Dualla wasn't surprised to see that Ten Forward was as nice as the rest of the ship. " This place makes Joe's look like…."

"A bunch of scrap metal and old Viper parts made into furniture," Helo said helpfully. " So do all Starfleet ships look like this, Felix? I might have to request a transfer." He was teasing, Dee could tell, but only a little. And he had a point. It was damn nice on the Enterprise.

After a moment, Gaeta chuckled. " No… This is the flagship of the fleet. The last ship I was on was a lot smaller and not as nice. We didn't have a bar, we just moved tables in the cafeteria for parties." He gestured to the mostly empty room. " We should grab a table. The first shift gets off right now, so it will be busy soon."

" A window seat," Dualla said, and started moving before the men could protest. The Enterprise had a lot of windows to space. " Look, we can see the fleet from here." She watched as the ships gently jostled for position. The Galactica dwarfed the other ships, it dwarfed the Enterprise and that pleased her in some odd way. She turned to her three companions. " Come on, sit down." She grabbed Felix and pulled him to a chair. " You're sitting by me, and you are going to answer all my questions. Is that understood?" She held her stern look only for a moment, only until he smiled.

" Ok, ok," he said, holding his hands up in surrender as he took a seat. " I promise I'll answer."

" Good, because I have questions," she said. " I have so many questions." Some that would wait until she was certain he was all right. Felix seemed very tense for someone who had the luck of the gods. Start small, she told herself. " Is Felix Gaeta even your name?"

Helo laughed, and after a moment so did Felix. " Yes," he said, " That's actually my name, although I did skip putting my middle names down. My full name is Felix Spyridon Palamas Gaeta. It could be worse." He grinned. " And I'm from Earth."

" Earth, really? And here I thought you said you were from some Delphi mountain town that had no name." Dee said it in a teasing tone. " I have to wonder if you're really some sad orphan with no family."

He smiled again, but she had the impression she had made a mistake, touched on a sensitive topic. Felix leaned back in his chair, looking both happy and worried at the same time. " My parents are still alive, and my grandparents, and I have six older sisters, and more nieces and nephews than I can count."

" They must be very pleased," Lee said. Dualla looked at him sharply. Lee was angry about something, she knew that tone. The question was why. It was hardly Felix's fault that his family wasn't dead.

Felix eyed him carefully, and Dualla realized that he was picking up on Lee's irritation as well. " They are. If I know my mother and father, they are both pulling every string they can to get on a ship heading out here. Which means in about three weeks my mother will actually be here, telling me I look too thin." He tapped the computer pad he had brought with him. "Here's a picture of my family. It was right after I graduated from the Academy. My sisters, the ones in Starfleet had leave." He handed the pad to her.

The picture was the same sort of photo her own family would have taken, although her family wouldn't have made a digital photo that was so clear, and crisp. There was a much younger looking Felix, smiling and standing next to a taller man that had to be his father. Certainly he had the same curly hair as Felix, and the same facial features, but the man towered over Felix and was bulkier looking. It didn't help that Felix looked like a teenager, a young teenager. The sisters were as tall or taller, and most shared Felix's coloring and hair, although two of them had the blonde coloring and fair skin of the older woman. His mother, Dee assumed. They were a very attractive family, she couldn't deny that at all. She passed the pad to Helo.

" You have hot sisters," Helo said. He pointed to the scenery in the background, a dramatic looking waterfall with thick green forest all around. " Is this Earth?"

Gaeta nodded. " It's a place called Snoqualmie Falls. It's not that far from where I grew up. And don't call my sisters hot."

" Or what?" Helo said, grinning as he passed the pad to Lee.

" They'll beat you up," Gaeta said. " My sister Sofia is as tall as you. Trust me, I was always the small one."

0o0o0o0

" This is when you graduated from Starfleet Academy?" Lee asked after looking. He wasn't sure why he was irritated with Gaeta, but he was. Angry was too harsh, it wasn't fair to be angry. There were too many factors that couldn't be helped. In a perfect world, he never would have met Felix Gaeta. Gaeta would not have had the accident, an accident Lee still didn't understand, that caused him to be living on Caprica. In a perfect world, the Cylons wouldn't have invaded, and all of the events leading up to his sitting across the table in a bar on the Enterprise would never have happened. It wasn't fair to be mad at Gaeta.

But irritated was fair. Because just a few hours on board the Enterprise told him just how badly the Twelve Colonies looked. Even if they still had the Cloud Nine and the Pegasus in the fleet, they would still look horribly backward technologically. And worse, the people of the Twelve Colonies looked like complete savages thanks to Gaeta. It wasn't entirely fair to be angry with Gaeta about that. But it was fair to be irritated.

