Disclaimer: Ron Moore, David Eick, and possibly others invented these characters and this sci-fi universe. The Syfy Channel, and possibly others, have all the rights to them. I make no money, and mean no harm.
Eagle-Eye View
Tigh didn't waste much thought on Lee Adama.
He first met the kid at an uncomfortable dinner, right before the Galactica shipped out. Carolanne held court – too many drinks, too many compliments – inviting Tigh to embarrass himself. She got him drunk to remind her husband how worthless his friends were. Awkward parties were fast becoming Bill's standard punishment for shipping out. He owed his career to her, she liked to think, and Tigh owed Bill. That put them both beneath her.
Lee picked at his food, but he stared at his father instead of his plate while his mother took her shots. He was too young to be interesting and too old to be cute, but there was a sullen curve to his mouth that made Tigh think the brat was on her side. He looked just like her, almost prissy; not a drop of Bill's strength had made it inside.
There was nothing to be done about Carolanne – Bill shut up about Tigh's marriage and Tigh returned the favor – but frak if he was gonna sit back and take contempt from a twelve-year-old.
"You plan on doing something with your life, Lee?" Tigh said loudly, out of nowhere.
Lee looked up, lowered his fork, and set his folded napkin on the table.
"Yeah," he said, "I do."
That was it, apparently. Not quite what Tigh expected, but nothing he hadn't seen before. He spent enough time with insubordinate rooks to read 'I'm giving you nothing' in shuttered eyes. The kid excused himself soon after, which Tigh counted as running away.
He knew then that Bill's eldest would never cut it in the service. He was meant for soft, shifty work – all talk and cold smarts and bad attitude.
Bill didn't see it that way, though, and Lee wasn't raised to defy expectations.
A few years passed, and Bill announced that his oldest son was heading to the Academy. Tigh knew Lee wouldn't wash out – stubbornness came with his name – but still hoped the real soldiers were giving him hell. From what Tigh heard, the boy made up in skill what he lacked in commitment, and that was a dangerous combination. He joined the reserves, true to form. Tigh had no doubt he would be unhappy. He expected more from the younger son.
Then Zak died, and Bill came back from the funeral with a new and much worse child. All Tigh could offer was support. Beside Starbuck, Lee's unfitness for duty shrank to nostalgic insignificance – but she loved the old man and Lee hated him, and that was enough to prove her superiority. Of course, her superiority was one of the things that irritated Tigh most, and her presence provoked him far more regularly than Lee's absence could. She was the bane of his existence. Lee was an abstract problem, beneath his notice.
Then Lee arrived on Galactica, and the Cylons followed.
The misfits worked well together, it turned out. Apollo and Starbuck, the perfect storm of unprofessional soldiery, cluttered up his decks with their private tug-of-war, but at least they shoved each other into balance most days. A hell of a lot of pilots flew home safe in the eye of their hurricane, so they got his tolerance if not his respect.
He'd have come down on them like a ton of bricks if he thought they were frakking. But he'd lived on the Galactica for decades – the average age of its crew was twenty-three – so he'd long since mastered adolescent subtexts. He read the distinction between wanting and having in their teasing looks, their careful hands, their nervous energy. They weren't sleeping together, they just ached to be, and that didn't matter since it wasn't going to happen. The ship would run fine so long as no one told Bill.
They didn't respect him, but he couldn't care less, so long as they obeyed orders. To his surprise, Apollo was shaping up to be a decent CAG; efficient as hell, haltingly authoritative, with occasional traces of common sense. Starbuck stayed crazier than ever, but delegation was a beautiful thing – she was Lee's problem now.
Total war turned out to be her ideal environment; she got toaster galleries to shoot up daily, not to mention a direct superior who viewed insubordination as an intimate game. Tigh had never seen her so happy. The stress and sleep-deprivation must have been getting to him, because he'd actually started to think of the kids' dysfunctional rapport as an asset. Then Starbuck went missing.
The traces of common sense he'd credited to Apollo evaporated immediately, and he was stuck with two fanatical Adamas when even one would have been too much to handle. Father and son worked with reckless speed and single-minded selfishness. He tried to stop them and lost. It took a tongue lashing from Roslin to save the fleet, and a last minute miracle to save the girl. She'd always been impossible – after this she'd be insufferable for weeks – but he saw his best friend come back to life at the sight of her.
He'd never had children, but he thought he understood.
