Title: The Lords of Kobol
Author: Ysrith
Rating: G
1,148 words
Summery: In the depths of the night Laura ponders the effect Lee Adama has had on them all. Lee/Laura. Time-frame: Post-season 1, approx. day 85 post the Cylon attack. Spoilers for all of season 1, including the final 3 episodes, and some speculation on what may happen after that.
Disclaimer: BSG and the characters are not mine. They belong to Sci-Fi, Universal and NBC. I'm just playing in their sandbox.
Thanks to Heather for the beta.
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Lee had fallen asleep in the chair beside the bed, exhaustion finally catching up with him. I slip into the room quietly so as not to wake him. He needs the rest. What a pair we make these days, the President and her Captain. The cancer wears me out quickly and I have little energy left, but at night, it's hard to tell which of us looks the worse. He's aged so much, too much. You can see it in his face, gaunt, eyes sunken. He's never been a big man, but now his clothes hang off of him. Remember at the beginning, when the Cylons kept coming and coming, and the pilots stayed out there for days? Well he looks like that the whole time now. The beard is an almost permanent feature and there are lines around his eyes. I wish I could call them laughter-lines, but he laughed the other day and it was harsh and brittle.
I keep forgetting how young he is. He was thirty last week. Was I ever that young? Age is relative here. On Caprica he would have been considered too young to be the CAG, but now he's all we have left. But I am a selfish woman and I miss my Captain Apollo, the nervous, slightly twitchy, young man with the quick smile and those very blue eyes. Can three short months change things so much? He keeps reassuring me he's okay, but he's not. How can he be?
A few months ago, I remember celebrating as he pulled off a minor miracle on the Cylon asteroid. I can still see him smiling as he finished off a bottle with Kara. But now Kara is gone and you lie here, and every night he comes and sits in that chair and holds your hand.
He told me he never intended to stay in the military. Did you know he had planned to quit? After the ceremony on the Galactica, he was going home to Caprica to resign his commission. He could not longer stay in a military he did not believe in. How ironic, given how things have turned out.
He believes fiercely and passionately about things. For him humanity is not just about surviving, but what we are, what we become. There is no point surviving if it costs us everything that makes us human. He truly believes this, you can see it in his eyes. It's very frightening having an idealist as a lover. I am a politician. I negotiate, compromise, adapt to the situation, but Lee won't compromise his beliefs. He fights for what he believes is right, no matter the cost. And I look at him and am both frightened and awed.
But he is right. Now of all times we cannot compromise. Humanity is slowly dying. We no longer need politicians but leaders. We need heroes. Men and women we would follow without hesitation because we know they will do the right thing. Did you know your son is a hero? He would laugh at this, but it is true. I see it everyday on the Galactica, those young faces on the CIC and the pilots, they trust him, they look up to him. But more, the civilians, those nameless hordes, hidden away on the ships, the ones he fights so hard to protect, he has become a hero to them as well. Today on the Kobimaru, I saw him with them, and the pain he suffers because he can't solve every problem, and I saw how they respond to him. Your son has become their hope.
Do you remember the hostage situation on the Astral Queen? We were both so mad at him. He stood there before us, having openly defied both our orders, and lectured us on what was right. I was furious with him, but later on I realized he was right. He has a very annoying tendency to be right about things like that.
It was the same when it came to taking command, when you were shot. He could not sit there and let civilians die, would not stand aside and watch as everything we had struggled so hard to protect was sacrificed by the need for vengeance of one man. So he took a gun and held it against your best friend's head.
Lee has no regrets. He made that decision knowing full well the price he might have to pay. Mutiny in time of war carries the death penalty. And he stood before the Council, openly defiant, and for the first time since our worlds were destroyed I had hope that humanity would survive. It takes a brave man to defy everything he was been taught to follow, and stand for what is right.
I stood by his side that day and now at night I lie beside him. Are you shocked that I am sleeping with your son? It was only natural you know. Humans have a tendency to seek out comfort when wounded. I did not take advantage of him. It was mutual. He needed me as much as I needed him. It's lonely being the leaders of humanity, and Lee had already lost so much, and it will only get worse. The cancer is killing me. I won't survive much longer, and I worry about him. Soon, there will be no-one left for him.
Apollo was the son of Zeus, son of the Gods, Lord of Prophecy. I am not a religious woman, despite the visions, despite everything Elosha would try and make me believe, the Lords of Kobol are not Gods looking down on us. Many eons ago they were human, just like us, but over time their story became more. According to the Scrolls, Apollo gave Pythia the Gift of Prophecy, and now those same Prophecies haunt me. But that Apollo was exiled from the home of the Gods by Zeus. He was condemned to wander alone, outcast from his people.
As I stand here, watching my Captain Apollo sleeping, holding his father's hand, I wonder, many eons from now, if humanity survives this, what stories will they tell about us? What will they remember? That while Zeus lay slumbering, Apollo defied the other Gods to save their world, or that a tired young man led his people while he watched his loved ones die?