Title: Hold You Down
Summary: "But one look from him would always send a shiver skating down her spine. He'd always be able to hurt her more than anyone could with a well-placed word. She'd never be rid of him." Kara/Anders and Lee/Dee with a major Kara/Lee undercurrent.

---

Kara wished she could say it all came as a surprise. The rest of Galactica certainly seemed shocked enough when Dee and Billy broke it off. It was the most exciting thing that had happened in weeks; the couple everyone had pegged to be the first marriage post-attacks, suddenly over in the blink of an eye. But Kara wasn't surprised. She could see the smile Dee tried to hide, even if no one else noticed.

Even if she hadn't walked into the rec room that day to find Lee's arms trapping Dee against the wall, his lips on her neck, Kara would have known.

She wished she had the excuse that it was all a surprise. It might help account for the pit in her stomach every time either one of them was around. She could blame it on the shock, the not knowing.

But she did know, had known for a while, and that was almost worse.

---

"Kara!" Helo's voice bellowed outside the officers' quarters.

Yanking a shirt over her head, Kara turned to face him as he threw the hatch open. "You're back?" she asked excitedly.

"We're back," he replied. "Everyone else is down in the hangar bay getting checked out by medical."

"Oh, gods," Kara said, hit with a sudden fluttering in her stomach. "How many did we – I mean, did everybody—"

Helo cocked an eyebrow. "Come see for yourself," he said, holding his hand out to her.

They ran the whole way back, and Kara nearly fell down the flight of stairs when she looked across the bay toward where the medics were working on the Caprican survivors. There were only about twenty, and she felt an ugly twist in her gut. But then one of the medics moved to the left and there he was, sitting on one of the examining tables. Kara skidded to a stop at the bottom of the steps, Helo bumping into her back.

She pinpointed the exact moment Anders saw her standing there. He abruptly stopped talking to the person next to him and slid off the examining table, started walking in her direction. Grinning, Kara met him halfway.

She threw her arms around his neck, curling her hands around the back of his head. His arms circled around her waist, lifting her up slightly as he chuckled in her ear, "Gods, it's good to see you."

He placed her back on the ground but she still clutched at him for dear life, convincing herself that he was really there. "I wanted to come with the rescue party, I did, I just—"

Anders cut her off, his hand stroking her hair. "Hey, it's fine. We made it here, didn't we?"

She pulled back to smile at him. "Yes, you did." Leaning up on tiptoe, she pressed her lips to his. This was good, this was simple. She'd missed him.

Kara could feel Lee's eyes on her from across the hangar bay, but she closed her eyes tight and tried not to notice.

---

She woke up to the sensation of a hand gripping her arm, shaking her slightly. Still foggy with sleep, she jolted upright and struck out blindly with her free arm.

"Kara!" She relaxed slightly at the sound of Anders' voice. Opening her eyes a bit, she squinted against the dim lights shining from the baseboards; she could just barely make out his shadowy form sitting in front of her. They'd given him a rack in the ensigns' quarters, and while she was grateful for any excuse to sleep away from the officers' quarters over the past few weeks, she always woke up disoriented when she spent the night there.

"Sorry," she muttered, leaning forward and resting her head on his chest. "What time is it?"

"About three." Kara felt his hand thread through the hair at the back of her neck, his fingers combing gently through the tangles there. "You were dreaming," he said, concern in his voice. "Tossing and turning and muttering things. You remember any of it?"

"Nope. But I hardly ever remember my dreams. What'd I say?"

"I was asleep for most of it, but when I woke up you were calling for Zak, apologizing to him for something."

Gods, Zak, I'm so sorry…

She didn't remember the dream, but those words had become part of an inner monologue in the past three years. It didn’t surprise her that it would spill over into her dreams too.

Lifting her head, she locked eyes with him. "You can understand that, right? I've told you about him." Not everything, she reminded herself, but that was a conversation for another day.

"Of course," Anders replied. "You were going to marry him. You loved him. That doesn't just go away."

"Yeah," she said quietly. It had been years since the thought of Zak had made her want to curl up in a ball and drift into nothingness. But every now and then she'd remember his laugh or his horrible luck at the triad table and her chest would tighten so unexpectedly, she'd have to gasp for breath. Zak had been the first person in her life to love her so completely, so unconditionally; she'd never had to earn his smiles or compliments or whispered declarations of love. He was gone, but he'd left that feeling behind, and she clung to it in times when it seemed like she had nothing else. "I did love him," she said to Anders. "But that doesn't mean—"

"I know," he interrupted her with a small smile. "I'm not worried about that." His hand played with hers, his fingers tracing along the lines of her palm. Kara was about to suggest they go back to sleep when she noticed the small furrow in his brow.

"What?" He didn't answer right away. "Was there something else I said? You know," she joked, hoping to lighten his mood, "a girl can't be held accountable for what she says when she isn't conscious. So whatever it is—"

"You called for Lee," Anders said abruptly. "'Lee, it's dark. I can't see anything. Help me.'"

If the thought of Zak occasionally took her breath away, the sound of Lee's name, tossed back in her face like this, was a sock to the gut. Kara drew her knees to her chest, her arms hugging her legs.

"That's Apollo, right?" he continued.

"Yes," she replied, leaning her chin on her knee. She knew he was waiting for her to say something else, reassure him like she had with Zak, but she had nothing to say. When it came to Lee, Kara's head and heart were full of everything and nothing and words to express that just didn't exist.

Anders clenched his jaw before asking shortly, "is that over? That's all I want to know."

She didn't know how to explain to him that it would probably never be over. She'd be doing this dance with Lee for the rest of their lives, skirting around truths in favor of denials, ignoring any feelings beyond what a pilot might feel for a superior officer, or a person for her oldest friend. But one look from him would always send a shiver skating down her spine. He'd always be able to hurt her more than anyone could with a well-placed word. She'd never be rid of him.

