FFnet is happy with us again! I'm taking a deep breath and posting this before I want to change something again...

Too High a Cost
By: Mariel

Chapter 30

Inside

"In that case, there's something I need to ask you first."

The air in the room stilled after his quietly spoken words. His thoughts in turmoil, Adama took another sip of his drink. Having opened the door to ask what he needed to know, he felt suddenly tongue-tied.

With a soft susurration, Roslin set her untasted drink down and turned to face him. On the Gideon, he'd said they needed to talk, and she'd been surprised by the statement. Now, she knew he was right. This was their window of opportunity, and they couldn't let it pass. Gathering her courage, she decided not to wait for him to speak, but to forge ahead on her own.

Regarding him with green eyes that held all the softness of spring but little of its hope, she slid to the edge of the sofa and leaned a hand against its back.

"What are we going to do, Bill?" she asked.

She could almost feel his heart slow as he reacted to her words, and wondered if he'd heard the longing in her voice. When he shifted his gaze to her and she felt the full brunt of his searching eyes, she knew he understood that she was talking not about the problems in the fleet, but about themselves.

In spite of that understanding the words that came out of his mouth was a prevarication.

"I thought I was going to ask the question," he said.

"And I thought I'd help break the ice," she said easily.

Dragging his eyes from hers, he relented. "I don't know what we're going to do," he admitted in a low tone. Keeping his gaze firmly on the drink he held in both hands, he said, "Though for starters you can maybe tell me why you-"

Something tightened painfully inside her, and she withdrew her hand from the back of the sofa and quickly spoke over his words. "I tried to explain before," she said. "Encouraging a relationship with Zarek seemed the only way to get what I needed. You were gone, contact with you forbidden, things were getting steadily worse, and I had to know what Baltar was doing on Colonial One." She paused to gather her thoughts, then continued, "You know how awful it was down there. I was frightened, Bill, but I was also determined to do whatever I had to do to ensure our people's well being. I needed all the information I could get, and I latched on to the only way I could think of to get it. You know what Zarek is like; if you have nothing to offer him, you don't exist. I only had one thing to offer, and I knew he was interested. I didn't think about how what I did would affect you - or," she admitted, "how I would feel about it myself afterwards. I didn't see it as a betrayal of anyone, I saw it as a means to an end. I was just doing what I had to do." She sat back and regarded him with eyes full of regret. "I hadn't thought far enough ahead to realise there'd be consequences I couldn't live with."

And it wasn't, she realised, only her damaged relationship with Bill that worried her. To her surprised dismay, she also realised her actions said something about a change in herself she wasn't sure she liked. What she had done had lacked perspective. There had been no balance, no consideration of the ramifications of her choices in either a strategic, moral, or ethical sense.

She wondered when she had lost her need for that.

-xxx-

Bill frowned. Laura's rush of words had answered a question he hadn't been about to ask. Not yet, at least. That her alliance with Zarek needed to be discussed at all was distasteful, and when she had interrupted him, he had been preparing to ask about her act of self-sacrifice on Kobol. Her words had given him more time to think, however, and no matter how he looked at it, her coldly ending their relationship and starting an affair with someone else didn't jibe with her insistence upon following him to Kobol and the new-found knowledge that she'd thrown herself in front of cylon gunfire to save his life. How could she care so little on one hand and yet care so much on the other?

Another part of his mind also noted that her believing his first question would be about Zarek said things she perhaps didn't realise. A needy part of him felt somehow reassured. An even needier and more deeply hidden part of him began to feel some small stirrings of hope.

He exhaled softly as a myriad of thoughts swirled formlessly about in his mind and then slowly coalesced into a sort of understanding... His breath caught, and he turned eyes the colour of a stormy sea towards her.

She said she'd done what she'd had to do.

That had become, he realised, an essential part of her. Her willingness to do whatever she felt was necessary to accomplish her goals was something he both admired and feared. There was a price to pay for that sort of single mindedness, a loss of something he regarded as fundamentally human and civilised. He'd seen it most often in the military - the absence, for some people, of a line beyond which they would not go in order to attain a goal. It had always bothered him. He was a man who needed to question, needed to explore why and how...but though he accepted that there were more nuances of right and wrong, more shades of gray than most palettes could hold, he had come to strongly believe that there were lines that should not be crossed, deeds that should not be done. It was a perspective he could not give up. For him, having a line beyond which one would not step was a fundamental part of being a moral, ethical creature worthy of being called a human being...

And so the question became could he live with its apparent absence in the woman he called President?

Could he live with its absence in the woman he still desired?

