oOo

Athena jerked awake with a distressed cry. How could she have fallen asleep? There was something wrong with her baby, and she'd fallen asleep. Her cheek was still warm from resting on Starbuck's shoulder, her fingers still entangled with his, and it was only the tightening of those fingers against her own that kept her in her seat. "There's been no news." Starbuck's voice was subdued, soothing. "You were only asleep for a couple of minutes."

"Don't let me doze off again," she snapped, shrugging his arm off her shoulder and immediately regretting it.

That regret must have shown in her face, in spite of her harsh words, because Starbuck firmly replaced the arm around her shoulder. "I won't. I promise." If he'd risen to her bait, snapped back at her the way he usually did when they argued, it would have been the end of Athena's control, and she was grateful one of them was keeping their head.

"We've got to have faith that things will work out the way they're meant to." That was her father, offering comforting words that held no comfort for the distraught young mother. "The doctor is doing everything he can for your son, Athena. And we're all praying for him."

She looked around. Apollo was still there, sitting quietly by her father's side, and he offered her an encouraging nod of the head. She nodded back, unable to smile, and allowed herself to relax once again in Starbuck's embrace.

Hermes had stopped crying, but only because Dr. Salik had placed him into temporary stasis while he, Cassiopeia, and the neonatal specialist examined him. Their voices were low murmurs, barely heard, and Athena was certain they were deliberately keeping their backs to her. So she couldn't see their faces, read something from their expressions that she didn't want to see. "This is all my fault," she murmured in a broken voice. She'd stopped crying when Hermes went into stasis, hadn't even noticed the tears until Starbuck brushed them away. "I didn't want him, and now the gods are taking him away from me."

"That isn't how it works, and you know it," her father chastised her. "Hermes is a fighter, just like you've always been."

"But we don't even know what's wrong with him!" she cried, her grip on Starbuck's hand tightening painfully. He squeezed back, and once again she found herself grateful for the facade of control he was maintaining.

"Actually, I think we have a good idea."

All heads turned as Cassiopeia spoke. She was walking away from the stasis unit, stripping off her gloves and once again removing a surgical cap from her blonde curls. In the background, another med-tech was placing a screen around the baby, the stasis unit and the doctor. The four anxious family members came to their collective feet, waiting until Cassiopeia stopped to pepper her with questions.

"What is it?" "Can the doctor do anything about it?" "What are they doing?" "Will our son live?!"

That last, anguished question silenced them all more effectively than Cassiopeia's raised hands. Athena's fingers flew to cover her lips, as if to keep the dreaded words inside, but far too late. But the other woman's expression was neutral, not the face of someone with terrible news to impart, and she clung to the hope of that neutrality while she waited for her to speak.

"They're going to keep him in biological stasis while they perform the surgery," Cassie explained, looking directly at Starbuck, trying to ignore the way the young parents clung to each other, trying to ignore her own, jealous reaction to their closeness. She'd known it was over between them the second Starbuck let her walk out of his quarters when Athena was still missing, but had clung to a hope that perhaps the Commander's daughter would reject him again, the way she had when the Colonies were destroyed in the initial Cylon attack. Now that hope, too, was dashed.

"What kind of surgery?" That was Athena, the question forcing Cassiopeia to look at her. It was clear her thoughts were only for the fate of her baby, and the nurse felt ashamed for letting her mind and emotions wander. This wasn't about her or her relationship with Starbuck; it was about Hermes and his parents.

"Microsurgery. The baby's body is rejecting the Cylon nanotechnology," she explained. "It's a little like what happened to B'ranna, only her fetus rejected the changes in utero, very early in development, which caused a spontaneous miscarriage."

Both parents paled further at her words. "Does...does that mean our son will d..." Athena couldn't find the breath to finish the word.

"Actually, Dr. Salik is encouraged by this development," Cassiopea hastened to assure them. "It's not too early in your son's development, when the tech would have been virtually impossible to remove without causing irreparable damage, nor is too late, when the tech would be too enmeshed in your son's systems to remove at all. Especially the uncommitted nanoclusters, the ones that haven't had the chance to develop into fully functional systems as yet."

She could see her clinical explanation wasn't having quite the effect she'd hoped for. Time for the less technical option. "The doctor believes your son should be almost completely normal by the time he's ready to leave the Life Center, with no adverse affects." She very carefully refrained from saying how long that stay would be, and hoped no one would ask. Well, at least not the parents...While a stunned and grateful Athena and Starbuck exchanged elated hugs, she exchanged a glance with Adama. Nodding slightly, he asked Apollo to bring Sheba the good news, and gently ushered the now smiling parents of his grandson out of the Life Center.

After they were gone, with promises of periodic updates extracted from Cassiopea, Adama turned back to the former pleasure girl, his face grim. "All right. Now tell me the rest. The part you didn't want to tell them."