Title : Long Time Coming
Author : Helen C.
Rating : PG-13
Summary : It was the only visible scar still left over by Baltar's trial, now that President Roslin was dead; Apollo's absence and the Admiral's obvious weariness.
Spoilers : Everything aired so far is fair game.
Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
AN. Goes AU between the verdict and the Cylon attack in Crossroads II.
AN2. Eternal gratitude to joey51 and Mick1997 for the time they spent beta'ing this!
Long Time Coming
Helen C.
Chapter 9
For the hundredth time, Sam tested the restraints, to the same result as the ninety-nine times before. They still didn't give an inch.
It was funnier when it was Lee on his back, with his wrists tied to the headboard, she thought. She would have smiled if she hadn't been so damn terrified.
She hadn't left Lee in that uncomfortable position for hours—had it been hours? Days? She had lost all track of time—and if his shoulders and his neck had started to ache, he hadn't said so. At that point, she had been doing a great job of distracting him.
Damn.
She took a deep breath, trying to slow down her erratic heartbeat.
She was thirsty and hungry, pissed off and sore, and scared to death. Her captors hadn't said anything; they had just tied her and left her alone. She hadn't seen anyone since then. They were trying to make her nervous and they were succeeding.
She wondered where Lee was. Was he worried? Was he trying to find her? Had he been taken too? She hoped not—he wasn't the kind to go without a fight, and she didn't want to think about him being hurt or finding himself in the same situation she was.
Definitely funnier in the bedroom, she thought, but it wasn't funny anymore.
She wished she could stop thinking, but her mind seemed determined to turn against her and make her wonder endless questions she couldn't answer for now—which, again, must be part of her captors' strategy.
Were her kids fine?
They had to be.
If these men had gotten their hands on Laura and Mark—
She forcefully stopped thinking along these lines, trying to focus on something more constructive instead.
What did these people want?
Was this all about Nate's murder?
The last time they had seen Nate, he had told them that the story he was working on would be out very soon, and it would be huge. Then, he had been found dead in an empty storeroom on the Orion, in a pool of his own blood. Lee and Sam had discussed the suspicious timing at length, but aside from what Nate had told them, they didn't have anything to go on.
They hadn't even been much help to the two civilian police officers who had asked them if they knew anything about Nate's recent occupations, two days after the funeral. They had repeated what Nate had told them, but it was too vague to be useful.
"He could have been bragging," one of the cops had said.
"I doubt it," Lee had replied. "He wasn't the kind. I'm sure he had found something, which would explain why he was stabbed to death."
"Or he could have scared someone by saying he was onto something big, which would have had the same results," the older cop had said apologetically. He had seen Lee about to protest and had raised a placating hand. "I'm sorry, but we need to investigate that possibility as well."
Neither Lee nor Sam had found anything to say to that. What would have been the point? The cops would lead the investigation as they decided to, no matter what the two of them thought about it.
Sam took a deep breath, noticing that thinking logically about the situation was helping her to calm down somewhat.
If Nate had really found something worth killing for, maybe that explained why she found herself in this situation. Maybe the men who had taken her thought she knew something.
It wasn't the only possible explanation, though. Her job as a private investigator hadn't only brought her friends, but her cases didn't tend to be fancy; most of the time, it was just about finding what had happened to lost or displaced family members, or make a few inquiries about stolen goods. She had even worked with the civilian police on more than one occasion.
She didn't think anything she had ever done on was important enough to kidnap her and hold her for an undetermined amount of time, especially given her captor's tactics. Most of the people she dealt with in her day-to-day business were petty thieves, bullies, but not professionals by any means.
Out of habit, she tested her restraints, hoping against hope that she'd get a different result this time around.
She didn't.
Frak.
All she could do was wait until the men told her what they wanted, wait until the cavalry came (she decided to assume that the cavalry would arrive eventually), wait and pray that her kids and her husband were fine. And if Lee had been kidnapped as well… Well, she hoped that his plan to tell Mark and Laura to go to the Galactica in case there was a problem had been a good one.