And could he stop thinking of her affair with Zarek and all her other betrayals in terms of their relationship and instead see everything the way she had - as something extraneous and necessary at the time, meaningless in every way except as a means to accomplish a goal? For her, the affair with Zarek had had no bearing on the personal relationship she shared with Bill Adama - one relationship had been created out of her need to ensure humanity's survival, the other...

He wasn't certain what their relationship had been created from.

Attraction? Challenge? Need or loneliness?

The physical, intellectual, and emotional aspects of what had drawn them together were intertwined and so hopelessly entangled he felt nothing but confusion when trying to sort out its roots..

And what had 'it' grown into?

He remembered she had called it love.

And he remembered wanting to use that same word as they lay bleeding on Kobol...

But could love - or what they called love - overcome the culmination of what had passed between them? Could it heal the wounds made by so many betrayals?

Could it resuscitate the lost trust that had caused their relationship to founder?

-xxx-

Still on their way to CIC, Sharon, Lee and Helo walked in silence until Sharon looked at the Major and asked hesitantly, "Lee, has your father spoken about how he feels about being back?"

Uncertain what she was asking, Lee Adama's brow furrowed. Slowing his steps, he turned his head towards her and said, "I don't know what you mean."

As was her way, the lieutenant went straight to her point without preamble. "When your father left for Kobol, he thought he was going on a suicide mission," she observed bluntly. "He was sure he was going to die, and didn't mind. He'd make his plan, knew its outcome, and welcomed it. When you make that sort of decision, you think it's final. Problem is, he ended up alive and back here, right where he started. He's in the middle of a crisis now, so he's working on autopilot, but once this is over, where will he be mentally? He's back, but he hadn't planned to be. Hell, he didn't want to be. And although we're all thankful he's here, he needs to be thankful, too." She looked at him with dark eyes. "I'm not sure anything's changed to make him want to be here again, and if not..."

Her voice trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished.

Lee had no desire to complete it.

He and his father had never been ones for heart-to-heart talks, so how would he know what went on in his father's mind? How would he know whether or not his father was grateful to be alive or not? Remembering that until Kara had spelled it out, he hadn't even been aware that there was something going on between his father and Roslin, he admitted, "He hasn't said anything, and I've never been much good at reading him. I couldn't even guess what would have to change in order for him to feel right about being back."

"He seemed okay this morning," Helo offered optimistically. "Or at least he looked glad to be with us, and if that's how he's feeling, that's good, right? When Kara was ribbing us about taking over today's piloting duty and he threw in his two cents worth, it felt like old times."

Sharon nodded, and allowed herself to feel somewhat reassured. Still, she felt compelled to say, "It did, but I'm worried this crisis will end and he'll go back to what he was before he went to Kobol. I don't like the thought of that."

Silently, Lee agreed. It had been pretty horrible, and no one wanted that version of William Adama to return. He looked at Sharon thoughtfully. Sitting around the fire on Kobol, she'd been unusually willing to share her insights and observations about his father. Now, she was continuing that behaviour, forcing them to think about things that they otherwise would have avoided. Looking at her curiously, he blurted out, "Why the concern?"

Sharon regarded him with dark eyes. On some level she was offended by the question and by his need to ask it, but she swallowed that displeasure and considered her reply carefully. She could state the obvious: that she cared because Adama had been the first person, besides Helo, to look at her and see an individual creature worthy of existence. She could say he'd been the first to trust her and believe in her, and the first to extend his hand in concrete proof of his trust.

She paused, remembering. He had, she realised, gifted her with his trust even after others had betrayed it. He had not given up hope then; he had not given up his faith in people and doing the right thing.

But that was only part of why she cared. Her concern was rooted in more, and the more, she knew, would likely have a greater effect on his son's thinking. Finally, she said, "We spent hours talking while he was up here worrying about everyone on New Caprica and about how to get everyone back in one piece. One thing I learned about him, beside the fact he has an amazing need to understand things, is that he wants to do the right thing. He has a very idealized vision of how a good human being acts, of what a good human being is. It's obvious he doesn't feel he has been one, and it's hard for him to forgive himself for that in a time when he considers it so important to be one." She gestured gracefully. "I think a lot of that anger we saw was directed at himself. He feels it's important that mankind be worthy of survival, and he'd come to believe he wasn't. If he continues to feel that way, I'm worried he might-"

She stopped, leaving her thoughts once again unfinished. After only a heartbeat, however, she resumed her explanation.

"So my concern," she concluded, "stems from the fact that in William Adama we have a credible, ethical, trustworthy man with a proven track record to help lead us, but if he remains convinced that he can't trust either us or himself to act in the decently human manner he believes we need to, we're in danger of not having him to lead us at all."

Lee looked at her.

And life wasn't already complicated enough?