" Yes." Gaeta looked at him coolly, in that way he had. That smart way he had, which only irritated Lee more, because he knew without a doubt that Gaeta had done something to the FTL drive, and he had promised Roslin that he wouldn't say anything.

That his wife, his ex-wife was almost sitting in Gaeta's lap wasn't bothering him at all. "So how old are you, Felix? Because you can't be twenty seven." It was interesting, the things Gaeta had lied about. Not just that he was from Earth, because that was something Lee understood. It was the little things, like his age, that Lee found odd.

" I'm thirty two, Lee." Gaeta said it easily. " Almost thirty three, to be honest. I lied about my age."

"You don't look thirty three." Dee said. " Not at all."

" I have good genes." Gaeta looked awkward. " It runs in the family."

" You're four years old than me?" Helo asked, his tone incredulous. Lee wasn't surprised, he had already assumed that Gaeta had to be older, but he had to admit, the man didn't look his age.

" Why?" Lee asked. He had generally found Gaeta to be extremely honest and while Gaeta looked very young for his age, it was hardly a terrible thing.

Gaeta shrugged. " Because it's easier to be an ignorant naïve mountain kid when you're seventeen. People expect a twenty two year old to have lived a little bit, and I had no way to justify knowing absolutely nothing without… being a little bit younger than I was. I could pass for seventeen, so I did. It worked. The recruiter bought it, I got a place to live, a job, and time to read up on all the things I needed to know to pass myself off as a Caprican. That was a lot. Fortunately there are a lot of odd similarities. You'll see. I think they have you three scheduled to attend the exchange officer briefing tomorrow."

Dee and Helo both looked at their own pads to see that. Lee didn't bother. He had already checked and it was true. Gaeta's answer made sense too. It was clever and well thought out. Which wasn't a surprise. His father had always had the opinion that Felix Gaeta was clever, and so had he. But… " All right, I have another question. You're not… a tactical officer in Starfleet, are you?"

"No," Gaeta said. He seemed to relax a little. " I'm not really anything here, right now, but I was in Engineering. I was thinking of going into the Science track, but I'm so far behind now… Everything I learned about tactics in Starfleet was… non applicable in the Colonial Fleet, so I had to relearn it all. I didn't expect to be an officer when I enlisted. I was really just looking for a job that would let me figure out what to do next, and it just snowballed from there."

" Now wait a minute," Dee said, her eyes lighting up with interest. " Correct me if I'm wrong but… I get the impression that Starfleet officers are pretty smart. But, you never seemed much above average until the Cylon attack and then it was like you suddenly got a lot better at math. I never saw anyone calculate jumps in their head until that jump from Ragnar Anchorage. What about that?"

" I never said I wasn't good at math," Gaeta said after a moment. " I just didn't want to stand out. It wouldn't have made sense, with the story I told. But I also didn't want to get killed so I… got better at math."

" So why didn't you say anything about the Circle?" Lee said it without thinking, but once he did, he realized that was what had been irritating him. It made the Admiral look terrible, not just to the Federation, but to the people in the fleet, that a trusted officer hadn't confided in the Admiral. After all, Gaeta had been in the Resistance. After Tigh had made it known that Gaeta had provided them with the access codes, Lee knew a lot of people had been very impressed, including his father.

Gaeta looked at him with both anger and surprise on his face. " Are you serious, Lee? It isn't obvious?"

The problem was that not only wasn't it obvious to him, it was clear by Helo and Dee's expressions, that it was obvious to them. Which turned his irritation into anger. " I asked you a question. And if you could tell the truth, that'd be nice."

Gaeta glared at him. " Do you really not know?"

Lee leaned over the table. " Answer the question, Felix."

" You mean why didn't I didn't I tell the Old Man that his best friend, and his pretend daughter tried to execute me? And that your pal Kara still wanted to kill me even after finding out that she'd still be some Cylon's sex toy if I hadn't risked my life to get those codes?" Gaeta was nearly spitting from anger. " Because the Old Man wouldn't have done a thing. I respect your father, Lee. In most ways, he's a good man, and I'm here alive because of him, but there's no way he would have done anything to Col. Tigh or to Kara Thrace. They're his family, and I am not, and we all understand that there's a pecking order and what our place is. That's why Lt. Palladino got blamed for the Gideon Massacre, that's why Col. Tigh is still the XO after going on a two month bender." Gaeta smirked at him. " It's why you were made commander of the Pegasus after you openly committed mutiny. Amongst other things."

