Chapter 10

Negotiating

In choosing his negotiating team, President Adar selected a wide range of talents both in negotiating skills and resourcefulness. Credit for the conditions they worked out with the Cylons can be attributed to no one particular person but to the group as a whole. Though not everyone agreed at the time, historically the treaty is regarded as a masterpiece of human negotiating skill.

-Bartell, History of the Second Cylon War

.

In the rush to get back to Caprica, no one had remembered to call and tell Carolanne and Zak that Bill and Lee were coming home.

Zak was sitting in the den playing a video game when Lee and his father came in the kitchen door. Lee had never hugged his brother so long or so hard. Zak didn't seem to want to let go of him. He doubted that his father had ever hugged Zak like that either.

Where's your mother?" Bill asked.

Zak motioned toward the hall. "In her bedroom. She got word this afternoon that her friend from the museum was killed in Delphi. Henry was there when the fighting started and couldn't get back. After the bombing stopped some people went crazy and started looting the museum and some other places. I don't know, I guess Henry tried to stop it or something and somebody shot him. Anyway, he's dead. Mom's been in her room since then. I've tried to get her to come out, but no luck."

"Is she drinking?" Bill asked.

"I don't know," Zak answered. "I don't think so, but I don't know for sure. She was spending a lot of time wandering around the house crying even before Henry died. I think she's been worried about both of you. Yesterday morning I came down to breakfast and she was sitting at the table drinking coffee and crying over your wedding pictures and Lee's baby pictures. I told her you'd be okay, but…" he shrugged.

Bill told Lee to go out and tell the driver that he would be delayed. Then without another word, he went down the hall, knocked on Carolanne's door and went inside.

For the next hour Lee and Zak sat at the kitchen table while Lee drank milk and ate two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and told Zak everything he could remember about the time he had spent on the Galactica. Well, almost everything. He told Zak about meeting Blaire Merric but didn't mention sharing a bunk with her. That was something private and special and he kept it to himself.

Finally Zak looked down the hall and said, "Dad's been in there a long time. What do you think they're doing? Do you think they're doing it?"

"No way," Lee answered. "They're probably just talking."

When his father came into the kitchen later, though, his hair was damp. He'd obviously taken a shower, but that didn't mean…did it? Could his mother and father have been sharing a bunk, so to speak? His father did seem to be in a lot better mood, though.

Lee suddenly wished John was around to ask his opinion. Gallagher would probably just laugh, and tell Lee his father was entitled to some privacy. His parents might be separated now, but they weren't divorced. He guessed that was the same thing as still being married.

"I'll call you tomorrow," his father said to him before he left. Lee stood up. Bill came over and hugged him. "I can't tell you how proud I am of you, son. Any commander in the service would be privileged to have you serve on his battlestar. I was privileged to have you on mine."

Lee almost choked up. His father had never said anything that nice to him in his life.

A few minutes after his father left, his mother came into the kitchen. She was barefoot, wearing jeans and one of his father's old shirts. He noticed that her eyes were puffy but she was smiling as she came over and hugged him. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail, but it was damp, too, and she smelled like soap, just like his father. They probably had shared a bunk. Maybe even a shower.

He caught Zak's eye. Behind his mother's back Zak shrugged and grinned.

He thought so, too.

War sure made people do crazy things.

...

Early the next morning Laura Roslin paced her bedroom down in the bunker. The confirmed roster of the President's negotiating team had just been delivered to her. It was alphabetical by last name. Adama, William, Cmdr battlestar Galactica, was the first one on the list with a brief biography by his name. She could hardly believe that in a little over an hour, she would sit down at the table with a man she hadn't seen in eighteen years, a man she had once loved, possibly still loved.

She went over to the small closet. She hadn't brought much, mostly casual clothes, but she did have a wine-red skirt suit and a dark green pantsuit. Which one? She finally decided on the wine-red suit. It was more feminine. Bill had liked her best when she looked feminine.

