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LET HER GO, LEE.
---

He watches her viper exploding time and again, time and again. Into little pieces, debris, fiery arrows shooting through the clouds. Golden and white, as white as stars, as nova. As golden as Picon sun.

And again he chases her, and she’s still so very much alive. She’s talking to him, “Let me go, Lee,” and he tries to reach out and grab her, because he can’t let her go! He let her go in so many ways already! He let go of loving her . . .

“I love Kara Thrace!” he cries to the sky. To the cloudless sky of New Caprica. To the empty plains, so empty now, without her. And high above, where New Caprican moon should be, her viper explodes again. And he can do nothing, because he’s standing naked under cloudless New Caprican sky. Fiery arrows fall on his naked skin and burn, burn, burn . . .

He let her go.

He let her down.

He let her fly when she wasn’t ready.

“That’s what she did to me. Don’t you think revenge is sweet?” a voice from the past asks.

Lee turns abruptly and sees him--no! them--standing there, between the bushes in front of a little house that she was going to build there. She holds her arms around Zak’s neck, and smiles at him lovingly. He reaches out and grabs her waist.

“Maybe we were meant to die in the same way?” he jokes and she laughs like a thousand diamonds.

And they both ignore Lee so completely. Because the world and the eternity belong to them, there’s no place for him there.

Lee watches them kiss and her eyes are so bright with joy and love, so bright and shining. He could never make her eyes so bright and shining. Glowing. Burning.

And when she hits the hard deck again, those shining eyes explode in a blaze. He still can do nothing, because he’s stuck naked on New Caprica, and she’s light years away, or she was rather, because now she’s dead.

He has to go back to town. So he walks naked, because his cloths burned along with her. Naked he faces his father.

“Was a hell of a party,” the Old Man winks.

Lee doesn’t respond, because he sees the two of them, Sam and Kara, coming. Their matching tattoos spread their wings and they fly to him. She’s smiling, her eyes are shining, and Lee says, “You can’t marry him! I can’t let you go!”

“But you did let me go,” she smiles smugly. And spreads her wings and climbs into the blue sky with one swift move. And explodes; fiery arrows burn his skin.

Anders looks down at Lee, who’s standing naked on naked New Caprican soil, and he knows what he’s done. What they have done with Kara and that Lee let her go.

So Lee turns and walks to the raptor, where Dee waits and she sees him naked and she knows it too.

“So you’ll take me instead?” she mocks. “For as long as Kara lets you?

He wants to deny, but he stands there naked and she can see his lies.

“She never loved you,” Dualla hisses and Lee wants to smack her. “Remember?”

Suddenly he sits under his viper, dressed in his flight suit, mulling over his insecurities. Kara comes near and sits beside him.

“I’m not going back out there,” he whispers.

And she shrugs. “Then don’t. You’ll live longer.”

“I don’t want to--”

She looks at him with her burning eyes, and he knows she doesn’t want to listen to any of this.

So he changes the subject. “I’m sorry I let you go out there. I made you go out there. I thought it was the right thing--” “--When you fall from your bike, you have to get up and ride again!” his father, the Admiral, stands above him and yells.

And Lee, the CAG, picks up the bike; the small wheels on the sides removed, so it’s no longer as stable. He sits back on it, swallowing tears. The bike is ridiculously small. He should be sitting in a viper!

“Why didn’t you tell me that when I fell out from the viper?” Lee screams to his father, but instead he sees Kara.

“So you blamed me for not holding your hand? So this was a pay-off?”

“No!” Lee gasps. He wants to take those words back. And those about trust and flying her wing. But it’s too late. “I don’t blame you, Kara! I never did!” he screams, but she moves away into the mist of clouds, where he can’t follow, because someone holds his arms.

“I never blamed you,” he moans, “for anything. Don’t punish me. Come back.”

He opens his eyes and sees his wife’s face. Dee doesn’t say anything, gets up quietly, goes to the corner of the room and returns with a glass of water. She’s the only one who knows what’s going on, and taking the glass from her hands, and watching her sit beside him, so silent and still, he feels naked again. During the day he can walk in disguise of the CAG, even the son and . . . the husband. But at night, when he has no control, he’s naked. And she can see that he doesn't let Kara go.

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.end