground. "Just in time. I was runnin' on bingo fuel." Apollo saw Anders, lying on the ground, and archly noted that she'd literally drunk him under the table. More to the point: "Where's Dee?" Lee giggled. "Oh, she, uh, packed it in. To go pack." He laughed at his little joke. How much of it was theatre? "Guess it's just you and me then," Kara laughed, and they sat with that, in the growing quiet, as people left the Groundbreaking behind, in twos and threes. "Yep," he said. "It's just you and me." It always was.

Chief finally gets the drop on Adama; Lee shouts for his father. Cottle comes into the ring and tells Adama to quit already. Bill grits at him to stop the bleeding; Laura leans over him. "Coagulant for the swelling and bleeding. Come on, you insist on doing this? You want to do this. You're crazy, right?" His only response is to spit a very terrifying amount of blood into a very gross bucket. "You want to do this?" He looks up at her. "Yeah." She nods. "All right. Keep your guard up. He's coming in wild. Get him with a left hook. You wanna win?" Nope. Obviously. "I'm not gonna win," he says, almost jokingly. The dude -- is it Kelly? -- working on Chief notes that it's Bill's jabs that are killing him. Ask Lee about that.

In the morning after Groundbreaking, still wearing their clothes from the night before, Adama and Roslin approached Cally and the Chief. In the night, Bill asked himself the same question as Kara, and came to the same conclusion as Kara, but that didn't mean he couldn't be merciful. Show a little love to the people that had earned it; the ones that deserved a new life, on this new world. "I've been thinking about, uh, what you said. A Battlestar's no place to raise a family. So I'm gonna miss you, Chief. I wanna wish you good luck." Chief was overwhelmed and happy; Cally nearly cried. "I want you guys to have at least a dozen," he said, and Cally laughed and kissed his cheek. The Admiral poured a line of salt across the ground between them, and said goodbye. Gave them to New Caprica as a symbol of hope. The new tomorrow. She was beautiful, and so young. She fell into the Chief's arms; there were tears of gratitude and love in his eyes. It was good. Life on New Caprica was good. The Admiral did this for them.

Cottle and Roslin watch Chief destroying Adama. Just like he wanted. He finally drops, covered in blood, and Starbuck hangs her head. Everybody goes all Mudville, staring. Needing a hero. Tigh stares down at him. Tigh knows what this is about better than anybody; he's been watching Bill do this longer than we have. The Chief finally helps Adama to stand. Adama stands with his arms on Chief's shoulders, looking at him. Apologizing. Breathing hard. "When you stand on this deck, you be ready to fight, or you dishonor the reason why we're here. Now remember this: When you fight a man, he's not your friend. Same goes when you lead men. I forgot that once. I let you get too close. All of you. I dropped my guard." Kara: "I gave some of you breaks." Saul: "Let some of you go." Cally: "Before the fight was really over. I let this crew and this family disband. And we paid the price in lives. That can't happen again." He climbs out of the ring, trailing salt and alluvial deposits behind him. Epiphanies are great, but how many weeks do you give him this time?

Chief calls to a deck hand, ready to resume working again. Roslin takes Adama's arm and walks him out of the room. Tigh calls the dance over. "Get your booze and your dog tags and let's get out of here." Kara watches them drift away, and yells up at Tigh. What about her apology? "Not enough excitement for one night for you, Captain?" She jumps down to grab Lee, who's also walking away. "Hey! Where the frack do you think you're going?" He shakes his head. "It's over, Kara." This is unfinished. She goes for the gut. "So what? You have the guts to try and frack another man's woman but not to fight one?" This is how she gets what she wants, right up in his face. "I wonder if Dee knew what she was getting. Think she would have settled for sloppy seconds?" Apollo punches her in her stupid face. She smiles at him, vindicated: "Truth stings, don't it?" How many times does she have to do this? How many times do you let yourself get hurt, just to prove you love the person? Even the Cylons know about her mom. "You want a fight, Captain. You got it." He storms off, ready for their match. She stares after him, wondering what happens .

Commercial. Shouting and cheering as Kara circles Lee in the ring, hitting him over and over. Nothing new there. Dualla comes in, and immediately knows everything that's going on, and how we got here, and where it goes from here, and why it's happening. Poor Dualla. "Come on. You afraid to hit me? Or maybe you can't."