Could she really be doing this? Choosing her wardrobe for a man who might barely remember her? A man who had been married to another woman for eighteen years now, a woman who had borne him two sons? A man who had taken only three short months to forget his feelings for her all those years before?

Oh, Laura, get a grip, she told herself. Still, she slipped her feet into a pair of black high heels instead of the sensible lower-heeled wine-red pumps she had brought to wear with the suit.

Bill's face when he saw her registered almost nothing. He should have gotten the same list she had of the negotiating team so her presence shouldn't have come as a surprise. She was much more collected than she had thought she would be. She had purposely waited until she knew some of the team had gathered before she entered the room. She could not have handled seeing him alone.

Bill was wearing his duty blue regulation uniform, not his dress one, and was standing off to himself. She saw the pins on his collar, commander now instead of lieutenant, and over his heart he wore the wings of a senior pilot.

The others were gathered in a tight group. She recognized Dr. Baltar from his talk to them the previous evening. He was talking to Justice Evan Socorro and Dr. Phoebe Medwin, the medical member of the team. The President wasn't there yet.

Taking a deep breath, Laura crossed the room.

"Hello, Bill."

"Laura." She could read nothing in his eyes. "Do I have you to thank for this?" His tone was tight and controlled yet she could feel the fury just beneath the surface. Fury, she realized, that would soon be directed at her.

There was no way to avoid the confrontation. She knew he had guessed her involvement the moment he had seen her. At least she could give him her reason. "The President was looking for a good military man, someone who had seen combat, someone who…"

"Damn you," Bill said softly. She heard the barely-controlled anger in his voice. "Don't you understand that when I see a Cylon, I want to kill it? Do you have any idea how many good men and women are dead because of them? And now you expect me to sit down at a table and make nice with them? Negotiate with them?"

Facing Bill's anger now failed to rattle her any more than facing her father's had years before. She drew herself up and said coolly, "I suppose you'd rather see the human race exterminated?"

"What I want to see is those metal motherfrakkers put down."

"Well that wasn't happening, was it? You were losing. We were losing. Our fighters were being destroyed. Our pilots were dying by the score."

His eyes finally revealed his pain…very deep…very real.

She continued in a much gentler tone. "It's time to let the Cylons put their cards on the table and see what they're offering and what they want in return. We may still choose not to accept. We may still choose to fight to the death. We may still rather take annihilation instead of capitulation. And at this point, Bill, the extermination of the human race is our only other choice. But at least we'll know we made that choice. And you obviously haven't heard. You won't be negotiating with something metal. Some of the Cylons look like us now."

"What?"

The shock in his voice seemed genuine and yet there was something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Shock in one sense but not in another? A memory stirred perhaps?

"I guess word never reached the battlestars. Two days ago the Cylons sent a delegation of what we thought were three humans to negotiate. They were arrested and charged with treason. Yesterday they sent three more…the same three. Dr. Baltar has a theory, which he explained to us last night. The Cylons have developed lifelike-looking robots that can pass for human in every way. I understand that doctors have taken blood and tissue samples from the three who were sent two days ago. They're more than synthetic robots. Even their medical tests look human, although Dr. Baltar is certain there is a way to tell the difference. We just haven't found it yet. So, no, you won't have to sit across the table from something metal."

Bill's anger seemed to abate slightly. He knew something about the human-looking Cylons. She picked up that much from him but could sense nothing more. Whatever it was he had buried it deeply in his thoughts.

She turned to go.

"Laura," he said softly.

She turned around.

"Sometimes I can stand too much on pride. It's a failing of mine."

"We all have our failings, Bill. For some of us it's a lack of faith in our own hearts."

She knew that neither of them was talking about the current situation and so did he. Again she saw something in his eyes. For a moment they were the pilot and the diplomat's daughter once again, and then he dropped his gaze, unable or unwilling to let her see any more of his heart.

