The Question
Rating: T
Spoilers up to the end of "Sacrifice" (2.16)
A character study in
Lee Adama's words
Ali Cherry (Mulderzkid)
I was eight when I realized that there was a question to ask, but I was too young to know what the question was. I just knew that there was something wrong with me and my dad. Other children, Zak included, weren't afraid…no, that's not the right word…other children weren't apprehensive about climbing into bed with their parents after a nightmare. But my most vibrant memory is sitting beside my dad's side of the bed, staring at his fingers hanging off the side of the mattress, and counting the deep breaths in the dark. I lost count before the dawn, but the consistent sighs above my head, the warm musk of my father's aftershave kept the monsters from crawling from the shadows.
I knew the question by ten, but I waited a year before I whispered it to someone else. My best friend's older brother asked me when he was home from college. He said later that he was saddened by my solemn, watchful eyes. I don't remember being solemn, I thought I was loud and boisterous. Mischievous, out of control, that's what my grandfather called me. Too much boy. But Jerry's brother saw something and he was the first one to ask, so I answered.
"Is my dad a Commander, or is the Commander my father?" I had leaned close to him as we watched Jerry's dad pin wheeling his arms in a mime for a game. Before he could say anything more, I opened my mouth again. "It's not same thing, you know."
I had known the answer then, in my head. I felt relief that Zak didn't have to ask the same question. With him, Dad was just dad. He was just a son. With me it was different. I couldn't decide if I was a son or a legacy. Why else wouldn't he hug me? Why else wouldn't he smile at me? Why else did he choose a seat that was not next to me on the sofa? Why else did he not want to have special time with me?
By twelve, I was ready to admit the answer.
That was the year that I had nightmares, horrible dreams, with dry winds sweeping across grassy fields, deadening them. Watching the grass curl and shrivel; the light changing to a sickly yellowy-orange. People melded with metal, and the horrible stench of death. I could taste decay on my breath and feel the slashing sting of the rain on my arms, but in my dreams when I looked up, I saw not gray low clouds to wash the land fresh, I saw the rain of glass from the buildings above me, until the glass shredded my eyes. I'd wake up with a shout, gasping for breath, and beside me Zak would start to cry. While he ran to my parents' bed, and they allowed him under the covers; I sat down outside of their bedroom door, leaning against wall, watching the three of them sleep, smelling the musk of my father's cologne and the deep even breaths of the three of them. And I counted until I saw the inky darkness dissolve into the foggy gray pre-morning light.
I had believed the answer was an inescapable truth. I was a legacy for my father, not a son. I was not the beloved one in the family, I was the one who never seemed good enough, and I had enough honesty to own up to my faults; I was and still am a great disappointment for my father.
When I was a child, I thought my defect was that I wasn't good enough, now I realize my failure was that I was too insecure to reach out to my father and he didn't know how to reach out to his quiet son. I never voiced my nightmares, my fears, my sorrows and he didn't know how to look for them.
Zak was an open book, when he hurt, he could tell my dad, but I couldn't. During college, with my degree in psychology, I knew where my childhood went wrong, but I couldn't admit it to myself, let alone anyone else because the problem lay in the only parent who hadn't let me down.
Now at the end of days, or the beginning of our voyage to Earth, I can finally say what disappointed my father so much about me is the same thing that disappointed me about my father. We can't just love each other because we've always had an XO between us. It was not the sting of my father's dissatisfaction, it was my mother. My mother wanted to give her husband a legacy. It was my bright and smiling mother who pulled me aside and told me I couldn't climb into their bed anymore because I needed to grow up and the Commander had said how childish I was. Then she had whispered; "Besides you don't want to disturb your father when he's sleeping. A Commander needs his sleep."
It was always my mother. I use to think of her as my father's XO in the house. She handed down the punishments; she let me know when I had disappointed the Commander. She did it in such a way that I never doubted the expression came from him.
What made me change my mind? For so long, I held on to the memory of my mother because she hadn't deserted me even when I wasn't good enough.
But I have my father now, and even though he chooses a seat other than next to me on the sofa in his quarters, I do feel love. Even when he asks for Starbuck and not me, I understand he loves me.
I think this understanding might have started in those few frantic moments when Starbuck was missing, "If it were you, we'd never leave." It is a pretty lie, and one I needed to hear; one that started the healing.
Now that he is an Admiral and I am a major, it is possible for me to sit on his couch in silence and not be ashamed to need to hear my father's deep breaths, or smell his warm musky aftershave. I can grimace in pain or even shed a few tears waiting for the pain medication to kick in, and I know he still loves me.
Somewhere between harsh words and harsher realities he became my dad who was an Admiral, not the Admiral who was my father; and I became the son he never thought he had.