"So we've got to figure out where his head's at," he finally said. "If he's got any doubts, we've got to find a way of getting past whatever was going on with him before he headed after Kara and me."

Sharon nodded. "Yeah, though I have no idea how to do that. It's important he sort himself out, though." Knowing there was another important aspect to the problem that had not been brought up, she added, "And it's just as important that he sort out whatever's gone wrong between himself and the President. They balance each other in a way we need. God placed them where He did for a reason. I'm positive their destiny is a shared one."

Lee was assaulted be two feelings at once: the queasiness he felt while fighting off a mental picture of his father and Laura Roslin on the ground on Kobol, and a distaste of Sharon's use of the cylon singular term 'God'.

Setting both things aside, he acknowledged that Sharon did have a point. He couldn't envision any other two people leading the fleet. For all his disagreements with his father, he knew that the Old Man not only had the ability, determination, and experience to lead the military, he had its respect and affection. His father also provided a necessary balance to Roslin's perspective. On her part, Roslin had proven herself a capable and perhaps even ruthless leader - and she was one of the few people who could make his father listen to another point of view. When they worked together well, they worked together perfectly...

But no matter what his father and Roslin had been doing together on that riverbank, his father now distrusted and perhaps even hated her. He didn't know the story behind the chasm that had grown between them, but he'd seen it first hand and knew in order to move on, his father would have to forgive her for whatever it was she had done to create it.

"On Kobol, you said he needed to forgive himself. I think he needs to forgive her, too," he said.

Sharon nodded. "He's been angry with her for a while. Something happened, and for some reason, he hasn't been able to work around it the way he has in the past."

Helo grunted. "Lots of things have happened, so if we're looking for a cause, we've got plenty to choose from. But you're right: there was a straw that broke the camel's back, and whatever it was, he's going to have to forgive her that before things start righting themselves."

They stopped just outside the doors to CIC. Lee thought a moment, then looked at his two friends. "We may have to mediate a peace between them," he said reluctantly.

Sharon agreed. "If they can't do it on their own, you're right."

Lee sighed and hoped they could do it on their own.

He thought of Kara. She, on the other hand, was so going to love getting involved.

-xxx-

Laura looked at Bill and hesitated. As she had said earlier, his anger seemed gone, but she was still not comfortable, and he had still not offered forgiveness. In fact, since she'd spoken, he'd remained resolutely silent. Turning away, she sighed inwardly. She had the inner strength to deal with whatever life presented her - including a life without Bill Adama. But, though in many respects life might be easier without his life entangled with hers, she knew without a doubt that she didn't want a life without him. Screwing Zarek hadn't been worth it. Keeping secrets, lying, and not considering the effects of her decisions on others, had all helped tear apart the trust that had built between them. That cost had been too high, and she found herself troubled by having to work around it.

"I've come to see," she admitted, "that when I am focussed on a goal, I lose sight of the fact that my actions don't just affect a result in terms of success or failure. There's also an effect on the people involved and on the people who care for them."

It sounded so simple when she said it.

Funny how long it had taken her to realise it.

She looked down at her hands and folded them, one inside the other, to hide their trembling. "I've made a lot of decisions without considering what they would do to you or us or the people we know. I'm not used to thinking about those things. I honestly didn't fully understand your anger when I went behind your back and had Kara return to Caprica, or your reaction to finding out about Hera, or even your reaction when we were all back here together and you couldn't stand to be in the same room as me. But when you left for Kobol, and Tigh forced me to see what you were intending to do, I began to see the web that had been woven, and now..." Her voice trailed off.

An emotion she was becoming all too familiar with trickled down her spine.

In an attempt to move away from it, she rose. After putting distance between him and herself, she stopped. Standing straight, her hands clasped in front of her, she felt separate and more alone than she had ever felt before. Turning luminous eyes to meet his, she said, "And now, I don't know what to do. I'm frightened, because except for Zarek, I think that given the same circumstances, I would do the same things again. Perhaps not in exactly the same ways, but I would have needed to do them. And knowing that the things I've needed to do have also destroyed the relationship that we built..." She lifted a hand, then dropped it. "I don't know how to fix this, and I'm afraid of that, too. But I know we have to, because we can't go on like this. I can't let go of what we've shared, Bill. And I don't want to. On Kobol... we...it meant something. It was right...And last night...That meant something to me..."

Her voice faltered. She had not expected to make this confession. Exposing herself like this went against every instinct of self-preservation she had.

With wary eyes, she watched him slowly rise to his feet. The tension in the air between them snapped when the phone began to ring.

End
Chapter 30

Author's note: Next up: The aftermath of a talk with the doctor. My apologies the end is taking so long. Thanks for reading, though!