The President entered the room. "Good morning," he said. "I want to thank all of you for agreeing to participate in this history-making event. We've got a lot to talk about before we meet the Cylon envoys. Let's not waste any time. We've placed some information on the table at your places. Please have a seat."

Laura made a point to sit on the same side of the table as Bill but with two people in between them. That way she didn't have to look across at him. It was easier on both of them that way. She could never have maintained her concentration on the negotiations otherwise.

When they were ready, Adar's aide let the Cylons enter the room. Laura was unimpressed by the men, but the tall blond female was extremely beautiful. Gaius Baltar immediately began to fidget with his tie as he stared at her. His interest wasn't lost on Laura.

It took them nearly four weeks to hammer out the conditions under which the Colonies would surrender.

First and foremost in a move which surprised everyone, the Cylon negotiators wanted the President and his Cabinet to remain in place. The older white man who introduce himself as John Cavil would join the President's staff. All decisions would be subject to his approval. The Cylons at least understood the chaos that would ensue on all levels if they completely dissolved the government. And chaos right now was not in their plan. In fact to avoid chaos and keep from having to expend a lot of effort keeping order, they were more willing to negotiate on some points than Laura would ever have dreamed.

Their motives became clearer as the negotiations progressed.

Keeping order had to have been on their agenda when they agreed that the military could remain intact. Cavil explained their reasoning. "When you disband a military, you put a lot of highly trained humans at loose ends. The way to handle that is to keep the military intact, keep the command structure in place, but take away their bullets."

It was flawlessly logical. The kind of thinking she would have expected from a machine, if you conceded that machines could reason.

All armaments would be removed from the battlestars, space stations and base stations. All armories, all missile silos and weapons manufacturing would be completely under Cylon control. They would indeed take away all the bullets. That was the hardest demand to get past Bill.

"We're letting them neuter us," he said bitterly to her late one evening as the two of them remained behind in the negotiating room.

"It could be worse, Bill. They could have demanded the destruction of everything and disbanded the military completely."

He looked at her and she saw the pain in his eyes. "Sometimes I think we've made a mistake negotiating with them. Sometimes I think death would have been the more honorable alternative."

"I disagree, at least at this point. I'm sure there is a point at which I would agree with you, but not yet. That's one of the main differences between a diplomat and a soldier. We're slower to see death as an acceptable alternative."

"You still want to better humanity, to save it. We created these monsters years ago. We unleashed this plague on ourselves. Maybe we don't deserve to live. Maybe it should be our fate to die at the hands of our creations. What gave us the right to act like the gods, to create life albeit artificial life?"

"I'm sure at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. I'm glad all of us don't feel like death should be the consequences of a bad decision made generations ago. I've said this to Billy my young aide…life is hope. Life is always hope. As long as we're alive there is a chance for a better future, possibly even one without Cylons in it. Don't give up on us yet, Bill. In spite of all our unwise decisions, in the past the human race has shown a resilience that can only be described as miraculous at times. Give us the chance to do that again."

She knew her faith in their future was not shared by everyone. After all, there were probably quite a few who shared Bill's opinion, that death was the more honorable alternative.

The only non-negotiable Cylon demand was the one that scared Laura the most. It was apparently the reason they wanted to negotiate in the first place instead of destroying the planet. The Cylons wanted full access to the Colonial biomedical labs and research facilities. They also wanted full access to fertility research and genetic engineering and cloning experiments as well as complete access to all research dealing with Artificial Intelligence.

They demanded to work with Dr. Gaius Baltar by name although Laura was never certain if that had been their original intent or not. There were times when she thought Gaius had prompted the beautiful blond who called herself Natasi to ask for him. Laura began to see what a self-serving man Baltar was.

In return the President's team demanded and was granted Cylon help in rebuilding the destroyed cities and repairing the damaged infrastructure even though it would mean bringing thousands of their centurions to the planet.

Laura made sure there was a provision in the treaty that allowed education to continue without interference. That seemed to be the least of the Cylons' concerns. It wasn't exactly a surprise to her. Education wasn't often very high on her government's list of priorities either.