Drunken and giddy, Kara and Lee rambled away from the Groundbreaking. Kara pointed at a clearing, under the moon, called it "a great place for a house." Lee scoffed at the idea of her settling down, asked if really meant to give up flying. But Kara is a fighter. "Flying's gonna suck now anyway. Lots of training, endless CAPs. The war's over." She looked at him meaningfully: "So's all the good stuff." New Caprica meant laying down burdens. Things that were too hard.

Lee finally starts hitting back. There's no referee and there's no bell.

"Gimme a tour of the future life of Kara Anders," he said, and she cocked her head at him, brave under the moon. "I'm not getting married." He got confused and stopped making sense, asking too many questions without enough words. He forgot where his dogtags were. "Then what's the point, Kara? I mean, you love him, right?" She pulled back like she'd been burned; her fingers ached. "Where are we going with this, Lee?" But Lee was thinking of the grander picture, this place for a house under the moon. This dream vacation. "Now that's the question, isn't it? Where are we going? I mean, what if this is it? The rest of your life, Kara. Is this how you want to spend it? Is this who you want to spend it with?"

They're evenly matched, fighting their worst. Anders enters and asks Dualla, with a hand upon her arm, what they're doing. "What's it look like?" she says, rolling her eyes. "Looks like they're trying to kill each other." He's sweet, and naïve. "Kill" isn't the word. Dualla just watches, the rest of her life playing out in front of her yet one more time. "That's one perspective."

Kara and Lee kissed, and made love under New Caprica's moon. She laughed quietly in the hush when they were finished. "Well, that makes things more complicated," she said. Another burden. "What are we gonna do?" Lee was feeling expansive and crazed; everything you want in the worst possible way. "What are we gonna do? We accept it. Tomorrow, I tell Dualla, you tell Sam." Just like that? "Just like that." Kara whispered, in the silence: "I don't know." But Lee was in love with love and his own bravery, and wanted to shout it to the skies. Kara laughed at him, because she hadn't ever met this version of Lee before. He was like a little boy. "Yeah, right." He took it as a dare, and against her giggling protests, stood naked under the moon of a fresh new world, without countries or boundaries or enemies, and howled. "My name is Lee Adama, and I love Kara Thrace!" She begged him to stop, calm down, but he reminded her they were on the frontier; he reminded her that this was only fantasy. They were breaking ground. "Well, it's not like anybody'll hear. We're in your cabin in the forest, right?" She smiled at him, at the sudden youth and strength of him. "I love Kara Thrace! And I don't care who fracking knows!" He was everything you could want him to be. In the worst possible way. She called him crazy and told him to get down, but he stood there naked and grinned at her, and promised her he wouldn't stop until she did it too. But she couldn't. You don't say things like that. Not when the Gods seem hellbent on taking everything away. You don't risk that kind of bravery if it really means something. It's better to be alone. "I can't," she said, but he didn't hear her. "Okay, here we go again. Lee Adama," he started to shout, and she finally gave in. She stood up, shivering, naked under a strange moon. "Okay. Ka --" and her breath caught on the enormity of it. She took it as a dare. "Kara Thrace loves Lee Adama!" She squeaked to herself, impressed and afraid and proud of her bravery. To stand naked before the moon and announce it to the world. They kissed. It was everything he wanted.

He drops her. Helo begs her to stand up, urges her on, and she fights dirty. She always fights dirty. With one mighty roundhouse she kicks his feet out from under him. Just like always. Then another half-crouching kick to the face.

Apollo woke up alone, in the alluvial deposits of a foreign nation, a wild world, and under the morning sun he dressed, and headed back into town. He was met by his father, still wearing the same clothes as the night before. Lee didn't look too great, between sleeping outdoors and putting on a wrinkled uniform in the cold morning. "You look like you had a good time," said his father, and he nodded. "It was some party!" Bill smiled. "Yeah, well, it's been a hell of a morning too. You missed all the excitement!" Lee snapped half to attention: "Problems upstairs?" No, no problems. Good things, Bill called them. "Kara got married. Believe that?" Apollo choked on something but his dad didn't notice. "Yep, 'Bout an hour ago. Found herself a priest, went down by the river and got married." Down by the river, where it's wet. Lee choked, sick, and they spotted Kara and Sam, walking down the street. Happy and together. Bill chuckled over the way things had gone with them. "Well, she deserves it, man. We all deserve to be happy. I also gave her permission to muster out along with Tyrol and Cally, a few of the others, so it'll be up to us to make sure there's no mass exodus." But in the end, it was up to them, father and son, to make sure there was. Once Gina turned everything upside down again, and favors turned into indictments, and love turned into hate, and freedom turned into torture. Once New Caprica wasn't good anymore, and Bill had to leave them all behind, and come back and unsettle them back into the Fleet.