"Sam," she said finally. "Trust me on this – it never started." It was all at once completely true and a bald-faced lie; she ignored the constriction in her throat as she finished the sentence.

"Sure about that?" he asked.

She wasn't. But she cared about him far too much to tell him the truth.

"He's Adama's son, Zak's brother, and my oldest friend on Galactica, not to mention the Commander of the Air Group." Kara shrugged. "That's where it ends."

"Okay," he said after a moment's pause. Quirking a smile at her, he said, "sorry about that, then."

"Don't be," Kara said easily, unfolding her legs and swinging them to the side of the rack. "You start muttering other girls' names in your sleep, I'm bound to get more than a little pissed off."

"Duly noted," he replied with a nod.

Kara pressed a swift kiss to his lips before getting to her feet. "Go back to sleep," she said with a wave of her hand. "I just have to go to the head."

She knew he'd watch her leave, so she kept her head up until she was outside the hatch and halfway down the corridor. Leaning heavily against the wall, she squeezed her eyes shut and took one deep, shuddering breath before continuing on her way.

She was leaning on the sink with one hand, using the other to splash water on her face when one of the toilets flushed and the stall door creaked open. Looking up as she reached for a towel, Kara's hand froze when her gaze locked with Lee's.

"Captain," she said coldly, patting her face with a towel to avoid looking at him. Bad move, she decided when she lowered the towel to find him leaning on the sink next to her.

"Trouble sleeping, Starbuck?" he asked, a cruel twist to his mouth. "I guess a warm body lying next to you isn't all it used to be."

"You'd know about that just as well as I would," she shot back. "Your girlfriend go crawling back to the skinny assistant? That why you're haunting the corridors at night?"

"You'll notice I'm not the one who looks to be knocking at death's door any second. Problems with the pyramid player?"

"Frak off, Apollo," she said wearily. She'd been steeped in ghosts too much tonight to deal with a living, breathing one standing right in front of her.

"Gladly," he bit out. "You're in the way of the soap."

Stepping back, Kara motioned to the dispenser with a flourish of her arm. "Be my guest." She turned to go as he turned on the tap.

She was almost at the hatch when he called out to her, "I hate this." All the venom was gone from his voice. He sounded resigned and sad as he repeated, "I really hate this."

Kara clenched her hands into fists, her fingernails digging into her palm. "So do I," she choked out, refusing to look back as she opened the hatch and slipped out into the corridor.

---

They didn't speak for three days. The first time she heard his voice again was over a staticky comm. channel on Wednesday morning's patrol. "Kat, Joker, you two take the back half of the fleet. Starbuck, you're on me."

"Copy," Kara returned, guiding her Viper into a smooth right curve to follow Lee around the bow of the Rising Star.

They rest of the patrol passed in relative silence; even traffic from Galactica was sporadic. Kara shifted in her cockpit, biting her lip to keep from asking what his game was. He could have sent her out with one of the nuggets and saved them both this interminable silence. The silence was just an illusion, she knew that; whatever she said could be heard by anyone back in CIC, and that was trickier than it used to be. But it was easy to believe it was just him and her, out here on the fringes of the fleet.

"Apollo," she began, frak the consequences, but she never got to finish her sentence.

"Galactica, this is Apollo," she heard him say tersely as her brain registered the sight in front of her. "Incoming, four Cylon Raiders, approaching the north-northwest quadrant. Requesting assistance."

"Launch the alert fighters," came the Commander's voice over the comm.

Guiding her Viper up alongside Lee's, Kara glanced over at him. "They won't get here in time."

"I know," Lee replied. "But I seem to remember one of my pilots taking out eight of them by herself, so there really shouldn't be a problem."

The knot in her stomach, the one that had nothing to do with the Raiders heading toward them, eased a tiny bit. "Oh, there's no problem. Just try and keep up, Captain," she said, and as the Cylons advanced into range she'd swear she heard him laugh.

"Three, two, one, now!" Lee yelled, rolling left as Kara pulled a hard right.

The alert fighters showed up just in time to find Kara blowing the last Raider out of the sky.

"Guess you didn't need us," Hotdog's amused voice crackled over the channel.

"Guess not," Lee said, and Kara snorted. He sounded fairly chipper for someone who'd just had a Cylon Raider using him for target practice a minute before.

"Apollo, what—" she broke off as Lee's Viper took a dive and disappeared under her own. "Apollo. No time for hide and seek," she said sternly, her eyes scanning the canopy.

"Up here," he said, a hint of amusement in his voice. She lifted her eyes up to see him flipped upside down above her. He waggled his fingers at her in a silly wave. "Thanks for saving my ass, Starbuck."

"Anytime," she replied, rolling her eyes.

"All fighters back to Galactica." Kara stiffened at the sound of Dee's voice over the comm. "Repeat, all fighters back to Galactica for emergency FTL jump."

Lee righted his Viper, falling in beside Kara as they pushed the throttle for home.

Combat landings and one dizzying FTL jump later, Kara slid her canopy open and hauled herself over the edge of the ship. She hit the ground at the same time as Lee; he nodded to her and smiled a half-smile as he handed his helmet to one of the ground crew.

She couldn't return the smile, but she understood what it meant. This thing between them would never be over, never be fully resolved. But when they were flying, their Vipers flipping and twisting in the sky, they were Starbuck and Apollo and none of the rest had to matter.

It wasn't nearly enough, she thought as she watched him wrap his arm around Dee, press a kiss to her hair. But it was all there was, and she knew that.

She'd take what she could get, make it stretch, make it seem like enough. She'd always been good at that.

end