A/N: Hello fair readers, I promise I am not abandoning Sometimes the Best Man... this was a story (and will be a series of stories) that struck me while listening to the Ani Difranco album Dilate. It's an album I overly relate to and seemed like most of the album could have been written by Kara at some point. So this will be a series of stories inspired by that music. Each story will start out giving you a setting, time frame, character list and any important notes, you will also get the lyrics to the original song of inspiration. I hope you enjoy these, as this first one literally just gushed out of me in under a day. Enjoy, and let me know if you think these are worth continuing as the mood strikes! I am considering putting together a Project Playlist of the songs from the album, if you'd like a link to that let me know! Thanks for reading!!!

Setting: Caprica, Delphi City

Time Frame: Pre-attacks, post Zak's death, kinda AU

Characters: Kara, Lee, Gianne, Bill

Notes: Italics are flashes back to the night after Zak's funeral.

Untouchable Face

I think I'm goin for a walk now
I feel a little unsteady
Don't want nobody to follow me
Except maybe you
I could make you happy you know
If you weren't already
I can do a lot of things
And I do
Tell you the truth
I prefer the worst in you
Too bad you had to have a better half
She's not really my type
But I think you two are forever
And I hate to say it
But you're perfect together

So fuck you and your untouchable face
Yeah fuck you for existing in the first place
And who am I that I should be vying for your touch
Said who am I
I bet you can't even tell me that much

Two thirty in the morning
And my gas tank will be empty soon
Neon sign on the horizon
Rubbing elbows with the moon
Safe haven of sleepless
Where the deep fryer is always on
Radio is counting down the top 20 country songs
Out on the porch the fly strip is waving like a flag in the wind
You know I don't look forward to seeing you again
You'll look like a photograph of yourself
Taken from far far away
I won't know what to do
I won't know what to say except

Fuck you and your untouchable face
Yeah fuck you for existing in the first place
And who am I that I should be vying for your touch
Said who am I
I bet you can't even tell me that much

I see you and I'm so perplexed
What was I thinking?
What will I think of next?
Where can I hide?
In the backroom there's a light
That hangs over the pool table
When the fan is on it swings gently side to side
There's a change in constellations
Of the balls as we are playing
I see Orion and I say nothing
All I can think of to say is

Fuck you and your untouchable face
Yeah fuck you for existing in the first place
And who am I that I should be vying for your touch
Said who am I
I bet you can't even tell me that much.

Kara had never been as uncomfortable at a table as she is right now. Why the old man, wait, Commander Adama, wait, he told her to call him Bill, why Bill would invite her to dinner with him and Lee was beyond her. When he had called her initially she had been excited at the prospect of seeing Lee again. She hadn't seen him since Zak's funeral. The night of the funeral there had been an accident. Perhaps incident was a better word, regardless, the night ended with a drunken flight instructor taking an Adama boy home and into her bed. It wasn't the first time, but she swore it would be the last.

It was a warm, sunny day the day of the funeral. Hardly the kind of day that makes you think about death. Halfway through the ceremony the old man took her hand. It was the nicest gesture anyone had done for her in a long time. Lee was seated with his mother Carolanne. Starbuck chose to stand, she could lock her knees that way and never fall down. She was in uniform, so she had to be a representative of that. She couldn't be the grieving near-widow that she actually was. Carolanne had given her the eye in the receiving line. The woman didn't like Kara; she had even gone so far as to make a snide remark about Kara not crying. Kara didn't cry, she didn't cry ever, not since her dad disappeared. Zak's father, the commander, the old man, had hugged her and she felt a tinge of Zak in it. The man's eyes were rimmed in red, and while he had not shed a tear during the service she could see that he had been before. Lee was as stoic as she was. He didn't express sadness, but you could feel a definite air of anger around him. She took her place in that line, and after a while she just turned into a robot, thanking and hugging, and shaking hands with people who should mean something to her, but who meant nothing. Her mother hadn't even bothered to show. Not that it surprised her.

Now, she stood in the parking lot, leaned up against her truck, uniform jacket off and crumpled in the back seat. Once she figured she was the last at the cemetery she grabbed the bottle of whiskey and shot glass from the passenger seat and wandered to the grave. She poured out a shot and put it on his gravestone. She sipped from the bottle herself.

"I hope you have enough to share." A familiar voice came from behind her, Lee. His uniform coat was slung over a shoulder and his eyes were rimmed in red.

"Can't a girl drink with her dead fiancé in peace?" She asked.

Lee walked up and grabbed the bottle from her hand, he took a large swig and handed it back to her. "Who said you need to be alone to have peace?"

