Title: With Anger and Hate I Love You
Author: abelard
Rating: T
Spoilers: LDYB2 and everything earlier
Pairing: Apollo/Starbuck
Disclaimers: Not mine.
Summary: He'll never forgive her.
He'll never forgive her. Not for a million things.
Not for leaving the military. Not for leaving flying. How could she leave her Viper behind? Just drop it like it was a hunk of metal plates and rivets, and not the fantastic winged creature that turned her into a goddess? She was Starbuck, for frak's sake. She was born to fly.
And that was another thing. She left Starbuck behind. Of course, she'd always be that, no one could rip the Starbuck out of her, not even her own damn self, but she'd never go by that name again, never let herself be called that.
She left Galactica. She left his father. Two more things he'll never forgive her for. Not so long ago, if Lee had been asked what Kara would do, given the choice between the Battlestar and some frozen empty rock of a barely-habitable planet, he'd have bet every bottle of ambrosia the Pegasus had that Kara would stay at the Admiral's side. He knew, knew, that Kara would laugh richly, her head tossed back, at the prospect of leaving behind the only place she'd ever really felt at home besides the flight academy. But what Lee couldn't have foreseen was that it was Starbuck who'd considered Galactica and William Adama un-leavable. And Kara had shed Starbuck like an old flight suit. Lee knew how his father missed her. If only she had stayed on board, his father wouldn't be so lonely, wouldn't be lonely at all, really. Lee would never forgive her that.
All of this, all of his thoughts, were crap and Lee knew it. There was the last thing he could never forgive her for...he didn't want to think about it.
She got married. She got married. To a pretty-boy pyramid player, for frak's sake. To that smirking piece of starstruck (Starbuck-struck) beefcake, Anders. She married him. She married him forever. Lee knows Kara. She wouldn't have said the vows if she didn't know that she'd keep them for the rest of her life.
Married to Anders forever. Not until the day Lee got off his ass and finally forced her to see that he was the only man who'd love her totally, every inch of her exactly as she was, for the Viper jock and foul-mouthed triad player and occasional borderline drunk and bewildered vulnerable child and the guarded and hurt and needy and hopeful and sexiest frakking woman alive that she was.
Married forever, and not just until she looked at Lee one day and decided they could not go the rest of their lives without tasting each other, devouring each other's mouths, each other's skin, frakking each other nightly and daily for years.
It hurts, it hurts Lee to realize he expected that someday these things would happen. He and Kara are inevitable, that's what he always believed. It wounds him deeper to recognize he has believed this basically since the day they met, when his brother still lived and loved her. Even then, at the bottom of his carefully barricaded heart, Lee believed it would come down to him and Kara someday, and nothing, no force in the known galaxy or beyond, could keep them separated for all time.
But she's married, now, and he cannot forgive her for that. He feels the depression he's fallen into, and it's not just the gaping hollowness of the huge ship swallowing him up. It's a hopelessness he's never felt before, not even when all their worlds died. Since he's known Kara, he never had to live without the hope of her. He always had that. And now he doesn't.
He can never forgive her for closing the door on ever loving him. Ever.
Well, unless Anders dies.
Lee shocks himself with the thought. But then, when he shoves it down, it doesn't really go away. It just goes into that same well-barricaded place where the hope lived when Zak was alive.
If Anders dies, even if it takes years for him to die - then, she won't be married. Those vows will die with the man she gave them to.
And Lee will still be there. If the blood still runs red in his veins, he'll see his chance....
He'll forgive her then. It won't be pretty, with flowers. But if the chance comes, he'll make her understand his anger, his hate...and the thing that won't let go of him, the thing he feels for her despite everything...
The thing that isn't anger or hate at all. If she can give that back to him, he supposes it's possible, just barely possible, he'll forgive her everything.