Ch 17
After the events of the attack Lee found himself being torn between his duty to the fleet and his regard for the new President. Laura Roslin was a tough woman who deserved respect and Lee decided that she was definitely worth helping. However, he'd seen the rift between him and his father closing slowly and he didn't want to jeopardize that progress. He'd spent so much of his time being tossed around like a piece of paper in a windstorm he hardly had time to think about all that had happened.
Then he had a day to just sit and relax and it all came crashing down around him. He ran all of the events through his mind like a movie and tried to come to terms with it all. The Cylons following them, the destruction of the Olympic Carrier, the pilots that died, Kara being lost and then so miraculously found with a Cylon raider to boot.
None of it made any sense as he ran it all back through but he knew it was there, he just couldn't find the missing piece. He thought about how they all had reacted upon finding out the Cylons looked like them now and a black wave of fear poured through him.
Through all of the things that had happened he'd had two things he could count on, Kara and his dad. Kara and he had become closer than ever before. Even after she admitted that she'd passed Zak because of their relationship. He let it drop because he needed her, as a pilot and more so as a friend that actually understood him. Many times he found Kara just staring off into space, thinking about whatever it was she was pondering at that moment and he could always just sit with her and absorb her calm. No matter how crazy things got Kara always kept a level head which was rather insane he thought about it too much.
His father was the same way, a rock in the middle of a raging river, never moving just being. He never got angry, at least not that he showed to anyone but Lee knew better. He was always there to give a kind word or to push someone in just the right direction to get them to surpass his expectations. Lee had butted heads with his father for so many years it was a very pleasant surprise to find that they were now beginning to understand each other.
Then it all went south again when Kara disappeared with the Raider. He knew that Roslin had put her up to it and he could almost understand why she had done it but it caused a big rift once more, one that Lee couldn't repair. When the old man felt that Roslin had pushed to far and he ordered the Marines to board Colonial One Lee had to make a hard decision. He'd come to respect Laura Roslin in the months since they left the life they knew and he knew why she was doing what she'd done. That alone made him pull the gun on Tigh.
That one decision in that one split second changed it all. Tigh ordered him put under arrest and he was treated like any other criminal but damn it all, he believed in the President and the government. When he was brought back to the Galactica in cuffs, nothing could have wounded him more than the look in his father's eyes. Lee felt like he'd just become five again and his father had yelled at him for doing something silly that he couldn't remember. For so very long both Lee and Zak had done everything in their power to earn their father's approval so when they messed up and he yelled, their world crumbled, just as it did now.
Lee watched as his father walked away from him and he felt almost as much pain in that moment as he did from the thought of what he'd lost, his mother, Zak, Caprica, and especially Lauren. Then it happened. Two shots rang out across the CIC and Lee watched the man he loved so much fall into a pool of blood.