Lee Adama stared at the papers spread all over the desk in front of him. He had looked through each and every one at least twenty times in the past hour. He had read them back to front, top to bottom, and every other way imaginable. He had tried to think conventionally and then push it out of the box. But no matter what he did, every single one of those papers told him the same damn thing.
He had no way to help her.
Groaning, he picked up one of the papers from the top. Giving up was not an option.
"Working hard, Lee?"
Lee felt himself stiffen as the saccharine sweet tone of Ellen Tigh echoed through his office. "I'm trying to, ma'am," he said without looking up.
"Now, Lee. Let's stop with this whole ma'am business. It's Ellen." He gave a small nod in her direction before turning back to look at the papers. "Doing more work for that little baby program of Laura Roslin's?"
"First off, there's nothing little about the repopulation of our race. The program the President has instituted is extremely important. It also relieves the daily demands that are put on each and every person in this Fleet. It's a distraction and a necessity."
"If you say so," Ellen said with a light laugh as she stepped farther into the CAG's office. She leaned in over his desk and picked up a sheet of paper. "The known weak points on the humano-Cylon models?" She picked up another paper. "The standard water transference protocols? What do this have to do with repopulation?"
"Nothing," Lee said, standing up to grab the papers out of her hand. He really didn't have time for this right now. "They're information we need to resolve the Aerilon Sacrifice problem."
"Oh, is that still going on?"
Lee narrowed his eyes and shook his head up and down in a small, stiff nod. "Yes, that is still going on."
"What has it been? Two months now that those poor people have been held hostage?"
"The citizens on that small transport freighter and the people that Galactica sent have been on their for seventy-one days," Lee corrected, the tension evident in his voice. "But I really don't have time to talk about that. What is it I can do for you?"
Her eyes roamed over his body without shame in an unintentional answer to his question. Lee suddenly felt uncomfortable with the fact that he had unbuttoned his dress gray jacket, but there was also some comfort in knowing that he hadn't completely taken it off. The women was shameless. Ellen continued to blatantly stare at him a moment longer before letting out a amused laugh. "I know what you're thinking. What would bring the wife of the XO all the way down to the CAG's office?"
"Exactly what I was thinking."
"Come on! I have known you practically from the day you were born."
Lee sent her a funny look but didn't comment. Somehow it fit that Ellen Tigh wouldn't even remember her husband hadn't known Bill Adama that well until Lee was almost two. And even then, William Adama was never really home all that much.
"I don't understand why you keep treating me like such a stranger, Lee. I've been trying for weeks to catch you when you had some free time. I'd like to know what you'd been up to these past few years."
Lee held up the papers in his hand while trying his best not to roll his eyes or glare at the mess of a woman standing in front of him. "I'm sorry. I have a lot to be doing. A flight schedule needs to be done, and someone has to come up with a solution to this crisis."
"Fine. I'll get to the point." For a second, Lee actually thought she was going to tell him something that mattered. But then she let out that annoying little trill of a laugh and he knew better. "You would not believe what I found out from my husband the other day. He was speaking with your father about the baby… excuse me… repopulation program, and William let it slip that he had tampered with the results a little bit."
"What?" Lee said, setting down the papers in his hand and turned to stare at her. He had to have heard her wrong.
"Oh yes. The mighty William Adama couldn't let things stand as they were with my husband, it seems. I guess he thought his match gave Saul too much power."
Lee let out a breath of relief and sat back down behind his desk. For a second there, he had actually thought she was going to tell him that his father tampered with his results because he had been matched with the woman in front of him. Instead this was another step in her insane quest to put her husband above all others in terms of the chain of power. "I don't see what would have compelled my father to do that."
"Well, I know your father has that silly fondness for that young pilot who was supposed to be married to your younger brother by now. What's her name?"
"Kara Thrace," Lee said, gritting his teeth.
"Yes. Kara. Turns out she was matched up with my husband and William didn't like that. I don't really understand the problem. Any fool could see that she has power in this Fleet. It would be a smart union on both parties."
Lee smirked at her power-hungry nature and the way it clouded her vision. "Then you've never see how much your husband and Lieutenant Thrace dislike each other."
"Right," Ellen said, turning to sit herself squarely on the desk. Lee watched her look turn almost predatory as she crossed her legs and smiled down at him. "When Saul told me this, there was one thing that didn't add up. If Kara was the person he was matched with, how did she end up with you instead? And that begs the question of who was your original match, Lee?"
Lee felt Ellen's foot gently running up the side of his calf and his mind flashed back to that 'family' dinner they had had a few months back. His mind suddenly couldn't quite grasp if he had ever heard who she had been matched with. He wasn't even sure she had been matched. Was she even a part of the program? A woman like her would want to participate just to see if it could elevate her status in the Fleet. Plus, if it gave her a shot at getting her paws on any number of men in the Fleet, she wouldn't turn that down.
No, Ellen Tigh would be a part of this.
His face went pale as he realized just who she had been paired up with.
"I see you put it together, tiger," she said in a low tone. Lee could feel her foot slowly moving its way up his thigh. "So, here's what I was thinking. Since that whole mess with the Aerilon Sacrifice, I figured you wouldn't object to me asking Dr. Baltar to go through with the original match."
Lee had never understood what it meant when people said they saw red. He could never imagine being so angry that you couldn't even make out shapes anymore. All you saw was a great, big expanse of red.
Suddenly, he knew what it mean to be that angry. He felt it deep inside.
Throwing away any amount of tact and discretion he had had, Lee seized her foot and pushed it away so roughly that Ellen found herself grasping the desk so as not to fall off. "Get out of my office now."
