"Father, clear the launch bay and lock down the vipers if we still have time. Tigh, can you find Cassiopeia and have her meet us there. Oh and Athena too." Apollo began issuing orders. He wasn't sure what he would say to Starbuck when he found him, but he most definitely wanted him alive and here on the Galactica when he did figure it out. He always knew that someday he would lose Starbuck to some reckless daring stunt that would save the fleet, but he planned to be with him when his friend met his maker. It would be in a blaze of glory, not due to some laced drug that might leave his friend collapsed in a corridor in a pool of his own vomit. He shook away the vision of the broken men he'd sometimes find in the alleys of Caprica on those forays Starbuck dragged him on to off limit clubs and chanceries. It wasn't hard to picture Starbuck winding up that way had it not been for his abilities in the cockpit. He was not unlike those men, prone to excess, drinking his way out of his rotten childhood. Is that what the drugs were? Another attempt to patch up the holes that were in Starbuck's life?
"Athena? You think that's a good idea with Cassie there?" Boomer asked.
"They're friends now and like you said, Starbuck needs his friends right now. Besides, she has a way of getting him to cooperate when others can't. Remember how she got him to attend the Academy ball with her, dress uniform with medals and all. He even got a haircut. You and I couldn't even get him to shine his shoes for an inspection."
"Yeah, he was a sight. Ascot and all. I think he bathed in cologne too. I'll go find Athena," Boomer said.
"No, I need you with me, in case I'm wrong. You might have a better guess where he is and," he hesitated, hating to face the truth staring him in the eye. "He trusted you with this. He at least admitted to you he was taking something. He…for whatever stupid reason, he didn't want me to know. Hid it pretty well. I'm embarrassed to say that I think I know why. He thinks I judge him harshly and you," he sighed, "you understand him better."
"I've just bunked with him longer," Boomer tried to soothe the facts. "And you're the Captain plus the son of the Commander. It's not personal, it's protocol."
"It used to not be. What changed?" Apollo asked. Boomer shrugged and he looked to his father for an answer.
"We've all changed," Adama said. "The destruction of our worlds has wreaked havoc in everyone's life. People handle trauma differently, some better than others. You found Serina and some light in the darkness. Some take longer to process their pain. We all assumed that Starbuck was unaffected due to his lack of family, but it was still a loss for him as well. Maybe even greater than for us in that he lost what he had never had. This might have been a long time coming. Suppressed for many yahrens long before we lost our worlds. In a way I think the destruction gave him a chance to hide his wounds as everyone was hurting then. Misery loves company as they say. But we are all beginning to find a new way to survive and to recover our lives."
"But he hasn't," Apollo stated, reflecting on how often people would comment about the same old Starbuck. You could count on him to just be himself regardless of the situation.
"Maybe that's the crux of the problem. He wants to change and doesn't know how," Tigh offered up. "He's taken on many extra duties. He's an excellent instructor and he has helped Cadet Cree after his capture by the Cylons. Then there's the prisoners from Proteus whom he's helped to set up businesses and homes here in the fleet. He's not the same Starbuck that was constantly in my office to be reprimanded for his shenanigans."
And maybe that was it, Apollo mused to himself. No one was really up for shenanigans since the destruction. Trying to survive each day's crisis left everyone too exhausted to take part in the fun. But they all needed that fun in their lives, a spark of joy to give their lives meaning. They needed Starbuck. He needed his friend.
"Let's find him first and then, I can figure all this out once we find him." Apollo strode from the room, Boomer by his side.
He needed to see the stars. That's why he came here in the first place. "Just look at the stars and then find someplace else to go," he commanded himself.
Groaning he tried to get up, his muscles as sore as the mornings after a game of triad against Ortega. He ended up using the stairs to the dais to haul his astrum up. His fingers were tingling by the time he got to his feet. They felt like lead bricks wrapped in shorting electrical wire. His vision swam with traces of rainbows in his periphery. A voice sounding like Athena whispered in his ear, "No more Bucko."
He whipped his head around, convinced she was there with him. The sudden move caused a jolt of electricity to shoot through his chest down to his legs. His mouth went dry as his stomach knotted. He clutched the railing as he looked around. He was alone.
He felt a sudden ache in his chest, a hollowness that grew wider, crackling at the edges like it was on fire. Athena had been one hades of a lover, all fire and flirtation. But he missed her sweet side as well and the plans they had made. On one of his furloughs, they had cozied up in a mountain cabin on Caprica, hiding from her brother and her parents, not ready to tell them yet of their relationship. On that cool mountain night in front of a warm fire they had named their kids and planned their careers. She'd be on the bridge, and he'd run the squadron and they would kick the Cylons' astrums. The kids would come after when he would be a flight instructor and she would run the academy.
