Author's Note:
Just a short ficlet that's been building up in my head the last couple of days since watching Exodus Part 1. What Lee might be thinking while he waits for Adama at the rendezvous point.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eighteen Hours
I'll see you at the rendezvous point in eighteen hours.
He spends most of the raptor trip back to Pegasus trying to convince himself he believes those words.
But he can't. He's seen the reports, seen the surveillance photos. He knows the odds they're up against. It's impossible, as he said in the meeting, as he told his father.
There's no hope.
The facts, the figures are against them. The only way they could win is by an impossible stroke of luck, some crazy freak occurrence, just like the ones she-
He tries to stop thinking.
----
Seventeen hours.
They've jumped to the rendezvous point, the fleet ships all accounted for. Nothing to do now but wait.
He spends five minutes just watching the clock hands move, and realises he'll go mad if he stays here.
A hand touches his arm, and he looks up into Dee's concerned face.
"I can manage here, if you want to go. You should try to get some sleep."
Sleep. No chance of that. Too many thoughts, too many doubts, whirling in his head. But he nods gratefully and leaves, because he doesn't want to stay here.
He needs to be alone. He's always better when he's alone.
----
Thirteen hours.
Some men might pray at a time like this, but that's never been his way. His gods were democracy, law, justice, until their certainty crumbled to pieces around him.
He has a shrine of sorts, though. A small wooden box that he keeps hidden away in his desk, buried in a pile of old reports.
Dad gave him the photos. All his own were left on Atlantia.
The first is of the four of them, on holiday when he and Zak were still young enough to build sandcastles, and his mother would still rest her head on his father's shoulder.
In the second it's just the three of them. He and Zak are grown now, towering over their mother as they watch the pyramid game.
The third was taken on the day of the attacks. Just him and his father, stiff in their uniforms, a thousand miles of bitterness separating them.
He grips the photos so tightly that they crumple and thinks that in fifteen hours there might be only one Adama left.
Why did it have to happen like this? he asks the shiny smiling faces. Why did you all have to go? Why did I have to be the one left behind?
----
Ten hours.
The doubts won't be repressed any longer, slip free of the chains binding them.
He replays all the reasons he decided not to take Pegasus back to New Caprica, all the sensible, logical reasons.
When you can't save everyone, you have to cut your losses and save who you can. Roslin made that decision back on Colonial One on the day of the attacks. He advised her to make it, and he doesn't regret it, although the thought of all those people, abandoned to the Cylons, haunted him afterwards.
It will be worse this time, he knows that. The ghosts will be stronger. More familiar.
But it's still the right choice.
It is.
As he said to his father – if they risk both battlestars at New Caprica, and they fail, the human race just comes to a stop. Nothing left. It's too big a gamble to take.
And he's never been a gambler. The few times he has gambled, he's always lost. Last time he gambled, he ended up a mutineer and nearly lost his father for good.
Decisions should be considered, sober. Unemotional.
He knows that. But it doesn't stop the faces of all the friends left behind on New Caprica tugging at him, tempting him to change his mind.
----
Seven hours.
The doubts won't go away. In desperation he takes the last photo out of the box, the one that will drive home to him why acting on emotion is always a bad idea.
Her photo.
Emotion flaws your judgement, makes you act like a fool. Leaves you trying to pretend you're still a whole person when you've been sliced in two.
Emotions can't be trusted.
He places the two torn halves of the photo carefully together and stares down at her face, willing himself to remember that.
----
Five hours.
Two hours later and he's still staring down at her face. The sight has opened up all the questions he's been trying not to ask himself the last four months.
Where is she? Is she safe?
He's afraid he knows the answer. After all, she's never accepted anything in her life; she's certainly not going to start with a Cylon occupation. And she's never been good at taking care of herself, at keeping herself safe…that was always his job.
It's better not to think of her, because if he does, he'll have to face up to reality. To the fact that most likely she's nowhere at all.
That soon he's not just going to be the only Adama left. He's also going to be the only one left who remembers Zak. Who loved Zak.
----
Two hours.
Even he has a limit when it comes to solitude, it seems. He goes back to CIC and stares at the dradis screen, willing it to burst into life.
Come on, Dad. Prove me wrong. Please.
----
Zero hour.
CIC has never been so silent. Everyone seems suspended, waiting, frozen in time.
But time doesn't freeze. Eighteen hours comes, and then passes.
Five minutes. Then ten.
No Galactica.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
He realises that despite all his gloomy predictions, all his certainty that the mission was doomed, he still didn't expect this. Not really.
It seems that the young boy who believed that his father was indestructible is still there, deep down.
Another illusion crumbling away.
But he can't quite let go of it, not yet.
----
Zero hour plus one.
"We need to go. He told us to go, you know that. Not to wait. Waiting is just putting the whole fleet in danger-"
He turns away from Dee's words, from her sad but determined eyes.
He can't do this, can't let go of them, not so soon. They might only be slightly delayed-
"We'll wait a little longer," he says firmly, and ignores her sigh.
----
Zero hour plus two.
Two hours overdue, and he knows he has to make a decision. He knows Dee's right, that they need to leave, to make sure that at least some humans get out of this mess alive.
But something in him is rebelling at the thought. He knows he has to do it, knows it's the only sensible thing to do, but he can't quite bring himself to say the words, to accept that the two people he loves the most are gone without seeing for himself, without trying to help them-
He can see Dee crossing CIC towards him. His time's run out.
This is it.
He closes his eyes, and a memory blindsides him out of nowhere.
----
The park in Caprica city. High summer, the sun scorching his face as he and Zak sprawl on the grass, eating ice-cream.
His ice-cream is dripping onto his fingers, forgotten in his anger as Zak tells him he's going to the ceremony marking Dad's promotion to commander.
He can't understand it. He lists all the times Dad has let them both down over the years, failed to appear at the important moments in their lives, hurt and disappointed them and their mother.
His ice-cream has melted entirely by the times he winds down.
Zak just smiles at him, sadness in his blue eyes. "I know all that, but I'm still going."
"How can you? I don't understand." He digs his fingers into the grass, confused and hurt. "It doesn't make sense."
The sadness in Zak's eyes has changed to pity.
"Not everything has to make sense, Lee. Sometimes it can't. Sometimes you just have to go with what feels right."
----
He opens his eyes, and for the first time since he left his father, he smiles. Because he knows now what he has to do. And this time he has no doubts.
Because it feels right.
He looks over at Dee. "Prepare jump prep." He pauses. "For New Caprica. We're going back to get them."
Dee blinks. A murmur runs round CIC, but not one of disagreement. He looks round and sees surprise on all those faces, but relief too, and acceptance.
He thinks Dee might argue, but instead she just stares at him for a long moment and then nods and smiles, tears glittering in her eyes.
He thinks that somewhere out there, Zak is smiling too.