Ch 11

Then Lee got the call he'd been dreading for so long.

The call was unexpected but he'd been waiting for it ever since Zak had signed up to be a Viper pilot. Zak had been reassigned to Caprica some time ago and was at one of the smaller bases on the other side of the planet. Lee hadn't had time to go visit him but he got reports from various friends in the fleet about Zak's progress. Now he was getting the call he never wanted to get, Zak's Viper had gone down.

The official explanation was mechanical error but Lee knew what had really happened. When he reached the base he read the reports and knew he was right. Zak's crash had been because he just wasn't cut out to be a pilot. After he knew the reality of it all he went searching for Kara.

When he found her she was huddled in a corner of her bunk, crying hysterically. He couldn't say anything, but he held her for a long time and let her tears mix with his own. When they'd both cried themselves out they talked, about the crash, about Zak and about how Kara was dealing with all of it. She surprised Lee by telling him that Zak had recently asked her to marry him and she'd accepted. The shock of that set in and Lee tried to come to terms with that revelation.

Plans were made to send Zak's body to Caprica City where the rest of the Adama family was buried and Lee contacted Lauren to give her the news. She did the best thing she could for him and told him she'd be there as soon as she could. Lee brought Kara to the base near the city and waited until his father arrived. When the Old Man's transport landed Lee went to meet him and they settled him into the VIP quarters at the base. The next day Lee took Kara on his rounds with him to keep her mind off the matter at hand. Somehow the Old Man caught up with them and confronted Kara. He was relatively calm about the whole fiasco and apparently held no ill will towards her. They talked for a long time while Lee was working and the three of them spent time that night telling funny stories about Zak. By the end of the night Lee felt like Kara was really a member of the family.

The next morning Lee had some time alone with his father before the funeral and they talked about the reasons why the accident happened. The Old Man was convinced that it was in fact a mechanical failure and that Zak was not to blame for the mishap. Lee however, was not so sure about that. He tried time and again to get it to sink in that Zak had never been cut out to be a pilot in the first place. Finally Lee got so frustrated with the back and forth argument that he ended up yelling at his father the fact that their whole childhood had been spent listening to how important it was for them to be Viper pilots.

"You're not a real man until you're a Viper pilot! Isn't that what you always said dad?"

The senior Adama looked like he'd just been slapped by his son. "Lee, you know that's not what I meant."

"I know that now but when I was a kid it meant something else. Dad, you have to realize what your words meant to us. Zak and I thought you were one of the Gods when we were kids," he paused and cleared his throat. "Saying stuff like that to us was what drove us to do what we did. It's what made me enlist and be a pilot. It's what made Zak do it too. You said that so often when we were kids we believed it and now it's killed Zak. He was never cut out to be a pilot and certainly not in a Viper. He wouldn't have died if you hadn't filled his head with stuff like that."

"Lee, please tell me that you don't believe that."

"Dad, I don't know what to believe anymore. I need to get out of here for a while. I'll see you at the funeral," he spit the words out like venom as he went out the door.

Later at the funeral the painful words that were thrown about had not worn off and Lee found himself standing on one side of Zak's casket with their mother while Kara stood with the Old Man on the other. When the priest had finished speaking Lee solemnly placed Zak's Viper wings on the coffin as it was being lowered into the ground. When the ceremony was over father and son walked away in opposite directions, causing a rift between them that would end up lasting for two years.