" It's why you're not in the brig for attempted murder," Lee said, his anger rising.

" Yes," Gaeta said angrily," and would you like to bet on how quickly I would have been executed if it had been you I stabbed, and not someone the Admiral despised? I know my place. If it had been someone like you or Tigh, I'd still be jail. For that matter, do you think I've just been having fun the last ten years? That I was just amusing myself, having a great time at your expense?"

0o0o0o0

Helo watched the exchange nervously. He wondered if Lee realized he was about to start the fight that they had been told to avoid. With Felix Gaeta, a nice guy generally, who had flipped out pretty extravagantly not that long ago. That wouldn't go over well with their hosts at all.

Especially since Gaeta had a point. " I don't think," he said softly, putting a hand on Lee's knee under the table, " That anyone thinks that you were having fun."

" Is everything all right?" Everyone turned. An older black woman, wearing a large brightly colored hat stood by their table. " And would anyone like a drink?"

Gaeta stood up suddenly, unclenching his fists. " I can't," he said, his face losing the angry caste it had taken on, replaced, Helo realized, by exhaustion. " This wasn't a good idea. I've been up since about two this morning and I have briefings and meetings all day tomorrow. I'll see you guys tomorrow." With that he walked off.

" What about you folks?" The woman smiled. " I'm Guinan by the way, the bartender. Do you have something in mind, or should I surprise you?" She looked them over. " I'll surprise you."

Lee waited until she walked away to speak. " Do you both agree with Gaeta? That the Admiral wouldn't have done anything because he likes Kara and Tigh more than he likes Gaeta?"

Helo hesitated. Clearly Lee had never really considered it, and Helo didn't consider himself the best person to point it out. At the same time… " Lee, Gaeta showed up for work covered with bruises. He also showed up on the medical list because four days after the exodus, he somehow managed to get three ribs broken, with no explanation. The Admiral never asked me one question about it, and at the time, I was the XO. And you'll notice that I'm not the XO now."

He wasn't upset about that, not really. It was enjoyable work, but he was just as happy flying a Raptor. What bothered him was that Tigh was still a drunk, and being tortured by Cylons hadn't improved the man's disposition at all. " Once the President gave amnesty to everyone, there was no point in saying anything, but honestly, no, I don't think the Admiral would have done anything to Kara or Tigh. He never did anything before."

Lee stood up, and Helo was pleased that the man looked a little calmer. " I think I'm going to go to my fancy quarters and remind myself that things could be a lot worse."

" So…" Dee said as Lee walked away, " was this as awkward as possible?"

" I think we're the sane ones." Helo said after a moment.

Dee shook her head. " There's something wrong. I would have thought Felix would have been a little more happy. He gets to go home." She sighed. " He's my friend, Helo, but I can't help but be a little jealous. He's getting everything I wanted, to go home, to see his family."

" Maybe that's why he's unhappy," chimed in a new voice. It was Guinan again, and she pulled up a chair. " Here's your drinks. It seemed like a pina colada type of night. You've never considered that? I haven't really had a chance to meet Lt. Cmdr. Gaeta, but he strikes me as the type to take everything to heart. A worrier. The sort that might feel bad over every mistake he makes, and maybe never considers that mistakes sometimes happen. Am I getting close? You should try the pina colada."

Helo did. It was sweet and milky, with a surprising alcoholic burn. Like one of the fancy Picon drinks the Cloud Nine used to serve, but with unusual rich flavors. Dee also sipped her drink, but she was nodding along to Guinan.

" Felix has always been like that." Dee said. " He never said it, but I know he felt awful about… some of the things that happened. But why wouldn't he be happy to get home?"

" You know, he was with your people for a long time. He made a life for himself. Made friends, good ones I suspect." Guinan smiled secretively. " Losing every single tie to your past is hard. I've done it. You've done it. Your friend has done it twice. Three times really if you count coming back to us. That's not easy at all. Ten years is a long time and things change." She stood up. " If you folks need anything while you're here, you come see me. Tell your friend who left too. I expect him to at least try one of my drinks."

" I didn't think of it that way," Dee said quietly. Helo nodded. He hadn't really considered it from any angle other than just how happy Felix Gaeta should be. It hadn't occurred to him until that moment that Felix had lost everything. His family, his past, he had needed to lie about it all, and create a completely new life. And then lose it again.

It was a hell of a lot easier being the ship's official toasterfrakker. And that was still pretty damn hard.