Shell-shocked, Lee approached them. They were happy, cuddling in the morning cold as they walked. They didn't even notice him at first.

Lee gets up again. She lands several punches. So does he.

Kara woke up on the morning after Groundbreaking, her head on Lee's chest. She remembered what they'd done, and what they said. What Lee said. And what she said. And she made a choice, and she looked down at his body beneath hers, and she said goodbye, and she headed into town to get herself a husband. To make things simpler. She left him sleeping there, alone, exposed on a new world. Naked.

They're both bleeding now. His eyes are starting to cross. Her mouth is a wound.

Lee approached Sam and Kara, and she looked at him, sad and afraid: how far would he push it? Were they about to meet Brave New Lee, who screamed to the sky and felt love so deeply he couldn't help but howl? Or was it regular Lee Adama, who could suffer in silence and fear? Anders stepped forward, ecstatic. "Hey, man. Did you hear the news? We're hitched. We got married! Can you believe it?" Lee admitted that he couldn't believe it. He didn't let her eyes go but he didn't hear what they were saying: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. "No, it was crazy. She comes down, and she wakes me up. She pops the question, she drags me down to the priest, and, bang, like that, we're married!" Lee trained his sights her again: "So it was your idea." Of course it was. He almost laughed. She nearly wept. "Yeah. It was my idea." Sam floated the idea of giving the two of them a minute to talk alone, but Lee nodded, put on his Apollo face, shook Sam's hand, congratulated him. Wished him luck. "You're gonna need it," he said, pushing past her. She felt him going.

Lee goes down, gets back up again.

Apollo ran to Dualla, kissing her on the wing of the Raptor in the sunlight. It was very romantic and lovely, that morning, but not as romantic as you might have thought.

The hits come slower and slower. Dualla watches. Kat screams, "Watch that pretty face!" But I honestly don't know which one she means. On Colonial Day, she wore a beautiful dress and smiled at him, clear and easy. The night before the settlement began, they took shots and ended up in bed together. She's bleeding, dukes up. They're both unsteady. She came back into his life, springing up at him from the floor, two years after Zak's funeral. She came back into Lee's life again and again and again; kicked him in the nads, shot him, disappeared again, waited until he was happy and content before she attacked again. She kissed Anders in front of him, a look of triumph on her face. The hits they're landing, when they connect at all, aren't anything. Token punches that say nothing. They fall into each other's arms, in the middle of the ring, covered in blood. When they rescued her off Caprica, Helo and Sharon in tow, she kissed him exuberantly and dared him, with her eyes and a funny grin. She teased him and said, again and again, "You love me! You love me! Lee Adama loves me!" And she knew what it meant, and he just thought it was obscene. It's not her that has problems delineating kinds of love: it's him. She doesn't have time for the categories. And after she shot him, when the Pegasus was nearly lost, he held her in his arms, just like this, and said, "Forever." Lee Adama loves Kara Thrace.

The crowd disperses until it's just Dualla and Anders watching. Lee and Kara stop moving altogether, locked up tight in their little box. "I'm outta here," says Anders, taking off, leaving Dualla to watch. She just shakes her head: there's all kinds of love, and all kinds of dancing. Kara Thrace loves Lee Adama: her dog tags never leave the box. Whatever forms it takes, whether it's hateful sex or lovely sex or marriage or sibling rivalry or simple friendship, you're either in or you're out. Her kind of commitment never had a thing to do with sex; after Leoben, I don't know if it ever will. That's what Dualla gets about Kara, and what Lee never will, because he's Little Miss Rules and Regs. He needs to draw lines around it, say this kind of dancing but not that kind, these kinds of loyalties but not those. This behavior and not that behavior. But Dualla gets that too, and she knows she's another line around it; the line of salt that accomplishes his separation from it. Lee and Kara embrace. "I missed you," she says, and he speaks, thickly at first, choking on the hits he's taken. The blood she's already spilled. "I missed you too," he says, and wonders what happens . "I missed you too."