Given what she was doing for a living, and given Lee's past dealings with the black market and his stint as a lawyer, they both had a deeply engrained sense of paranoia. "It's not paranoia if someone's really out there to get you," Lee often said with a sheepish smile.
Neither of them had really thought that something was going to happen. They had obviously been wrong, and if she hadn't been a die-hard atheist, she would have thanked the gods for their over protectiveness. As long as the kids were safe—and she would cling to the belief that they were—then it didn't matter if she and Lee were a little paranoid.
The hatch to the room where she was held opened just as she was testing the restraints again and she blinked as someone switched on the lights, tensing up in fear.
She tried to turn away but the lights were all pointed in her direction, effectively blinding her and keeping the rest of the room—and the faces of the two men who had just entered—too dark for her to make out anything useful.
"So, what do you know about what Ellison what working on?" a man asked.
At least, that answered her question. She swallowed nervously and glared at him as defiantly as she could. She was totally screwed but damn if she was going to show that frakker that she was scared.
He stepped closer to the bed, put a hand on her thigh, and she had to use all her self-control not to kick it away.
Then, he showed her the knife he was holding and she reflexively pulled at her bounds again.
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Racetrack looked around. So far, her discreet questions hadn't yielded any answers and she was finding it increasingly hard to be subtle.
She should have come here as one of the uniformed pilots. What was Tigh thinking? She didn't know how to behave like a civilian. She hadn't known even when she was a civilian. She just didn't know how to win someone's trust, because usually, her uniform stood in the way of interpersonal relationships. People either saw her as a threat or an ally based on that uniform, and acted accordingly.
She knew that Apollo's friends hadn't been much help in the investigation; none of them knew more than they already did about what Ellison had been working on. None of them had heard Apollo or his wife mention that they were being followed, none of them had seen anything suspect. No one even knew if the journalist's murder and the Adamas' disappearance were related.
The civilian police hadn't been able to find anything in Ellison's notes that would give them a clue as to why he had been murdered, which meant that the Adamas' disappearance might not even have anything to do with it.
She took a sip from her ambrosia, studying the bar. This was taking too much time. How long did they have until Apollo and his wife became expendable to their captors?
She sighed softly, staring at her glass. It seemed that even after several years, she couldn't think of him as anything but Apollo. She still hadn't gotten used to not seeing him around on the Galactica anymore, maybe because he and Starbuck had been pretty difficult to overlook.
She had met him regularly after he had established himself on the Orion; after all, he served as a bartender here fairly often. She still remembered his smile when he had said, "If we find mountains, food and water, I'll build you guys a bar." Back then, they had been about to embark on a mission—she couldn't even remember which it had been, now.
Well, they hadn't reached Earth yet, but most of the pilots who had been there that day still teased him about that promise. She had heard many rumors about him over the last years. Some said he worked at the bar and did nothing else with his days but listen to people complain into their drinks, others said he sometimes piloted the Orion, other insinuated he was a high priced prostitute—mostly malcontents left over from the Pegasus crew. Boneheads, the lot of them.
Civilian life seemed to be treating him well, this latest incident notwithstanding—and while he was a talented pilot and she missed having him to cover her ass, it was good to see one of them getting out of the military alive.
Helo, sitting at a table in the far corner of the bar, caught her gaze and gestured at his watch.
Yes, yes, time wasn't on their side, and she'd have to give the Old Man a report as soon as she got back to the Galactica, and frak, but she really didn't want to do that. Adama was growing irritable and bitter, and most of his crew had started to give him a wide berth when President Roslin had been admitted to sickbay for the last time.
She wondered what had finally driven him to this—this constant anger, this tight and barely controlled attitude. Baltar's trial, his son leaving the ship, the destruction of the Colonies, his friend dying? All of the above?
She wondered if he had kept in touch with Apollo. As one of the ranking officers, she interacted more with the Admiral than most people and she had noticed his weariness recently. Tigh was taking on an increasing number of his duties, much to everyone's dismay. What would happen the day Adama couldn't command anymore? Would Tigh take over? She dearly hoped not; everyone still remembered the martial law and the Gideon.