Bill got them to agree to allow new pilots to be trained even though it meant in unarmed Vipers and Raptors. They would still be pilots. They could begin replacing some of their losses. The reason the Cylons didn't care about the training of pilots soon became obvious.

They refused to allow any more Vipers and Raptors or any other type of military ship, including battlestars, to be manufactured, and there were very few fighters left. Even using parts from partially destroyed ships, each battlestar could manage to field only about two dozen Vipers and half that many Raptors. There were about fifty Vipers left at the Caprica Airbase.

Bill later told Laura that the wording of that part of the treaty had only forbidden the manufacture of new Vipers. It hadn't mentioned anything about refurbishing existing ones. He told her that in the big military salvage yard or boneyard as he called it that was north of Caprica City there were between two and three hundred old Mark II Vipers. The Mark III Viper had been a complete reengineering in Viper design, so most Mark IIs had not been stripped of their parts. They were still mostly intact. He obviously had plans for those ships.

Despite the President's request, the Cylons refused to reveal how many humanoids there were. So far Laura and the others had seen only three. The negotiating team had no idea how many copies there were or if there were any more that hadn't been revealed. The three Cylon negotiators, Cavil, Simon and Natasi, refused all attempts to get that information.

Opinion was divided about the answer. Some felt like they had seen all of the skinjobs as some had begun crudely calling them. Some felt there were more. Laura had not yet formed an opinion. She didn't have enough information.

At some point during the month-long negotiations, Laura woke up one night and sat up in bed with a horrified thought.

Giving the Cylons access to all their medical, genetic, fertility and cloning research had set off a number of alarms with her. Did no one understand what the Cylon's ultimate goal might be? Had no one yet realized that the Cylons might be planning to conduct experiments to try some type of cross-breeding between the human-looking robots and humans?

To Laura something like that would be an aberration, a mockery of everything she believed to be sacred, a mockery of the gods themselves.

The next day she pulled Dr. Baltar and Dr. Medwin aside and expressed her concerns to them. Both of them looked at her as they might a first grader. Dr. Baltar turned to Dr. Medwin.

"Shall I explain it to her or do you want to?"

"Please," Dr. Medwin answered, "be my guest."

"Respectfully, Madame Secretary, your concern has no foundation. Have you ever heard of someone inter-breeding, oh, let's say a cat and a dog?"

Laura had to admit that she had not.

"Genetically they are completely incompatible. Just as we are genetically incompatible with these Cylons. Humans can't cross-breed with machines no matter how much those machines look and act like humans. So lay your fears to rest. They can study our research all they want. It won't do them any good if that is their goal."

Everyone else on the negotiating team with the exception of Bill must have shared Baltar's opinion. Most of them just wanted the war to be over and their lives to return to some semblance of normality. If any such thoughts bothered them, they were able to push them aside.

In fact Dr. Baltar seemed almost eager to grant whatever they wanted in regards to his research. He appeared enthralled by what the Cylons had accomplished. He wanted to find out how they had done it and if it could help his research.

The last hurdle fell when the Colonials granted the Cylons access to all genetic and AI research. A peace treaty had been forged.

On a crisp late autumn day the historic document was signed by President Adar and the three Cylon representatives. The war was officially over. The next phase of their lives under Cylon control was beginning.

During the negotiations Laura had noticed the chemistry between Natasi and Dr. Baltar, but she kept telling herself that it was her imagination. There was no doubt that Natasi was beautiful, but how could Dr. Baltar be attracted to her knowing what she was? And how could a machine exhibit that kind of interest in a human male? Could she have been programmed that way? Programmed to feel? Could emotions be programmed? She could understand, perhaps, how a robot could be programmed so that its face registered an emotional expression in response to some sort of stimuli, but to actually feel it?

Laura couldn't begin to wrap her thoughts around that concept no matter how hard she tried.