Lee had been on her mind since that night, she always had a weakness for pining away for any man she thought she might have missed the chance to frak up. She felt guilty, so guilty she thought it might consumer her. She didn't feel guilty for taking him, Zak's brother, to bed though, because that had to be something that would be expected of her. The grieving near-widow taking home the dead man's brother, it was something Helo would have called a Kara Classic. Zak has made her such a better person, and once he was gone there was no reason to be her anymore. No, what she felt guilty for was feeling more that night than she had ever felt with Zak.

Lee and she had a lot in common. She had met him a few times when he was on leave in Delphi. They had a passion for flying that Zak never would have or understand. He didn't want to live on a Battlestar and she wanted nothing more than to get back on one. Lee had been on the Battlestar Prometheus then, a similar ship to the one she had served on before her big mouth grounded her. Her big mouth put her on Nugget duty, a duty that lead her to Zak. They laughed at the same jokes, they were numbers 1 and 2 (her being first of course) in flight training records, and most of all she could see that inside of him was a deep sadness. It was the kind of sadness that lived inside of her. Zak was full of sunlight and Lee was full of night dotted with stars.

The cemetery was about a half an hour outside Delphi. Somehow she ended up in the passenger seat of her truck with Lee behind the wheel. She didn't see another car in the lot so she had no idea how he had planned to get home. Instead of heading straight back to Delphi he took the frontage roads, which lead them through the Caprican countryside. It was strange that just outside of a huge city like Delphi there could be so much damn nothing. They just drove around like that, saying nothing, staring blankly out of windows. Two shells, but in a peaceful silence, none of it was uncomfortable.

"We're almost out of gas." Was the first thing he said.

"There's a station up ahead." She replied, she knew these back roads, her and Zak spent a lot of Sundays out here just driving.

"All I see is a bar."

"It's a one bar town, and that bar doubles as the gas station."

"Oh."

The station was old, or at least looked old. In this area people weren't known for maintaining their stuff, so for all they knew the building could be 5 years old. They pulled in, and as Lee began to fill the tank Kara wandered inside the bar. He knew he'd have to go in after her. She was a mess, and he was a mess, a bar would only make things even messier.

She was seated at a table in the back of the bar. She was nursing a glass of ambrosia, with the bottle on the table next to another glass. He joined her. Still they said nothing, but once she looked up at him and he could have sworn that he saw right into her soul.

Now sitting at this table with him and his "date" she was just nauseated. What had she really expected? That Lee was sitting up on that Battlestar, that he was sitting up there pining away for her? Of course this woman was more what he wanted. She was the perfect future officer's wife. She was pert, and perky and perfect. It killed Kara inside that this girl was so beneath him. She wasn't bright, she didn't have any fight in her, and she could smell her pretense at a mile. What she did have going for her was looks, she was model-pretty, super skinny, and had a laugh that tinkled like bells. She could see the attraction, a woman like that was simple, easy, safe, the polar opposite of what she was. Still Kara sat at the table, smiled, sipped her ambrosia and ate her meal.

Lee ordered them food. If Kara kept drinking like this she was going to need to eat. Zak had told him about how Kara had literally drank him under the table on more than one occasion, but still, they had skipped the wake with the food, she needed to eat.

Once she washed the meal down with more ambrosia she stood up. She put 4 cubits into the pool table and the balls spun out.

"You wanna play?" It was the first thing she had said in over an hour. But she said it with a glint of the feisty competitiveness she had shown that first day he met her. It was another day, and she and Zak were playing Oblong, and he joined them. The park was full of people, and someone had taken their picture. Her and Zak were in an embrace and Lee was to the side of them holding the Oblong ball. His copy of that photo lived in his locker on the Prometheus. He knew why his little brother was enamored with her, because he was too.

The old man had invited her to dinner whenever he was on leave, this was the first time Lee also attended, even though he was always invited. She didn't know why he held such affection for the girl who had gotten his son killed. He didn't know that detail, but still she thought he would be able to smell it at a mile. He was good at seeing through her bullshit. She did like him though, he was the military dad she had always wanted, as opposed to the military mom she had. She could see where both of his sons came from within him. Lee was his dark, Zak was his light. Lee was burdened with a million unspoken things, things he could not speak of, things no one could know. Zak had never been burdened a day in his life. She suspected his big brother had shielded him from a lot; she had little respect for Carolann, their mother. The woman was a walking disaster. Zak saw her with the eyes of a child; Lee looked up on the woman with the eyes of an old warrior.

Lee looked worse for wear. How a man only a year older than her could seem so old was beyond her. Helo was the same age as him, and he always seemed so much lighter, so less burdened. Maybe it was just who he was, but Lee didn't even resemble the man she had seen less than 6 months ago. Death will do that to you though.