Disclaimer: I do not own Battlestar Galactica or anything affiliated with it. It is owned by Ronald D. Moore and Sci-Fi. No infringement is intended and no profit is being made.

Spoilers: General for the miniseries through season four.
Character(s): Anastasia Dualla
Pairing(s): Dee/Billy, Dee/Lee
Author's Note: I wish the show would have explained Dee a little more. I genuinely like her, but she keeps being used as a plot device that doesn't always make sense for her character. Sad. So, this is my attempt at explaining her, I suppose--of making sense of her character as its been presented to us.

Summary: Sometimes, all it takes is one guy to frak you up for life.

Maybe Bend, But Never Break
by: chopsticks
pg

-----

When she was younger, her best friend's older sister once bestowed some wisdom upon them while sneaking them their first taste of alcohol. She remembers that the girl's eyes had been red-rimmed and a little vacant. (Later, her best friend would tell her that her sister had just gone through another--there was a slight twist to her lips, there; almost a sneer--terrible, abusive relationship and an even worse break-up.)

The alcohol had burned their throats and had tasted disgusting on their immature tongues. She had laughed, and then took a healthy swig from the bottle herself, wincing slightly as the alcohol made its way down her throat.

"Sometimes," she said to them, eyes empty and staring just beyond them into the middle distance, "all it takes is one guy to frak you up for life."

Anastasia Dualla never forgot that.

-----

She realizes now that she feels trapped in a marriage that has suddenly become healthy; Lee told her he loved her, he chose her, and she's searching for an excuse, flimsy as it might be, to get the frak out.

He's not using her anymore, not staring just a little to her left while talking to her, and she doesn't know how to love someone who isn't using her, doesn't have a hidden agenda.

She pretends to be the doting, caring wife; she pretends to still love him. One day she realizes that their roles have reversed; she has a glass of ambrosia paused just in front of her lips, and she considers him over the rim of the glass: the blue eyes, the smile she's learned is reserved only for her. Now she's using him, and she doesn't really love him anymore--not in the way that he needs.

She takes a sip of the green liquid, feels it burn down the back of her throat.

She starts looking for an out.

-----

Once, while Billy is telling her a story about some of the mind-bogglingly idiotic requests from the populace he's fielded in the last week, she wonders if anyone who wasn't already frakked up in the head survived the end of the worlds.

She has a sneaking suspicion that the answer to that question is a very resolute no.

-----

She was happy.

Then there was Erik.

Now she isn't sure if she can even remember what true happiness feels like.

She knows she can't reconcile the girl she was before him with the girl she was after.

All it takes is one guy to frak you up for life.

-----

She knows she broke Billy's heart. She knows she broke it horribly, and with a kind of coldness she didn't think she was capable of before the worlds had ended.

(She didn't think she was capable of a lot of things.)

He had been too sweet, too awkward, but she had figured that was simply because he was new to the political game, to using people, and was only doing it because the President asked him to. He would forget to call her, drop off her dradis screen for a week or more, and then suddenly reappear with thinly-veiled questions that had to have come straight from Roslin's mouth.

She never imagined he actually loved her, actually cared for her as something other than a frak and a source of information.

Then Lee was looking her way, and oh, she would have to be stupid not to know about Starbuck and Apollo and the pain, anguish, love, hate, and whatever other contrary emotions they could fit into their relationship. She knew he was looking at her precisely because she wasn't blonde, wasn't a Viper pilot, wasn't, wasn't, wasn't.

She knew he was using her from the moment it started. He was using her to forget about her, to forget about how frakked up he was, to simply exist in some kind of emotional equilibrium, and she thrived on it. She felt the unrelenting need to be there for him, to let him soak up as much of her energy as he needed, to be the woman he needed (but never the woman he wanted).

That had been the attraction. Being used as a source of intel just didn't quite match up to the emotional intensity and sense of purpose she got from being with Lee.

-----

When she's drunk enough, she thinks she can see Billy's blood on her hands.

She doesn't drink a lot anymore.

-----

She hand-delivers the divorce papers for him to sign, glad for the chance to escape the dull gunmetal shades of the Galactica. She thinks he's doing good work, that he's on the road to making a real difference in the stagnant politics that have paralyzed the fleet.

She pretends otherwise because she can't think of another way to get out of this marriage before the sheer healthiness of it suffocates her.

They're still friends--will probably always be friends--and he still loves her.

She knows he doesn't really understand why they're getting divorced, knows the reasons she gave are a little on the nonsensical side, but he still accepts it, goes with it, because that's just the kind of man he is.

She feels nothing but relief when he signs the last form.

-----

One day she's playing triad, drinking only a little, and watching Kara wipe the floor with her opponents, using their weaknesses and strengths against them. There's a rude joke about Starbuck's past lovers, and boisterous laughter from the table.

It hits her that maybe she's used the men in her life more than they've used her.

It doesn't bother her as much as it probably should.

She laughs just as loudly as the rest of the table.

-----

the end.