A Flash Before the Eyes

by cliosmuse

Chapter 21

It was evening on the day of Kara Thrace's execution when Saul Tigh approached the admiral's quarters. He did so with some hesitation: no one aside from the president had seen Adama since morning, and, if that weren't enough, during his last extended interaction with his commanding officer, the two men had come to blows. He stood for a moment and then knocked quietly on the hatch.

"Come."

He took a breath; opened the door. Adama was standing in front of his desk, holding in his hand a framed photograph. In the photo, a much younger William Adama (that William Adama had been called Husker) stood in his flight suit with two small boys in front of a Viper. Saul cleared his throat. "You wanted to see me, Bill?"

Adama glanced up. "How are things in CIC?"

Saul shrugged, shifting nervously from foot to foot. "I wouldn't really know. I haven't really been there today."

"Saul."

He took a moment before speaking. "People are talking, Bill. They know what happened, more or less. They're confused. They want to know about Earth and about Starbuck. They want to know where we're going."

Adama sighed. He replaced the photo on his desk and lifted his glass (refilled often today), then walked toward his leather sofa, stepping over scraps of debris still scattered about the office from the morning, and sat down. "And what should I tell them, Saul? Should I tell them that Earth was a nuclear wasteland? Should I tell them that I have intelligence that suggests that Kara – who led them into battle, who they trusted – may have given away our location to the Cavils, the Dorrals, the Simons? One hundred twenty three jumps, Saul. It took us one hundred and twenty three jumps to get to Earth after we found D'Anna. Am I supposed to tell them we've in all likelihood been followed?"

Tigh was a silent. Then carefully, carefully, he made his way to the chair opposite Adama; sat down. "Bill, do you really believe that Starbuck would do something like that?"

The admiral frowned. "I've got to. If I don't – then I almost killed her for nothing."

An attempt at levity: "Oh, come on now, Bill." He tried to grin. "Since when is being a Cylon nothing?"

Adama didn't smile; merely pinched the bridge of his nose. "Since I found out you were one." A beat. "Should a man be held accountable for what he is, or for the things that he does?"

"Believe me, Bill. I haven't been able to think about much else for a long time, now."

The admiral poured his friend (the Cylon) a drink, and they sat for a time, lost in their thoughts, drinks in their hands, the way they would have twenty years ago, when they were younger men.

"So –" Tigh cleared his throat. "Do we know who else was on the Raptor, yet?"

Bill glanced at him. "Racetrack signed out the Raptor, supposedly to transport Gaius Baltar to a ceremony he was officiating. He never arrived and at this point is thought to be missing. I suppose we can assume that the two of them were on it, then."

Tight nodded. "Anyone else?"

"Sam Anders was absent from a midday roster meeting. And the Cylons say that the Three – D'Anna – is missing from the Basestar. They're getting anxious. They think we're holding her prisoner." Saul watched him, but the admiral didn't notice: his eyes were on his glass. He swirled the acrid liquid in the glass once, twice. "When I saw my son walk toward that manual override button, everything stopped for a minute. And then they put their heads together. I felt like I was intruding, watching them through the glass. But I stared: it was all I could do." He took a quick sip, felt the burn of it down his throat. "The first thing I thought was that he'd be the second son I'd lost because of her."

"And the next thing?"

"That I deserved it. That I deserved to be alone in this universe. That I deserved to suffer." He coughed, covering his embarrassment. "Laura told me that, when it was over, all I'd have left was my pain. She was right. She always is. They may not be gone – they may be down there, on that rock somewhere. But I've lost them. Just as surely as if I'd pushed that button myself."

The Cylon shook his head. "Not for good, Bill. Not for good. Children come back. They always do."

Again, then, silence, before he broke and asked the question he'd been wanting to since the moment he found out: "What's it like? Being a Cylon?"

"What's it like?" His laugh came out as a harsh bark, and he shrugged. "You might as well ask what it's like being human. I don't know. It just is."

Dualla sat in her rack, curtain drawn. All day she had been going through the motions in CIC, paying just enough attention to get by – to not kill anyone.

That morning, Starbuck had escaped, with Apollo. And she was glad, glad, glad. But for that, and it would have been twice that she had killed her.

Now alone, she stared at her hands, palms open before her. (Blood, blood on my hands.)

In her mind's eye, the interplay of two images, rapidly, bouncing off one another.

In the first, she knelt beside Starbuck, dying on the ground in New York City. Her hands pressed into her chest, into her neck. Too late, too late. Life flowing out.

In the second, she knelt by the commander's son on Cloud 9. Blood seeped from a bullet hole in his chest; there was fear in his eyes. Her eyes for the briefest moment met Starbuck's as the pilot ran out the door, and she saw in the dark pupils every emotion that she had now forgotten she once felt. Her own desperate ramblings, then: "I can't stop the bleeding. I've got to stop the bleeding." Words that she may or may not have uttered long before.

And then, before she knew what was happening, Billy, dead on the floor behind her.

In her rack, now, her hands, open before her, began to tremble. She squeezed them into fists, but still they shook. Moisture on her cheek; she batted the tear away.

In an instant it had become clear to her why what had at first been such a simple infatuation had become for her, so suddenly, something much, much more. (In sickbay afterward: "Lee, you can't leave. You have to stay. You have to really stay.")

Because him she had been able to save. Through Lee Adama, she had first tried to atone.

Laura Roslin awoke with a start. She was lying in a bed in sickbay. Tests, she remembered. She was getting back tests. She looked around and spotted Cottle at the far end of the room. "Doctor?"

He looked over his shoulder, cigarette dangling from his mouth. "Well, it's about time. And don't go thinking you can take my free beds for your nap-time every day. You make a habit of this, and I'll send you right back where you came from, president or not."

Laura shook her head, trying to clear it. "I –"

"You fell asleep while you were waiting for these results is what you did. Merciful soul that I am, I didn't have the heart to wake you." He narrowed his eyes at her. "How have you been sleeping lately?"

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head slowly. "Dreams, all the time, such vivid dreams."

Cottle grunted. "Well, I guess that would explain all the mumbling you were doing over there. I've never heard such a racket in my life."

Her eyes widened. "Doctor – Doctor Cottle, what was I saying?"

He shrugged. "All I caught was something about an opera house."