Then peace had come, and they were making plans for what life might be like outside of the service. She thought she'd like to be a teacher and he would run a club on Caprica, one of the upscale ones where men came to play cards and have a good meal with a fumarello afterwards, the kind of club her father might go to in his retirement. There would have been a sealing, a big one even though they both talked about a small ceremony, but Ila would have taken over and…
His body jerked and he nearly fell on the dais steps. Before he could recover another jolt of electricity ran up his body from his boots to his aching head, exploding in a burst of white in his eyes nearly as blinding as when the Atlantia was ripped apart.
He heard klaxons ringing, and he tried to get up from the steps. He needed to go. He needed to get to his viper, but he couldn't get himself up. He pushed at the stairs and the stairs of the dais pulled at him.
Then the klaxons shut off, and his head rang with the silence.
"What the frak? Are we under attack or not?"
He had to find out. He was halfway up to the console, and he crawled the rest of the way, dragging himself into the chair and reaching out to open the dome to get a look.
The gray petals peeled away. He gasped at the brilliance of the stars around him. He'd never seen them so clear and bright. Even in a viper it wasn't this kind of panoramic view, unobscured by the metal holding his canopy together. The stars weren't all white like people thought. There were reds and blues, yellows and oranges. Never purple, he mused to himself.
Just like the life he'd planned with Athena; purple was a color of fantasy. It had all been a fantasy, but he'd needed that dream late at night in his bunk when the Cylons seemed to be winning, like after the defeat of Molecay.
"Frak fantasy," he mumbled as he gazed out on the stars. "Here's what's real." He felt the small vial still clutched in his palm and debated taking it, another rush of the senses would really bring the stars to life and then, so what if it killed him? Maybe then in his afterlife he could go live those fantasies. "At least I'd get a break from all this," he laughed, and he couldn't seem to stop as the laughter spilled from him, forcing him to curl over and cradle his aching guts and ribs.
Who was he kidding? Even in death he'd probably be at somebody's bidding like that freaky angel guy John who had Starbuck chasing after Apollo on an unknown planet, locked up in a brig and preventing a war. Or those ethereal creatures on the ship made of light who gave him coordinates to a place so damn far away it might as well not exist. He wouldn't see it in his lifetime.
And he'd been forced to enough religious services in his youth to know that if he purposely caused his own death or cheated the fate that was waiting for him, he'd owe the Gods. He'd be their servant until the end of eternity if you believed the older section of the Book of the Word. Men were created to be their slaves and he was sick of being a slave to everyone from the service to his friends to his lovers to himself. Like hades he was serving the gods. He had plans for the warrior hall in the afterlife. Ambrosia, women and song was the fate he had planned, frak the Lords of Kobol.
His laughter turned to a strangled sardonic string of cursing that would have earned him a week's stay in the closet at any of the orphanages he'd been placed in when he was younger. "And they thought it was a punishment. Only time I got any peace and away from the bullies." He'd been scrawny when he was a kid, often at the mercy of the older kids. He could count his ribs, and his hands wrapped around himself now. He was still able to count them, but at least there was more muscle to protect them. Muscles that cramped at his laughter and he willed himself to stop.
His brain and body listened to his command, and he leaned back, trying to uncurl his muscles that all felt pulled tight. He stretched back his head, listening to each vertebra in his neck pop and snap. He pocketed the vial in his jacket, and he stretched out his arms going slow as his limbs felt brittle. Reluctantly his muscles slid back into place, and he groaned again as he rolled his shoulders, shaking off the static charge that had settled at the base of his neck. His bones cracked like the old man's that he'd lived with in his final years in secondary school. "Next I'll be moaning when I piss five times a night," he thought, belaying that thought. He wasn't going to live to be an old man, not at the rate pilots were being used up. Hades, now they had women flying. If he lost a gal on his flight, he didn't know what he would do. So, he made sure he didn't. That's why Athena came so close to shooting him down so many times, he shadowed her too tightly. He nearly flew up her turbos every time they launched together. She was not going to buy it on his watch.
"Okay, you've seen the view," he said aloud. "No enemy in sight. Time to get going."
Time to get going, he mused. The only way he was going to avoid all the things he didn't want to happen was to get off the Galactica and away from the fleet. He remembered back to the patrol that had started all this for him, the planets they had surveyed. One of them was nice, really nice, with resources for the fleet. Maybe it had a beach on it somewhere. Plus, there was that raider out there that needed to be taken care of. If he could just find it, shoot it down and then maybe take a holiday on that planet. The survey crew would come by eventually and he could help gather up fresh food and enjoy a day working hard in natural sunlight. Really, he'd be doing everyone a favor and he could pay off all his debts with the fresh fruit he would find. Boomer might forgive him for everything if he could find something like a peach, or a big crisp apple.
He stretched his legs, testing to see if they would respond to his orders, and like two dutiful soldiers they found the deck and brought him up straight. He didn't even need to use the railing as he descended the stairs and easily pulled up the hatch for the way down. He forgot the ear protectors as he climbed down the ladder, letting the thrum and the roar of the engines bring his senses back to life.