"All right. The last of Chief's rotgut." Helo sits down beside Lee with a half empty bottle and hands it over. Lee takes a pull and winces, the bitter, acrid burn charring his lungs like embers. "Careful, Commander. I don't know that the hallowed body of the upper echelons can handle homebrew."

"Not that long since I was a JG, Agathon." He takes another pull then, mindful that the bottle's the last and already more than half gone, relinquishes it to Helo. "You glad to be going back to Galactica?"

The name conjures up images for both of them, Lee imagines. He knows it does for him, and he never had a lover or a baby or a Cylon of his own. Karl tilts his head and drains a good portion of the bottle in one angry swallow. Helo's been his right-hand man, his XO for nearly a year now since more than half of the fleet deserted to the planet below. He thinks it wounds Helo that Starbuck went, almost as much as it wounds him.

"Don't know, Commander. I imagine the Old Man's going to have to teach me everything you don't know, so I'll be too busy to notice for a while." It's a tender joke, a raw nerve, but Helo gets away with things no one else can. Lee reaches for the bottle and takes another hit, licking his lips as he sets the bottle on the metal grate between them. "Tigh's been working with Dualla. Gonna send her over here to whip you into shape." He cocks an eyebrow. "Do they not know?"

"With my father?" Lee shrugs, and his heart aches a little more. He's not seen his father in ages, barely talks on the phone as the word from the planet trickles up in fits and starts, every report more disheartening, more depressing. "Maybe he doesn't know and we'll be treading on dangerous ground. Maybe he does know and, in his way, this is a peace offering."

"Man, I wish all my peace offerings looked like Dualla."

Lee smiles without feeling it and picks up the bottle, tilting it to watch the amber-gold liquid slide around like fresh oil. "Will you see Sharon?"

Helo is all stillness, like a solid stand of trees. "I don't know." There's an echo of pain in his voice and, for a moment, Lee's sorry he asked, but Helo's the closest thing he's ever had to a friend, and he doesn't know how not to ask. Not anymore. He's seen too many people die to leave questions unanswered. "You ever think about seeing Kara?"

Knife for knife, and it's a duel Lee didn't even realize he was engaged in. Kara's name guts him like her voice, like her laughter, like the life she's found where Starbuck doesn't exist anymore. He's never known Kara, he thinks. He only knew what she let him know, and safety lay in call signs and bottles he never saw the bottom of. "Kara doesn't need to see me. She's got a life. A husband. I'm just someone she used to know."

"Everyone that settled on that planet…that's all we all are to them now." Helo takes the bottle and takes a drink, and Lee knows he's not taking about anything he's actually saying. "They made new history the minute they had rock under their feet."

The metallic voice of CIC fills the flight deck with noise and Lee takes a breath and holds it, waiting for something he's never quite sure of. The sound always fills him with a terror he can't name that never seems to fade until right before the next call comes through. There's the silent vacuum of space for a millisecond and then the doors close and doors open and then the raptor is gliding onto the deck. It settles near them and the hatch swings open.

Karl stands and grabs his duffel, swinging it over the railing so that it skids to a stop not a foot from where Dualla is now standing. Lee gets up and takes a deep breath. Death, he reminds himself, isn't the only ending. He looks at Helo and nods then smiles as the taller man offers him a formal salute. "Barely a year ago you were holding a gun to my head."

"Barely a year ago, you were a smart ass little shit. No offense, Sir."

"None taken." He lifts his hand and returns Helo's salute. "Tell the Admiral…" Lee shakes his head. "No. Just…Good luck, Karl."

"I'll tell the Admiral you're a damn fine Commander, Sir." He drops his hand and then grabs the railing, vaulting over it, boots ringing against the metal as he lands. "And I'll only be lying a little."