Kin
by Charis
Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica and all associated characters belong to people who are not me. I'm just borrowing.
Notes: In the vague space between episodes nine and thirteen. Billy needs a hug.
He likes Dee - might even love her - but there are times when he gets insanely jealous of her. It's usually after their visits, when he remembers walking around Galactica and the greetings she exchanges with others in the halls. It seems as though she knows everyone on that ship, and while he realises that, like everyone else, she lost most (if not all) of her relatives in the war, she still has a family. They don't realise how lucky they are, here on Galactica, to have each other. Everywhere else in the Fleet, people cling together, hardly knowing each other, only because the others are there.
She has a family. All he's got is her, and a woman he admires but worries about more with each passing day, and a set of loyalties becoming more and more tangled and conflicted as time marches by. Caught between them, with no family left, he has no one to turn to.
"Something's bothering you," she says, the next time he sees her. He does not reply immediately, taking her into his arms and hugging her tightly. What can he say that she'd understand?
So in the end, all he says is, "It's nothing."
- finis -