Her eyes widened in surprise, but he didn't wait to hear her response. "I don't have time for your middle-aged hormonal desire to prove that you can still get younger men to want you. In case you haven't noticed, there's a crisis in the Fleet. There is a tactile team from Galactica and one hundred citizens out there who have been taken hostage by some humano-Cylon model that we didn't even know about. And the mother of my children, mistake or not, is stuck out there with them. I'm not wasting time on you when she needs me."
Ellen stood up slowly and walked out of the room without another word, leaving behind the vague hints at her feelings of superiority to everyone and everything. Lee sighed and lay his head down on his desk. Pissing off the XO's wife wasn't exactly what he needed right now.
"Something wrong, Captain?"
Lee looked up to see Crashdown hanging in the open doorway of his office. "You could say that."
"The Aerilon Sacrifice?"
"And then some," he said, standing up and shrugging off his jacket. The office was getting hotter with each minute he couldn't find a solution to the biggest problem in his life.
"Do you want me to come back?" Crashdown asked, already halfway out the door.
"No," Lee yelled, stopping the Raptor ECO in his tracks. "Come back in. I could use something to take my mind off of the total lack of solution to this problem. And something tells me with the rumors I've been hearing, you are coming to me with a distraction."
Crashdown chuckled and sat down in the chair facing Lee's desk. "Is it really that bad?"
"Rumors circulate fast on this ship. And you've been acting really strange for a while now."
"Well, you know I've been having problems with the Chief for the past few months or so."
"Because of Cally," Lee said, shaking his head.
"Right. I always knew the Chief thought of her as a daughter, but I never realized it was that bad."
"I know what you mean. Every day I thank the gods that I'm my father's son. Because if I wasn't, he would have hunted me down for being the man to defile his 'daughter' in this repopulation program." Lee paused and scrunched up his nose. "Why does my relationship with Kara suddenly ring of inappropriate relations between siblings?"
Crashdown shook his head. "I really doesn't. I think you two have a free pass when it comes to keeping your relationship from sounding creepy. The way Cally talks wistfully about it, you two were made for each other."
"You've been talking to Cally about Starbuck and I?"
"I've been talking to Cally about a lot of things," Crashdown replied, clearing his throat and sitting up in the chair. "That's why I came to you."
"To talk about talking to Cally?"
"Right. You see, I figured you were the expert on this ship about getting a difficult woman to come clean about how she feels."
Lee got up out of his seat, walked around to the front of the desk, and took a seat on the edge. "All right. Start from the beginning, Crashdown, and I'll see what I can do."
"I presume you know that the Chief has been actively hunting me down from the moment he found out I was Cally's match."
"Partially thanks to my better half," Lee said with a laugh.
"I wish I had the chance to pay her back for that someday." Crashdown froze as he realized what he had just implied. "Oh gods, Lee. I'm sorry."
"It's okay. You'll have the chance soon. That's a promise."
Crashdown nodded and kept on with his story. "Anyway, Hot Dog knew that I was having a little trouble, and he decided to help me out. Stuck his neck out to try to convince the Chief that he should talk with Cally before killing me. I don't know what she said to him, but the Chief actually apologized to me the next day."
"Looks like you owe Hot Dog one," Lee pointed out.
"Already paid him back." Crashdown tilted his head down and bit his lip while chuckling. "That lucky bastard should owe me for what I did."
"Explain."
"Hot Dog and I have been storage locker buddies for the past few months. I've been hiding from the Chief, and he's been hiding from Sergeant Hadrian, his match for the President's program."
"Oh no," Lee said, laughing and hiding his face behind his hand.
"Exactly. I figured since he helped me iron out the problem with my match, I'd help him with his. So I had a little talk with the good Dr. Baltar. Made him see the error he had made in the genetic match probabilities. Made him see that it was in the best interest of his health to try to fix his mistake."
"So that's why Baltar runs the other way every time you enter the room?"
"I guess I scared him a little too much."
"So how good of a deal did you pull to shift the balance to Hot Dog owing you?"
"Well, he got matched with Racetrack. Enough said."
Lee nodded. It was common knowledge that Racetrack was maybe the second most lusted after woman on board the Galactica. He didn't feel ashamed to admit that considering he was currently madly in love with the one woman who was lusted after more than any other. "So what does this have to do with Cally?"
"Well, the Chief has stopped trying to kill me, so things have settled down. I guess I thought that with the forbidden part of our relationship gone, my urge to talk with Cally all the time would die down. But it hasn't. In fact, now that I can talk to her whenever and wherever I can…"
"You want to even more." Lee shook his head. "I did not see this one coming."
"Neither did I."
"With all the different people being matched up, I figured people would start developing attachments to one another. I knew something permanent might come out of a few of the matches."
"But you didn't think it would be Cally and me?" Lee shrugged. "So, what do I do, Captain? I need your advice on this one."
"I find that just telling her what you feel helps."
"You want me to go up to Cally and tell her that I would like her to be more than just the mother of my children? No disrespect, sir, but she'll punch me in the face."
"I find that having a good sense of when the punch is coming and being able to just take one to the face is usually a good start. I had at least ten black eyes before Starbuck could figure out why I kept letting her hit me." Lee's eyes began to sting as the memories started coming to the surface. He tried to push it out of the way and covered with a smirk. "And sometimes, if she really gets you good, you can hit back. Not all the time, mind you! But sometimes."
"You think Cally will actually hit me?"
"If she likes you, then yeah, probably. But just don't let her leave without making her understand what you're trying to tell her. That's really all you can do, Lieutenant."
"And that worked for you?"
"Like a charm," Lee said, standing up. "Now I really should get back to work. I need to do something about this jaw. Without Kara around, I can actually chew without pain. It's not something I'd like to get used to."
Crashdown nodded and left Lee alone to his piles of research and reconnaissance information.