No one knew what had happened between the Admiral and Apollo, not really. Oh, sure, there had been Baltar's trial, and it was no secret that the Admiral had been deeply disappointed when his son had gotten involved in that little disaster—which Racetrack could understand. She hadn't taken it well either when one of her fellow pilots had seemingly betrayed what they had all struggled to defend.
In the end, though, she had moved on past that and started talking to Apollo again, because she could see that he had done what he thought was fair, and because… Well, there were so few of them left, and so few people who could understand what it was like to get in a Viper or a Raptor everyday, and cheat death time and time again—so many times that at some point, all of them started to wonder when the gods would get tired of watching over them, when luck would turn and they'd die, like all the others.
Apollo had burned out at the same time Starbuck had, because Starbuck had, and all the other pilots recognized that. He was now an unofficial counselor, when the pressure got too much and the pilots needed to talk to someone, or just needed to drink in silence to exorcise their demons.
Apollo understood.
He knew, deep down, what it was like.
Racetrack didn't think the Admiral knew what his son was doing, and how deeply involved he still was with the military, even if none of it was official. No one, except maybe Tigh, even knew for sure if the Admiral had so much as talked to Apollo since he had left the Galactica.
It was the only visible scar still left over by Baltar's trial, now that President Roslin was dead; Apollo's absence and the Admiral's obvious weariness, the only two gaping wounds that most people didn't even pay attention to anymore.
Being an officer, she had no choice but to see it, and wonder how long their leader would be able to lead.
All that alcohol was making her way too introspective. This was why she didn't like to spend too much time thinking about her life and about what could have been. She turned maudlin and it pissed her off, and she usually did stupid things when she was pissed off.
The guy seated next to her paid for his drink and got to his feet, bumping into her as he did. She scowled at him, ready to bite his head off, when he said, "Sorry." On a whisper, he added, "Storage room three, deck five. Half an hour."
He left on another clear, "Sorry, really," and an apologetic smile.
"Did that guy just proposition you, Major?" a cheery Costanza asked, sneaking up on her.
"Maybe," she replied. He opened her mouth but she spoke before he could, "Probably not. Take Helo. Follow me at a distance. Be discreet."
With that, she slid off her seat and stepped out of the bar.
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The guy stood in the shadows, but he was holding his hands up when Racetrack spotted him. "Don't shoot," he said.
She rolled her eyes at his dramatics. He was the one who had wanted to play cloak and dagger, after all. If he couldn't stand the heat, too bad for him. "Do you know anything about Lee and Samantha Adama's disappearance?" she asked.
He nodded nervously, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I was a friend of Nate Ellison, the journalist."
"Yes?"
The man shifted from one foot to the other, his hands still in sight. "I provided information, he guaranteed my safety. Made sure no one knew who I was and what I did for him."
"And?" she asked, trying to keep her impatience tightly under control.
"I heard some rumors. Some say that the Adamas were killed and spaced here on the Orion."
She felt like a punch to the gut and she had to force herself not to show her reaction. The man went on, oblivious, "Others say one or both of them were taken to another ship. The Aurora." He shrugged. "That's all I know. I just thought it might be worth passing it on."
She nodded. "What do you want in exchange?"
"I'd really appreciate it if you could allow me to get out of here, not follow me, and allow me to live a peaceful life ever after," he said, a hint of humor in his voice.
She grimaced but nodded, gesturing to the hatch. "Going now," she said.
Once outside, she whispered to Hotdog and Helo, who were pretending to be drunk and leaning on each other, "Follow that guy without him knowing he's followed. Try to find out who he is."
Just in case they had any follow-up questions. Just in case he wasn't the innocent informant he pretended to be. Just in case her gut feeling was wrong about his honesty. Just in case it could save Apollo and Samantha's lives. Just in case…
She headed to the Raptor. She had a report to give to the Admiral, and he wasn't going to like it very much.
TBC