Then Ellen came back from the dead, and he truly did.
Tigh's problem with Starbuck was simple: she was a nutjob. She charmed her way around everyone else, so it was up to him to hold the line. Apollo was worse – another loose cannon, less flashy and more dangerous. He wouldn't pick sides because he didn't believe in them. Frakkers like that had no place in the military.
Tigh was born for the service. Semper fi, right or wrong. Staring down the muzzle of Lee's sidearm, Tigh let him yammer on about democracy. He'd pegged the kid from day one: unfit to wear the uniform. No one so enamored of his own conscience could ever hold true in the confusion of war.
Ideals didn't love you back; they didn't cover your six or remember you when you were gone. You lost them when you made mistakes.
Saul Tigh's life ran on loyalty and mistakes; he was married to Ellen, for frak's sake. There would always be anger and regret, but he would never have to face them alone.
Lee would; high-minded fools always did.
Especially high-minded fools who fell in love with nutjobs like Starbuck.
Tigh never said anything to Dee, but privately he thought she could do better. He liked Sam, what little he saw of him.
He kept his thoughts to himself until that morning on New Caprica, when Starbuck slumped down on the sand to join him for a drink. Something about the slanting light made her look so young. Young enough to laugh at herself – a soft, pretty sound. For the first time, Tigh knew what Bill saw when he looked at her.
"Why don't you tell me all about it?" he offered, and she did.
He knew what he was doing when he spoke about survival. She was a born soldier, so he thought she must sense it, too: Lee couldn't be trusted to stand by people as screwed-up as they were. He wasn't safe.
She married Sam, and Tigh was happy for her. Lee took it much harder than he'd expected, but at least his hum-drum implosion played out on Pegasus, at a convenient distance.
After an empty year, Tigh chose Ellen over his oath and moved planetside.
He learned some bitter lessons there about betraying people for the sake of ideals. He did it; in the name of justice, he did it. But he hated himself. It was devastating, to be pulled apart at the gut, to be torn from loyalty to higher loyalty. To look at someone you loved more than life and know that you had to stand against them.
If he'd been able to see anything beyond his own pain in those weeks and months of grief, he might have begun to recognize more of himself in Lee Adama.
He was a frakking toaster, as it turned out. Life got a lot more complicated, but he was still determined to make his choice, as he always had. He would die an officer of the Colonial fleet.
But, like it or not, he would also die a Cylon.
He didn't know if personal devotion would be enough to carry him through, this time. He didn't know if picking sides even made sense anymore.
Then Starbuck came back from the dead. The President wanted to airlock her, Bill wanted to keep her contained, everyone wanted rational answers. Except Lee. He didn't care if she was a Cylon; didn't care if she always had been. It was hard to believe, but the boy turned out to be capable of unconditional loyalty.
Naturally, the moment Tigh figured that out, Lee left the service.
At the ceremony for his departure, Tigh proclaimed his years of honorable service with newfound sincerity. He watched him shake hands with Sam, part gently from Dee, and finally make his way to Bill.
Father and son leaned close, but as Tigh approached, he caught snatches of last-minute negotiation.
"So don't risk the fleet. Let her fly recon." Lee's voice pitched low.
"She's in the brig for a reason," Bill whispered, gruff.
"She's in the brig 'cause she made you mad."
"She threatened the President."
"By handing her a weapon?" Lee arched both eyebrows. "Come on."
"She's dangerous, son. Out of control."
"That's Kara, Dad; that's Kara. You have to help her." He touched his father's shoulder, his face solemn. "Trust her."
Tigh watched Bill struggle with his fears, looking every inch the Old Man. He felt anxiety dry in his throat; his friend was pronouncing judgment on him as well as Kara, though he didn't know it yet.
"I'll think it over," Bill said finally.
"Good." Lee hugged him, and began to move toward Athena's Raptor. "Just remember, she's gonna need a ship from someone, and I say better you than me." He grinned. "I'd hate to have to hijack Colonial One my first day out."
Bill didn't even twitch. "Laura would shoot you. Seriously."
"I hear she's got crummy aim," Lee called over his shoulder, settling in and stowing his rucksack.
"Don't count on it," Bill shouted as the hatch descended. He turned away from his son's departure, smiling.
There were moments when Tigh learned to appreciate his friend's eldest.
Moments when mixed loyalties didn't divide at all.