On the afternoon after the treaty signing, however, she was sitting alone in a little tearoom inside the Capitol Building enjoying a cup of tea and a few moments of quiet. There she saw Dr. Baltar and Natasi come in and go to a booth in the back. They didn't see her. So there had been something to her observations after all.

Her next thought was even more perplexing. Was Natasi capable of having sex? Would it be pleasurable for her? How did they manage to program that?

That was another concept that she couldn't begin to fathom nor did she want to try.

...

Bill went back to the Galactica with one of the Cavil Cylons and some centurions for a short time to oversee the removal of the remainder of her armaments and to talk to his crew. Then he was going to decide whether to stay on board the Galactica as her commander or to take a position that President Adar had offered him as one of his advisors.

During the negotiations, as they had forged a peace agreement with the Cylons, she and Bill had also forged a peace with one another. There were still times when she looked at him, though, and felt the tug of something from the past.

Once, just once, she asked him to come in for a drink when he walked with her back to her quarters in the bunker. It was the only time he let his guard down.

He shook his head and said, "You know why I can't do that." The hot spark danced in his blue eyes just long enough for her to see it. He was feeling the tug of the past the same way she was. And he was just as certain as she was of what the outcome would be if he accepted her offer.

Bill Adama was an honorable man. Bill Adama was a married man. Bill Adama was not an adulterer, nor would he allow himself to make her one. His decision had been wise; her offer of drinks had been foolish, just as foolish as her decision to take him to her bedroom all those years ago.

As he turned to go to his own quarters, though, he looked back at her. "You're still as beautiful as you were that day at the lake."

Then he turned quickly away and walked off down the hall. She realized at that moment just how very difficult it had been for him to turn down her offer. She wouldn't put him in that position again. She still cared too much for him.

She knew he and his wife had been separated, but she also knew that after the treaty was signed he moved back into the house they had shared. He never mentioned the sleeping arrangements and she never asked. It was none of her business.

Life was easier for her when he left to go back to the Galactica.

There was so much to be done. The President asked her to head a team to coordinate getting help to the refugees displaced by the destruction of the three major northern cities. Many of the people who had survived the bombing had set up makeshift tent cities in several locations. There were also the survivors who had come from the other Colonies, tens of thousands in all. Some had come to Caprica City, but Caprica's housing resources were already strained due to the bombing there. Many of the refugees had been shuttled north to the camps.

What Laura found was that the camps' inhabitants were in desperate need of food and clean water and medical supplies.

For a long time she and Billy worked ten and twelve-hour days six and often seven days a week. They worked with Scott Mickelson and his team. They worked with the Secretary of the Interior and his team, the Secretary of Housing and Welfare and her team. There was no room in her thoughts for Bill Adama. She fell into bed at night so exhausted that she no longer even dreamed.

The needs of the refugees were far greater than any of her needs.

Three weeks after the treaty was signed she traveled for the first time to the largest of the refugee camps. As her ship circled and then touched down on the one runway left at the Antioch Airport and she saw the ruin of that once thriving city, she cried. That was nothing compared to the way she felt when she saw the camp.

Even though it was nearly ten o'clock at night when she got back to Caprica City, she called President Adar and told him that their first priority had to be the sick and injured and starving people in the camps. There were several humanitarian groups doing what they could, but it was not nearly enough. It took a week before Adar's Cavil advisor released the first shipments of food, several more weeks before Simon allowed the first meager shipment of medical supplies.

What the Cylons wouldn't do was release the resources necessary to deliver the needed supplies. Raiders weren't designed to carry cargo and their own cargo ships and transports in the city were being utilized to ferry supplies to repair the damaged infrastructure, the water and electric plants, the shipyards and subways. The Cylons didn't care about the people in the camps. They wanted the medical research facilities and other labs back up and running first.

Laura asked them to allow the use of military cargo ships to help deliver the supplies. The Cavil advisor said no. Bill Adama defied him and put three big transports at her disposal. When the ships were loaded and ready to takeoff, though, centurions blocked the runway and Raiders hovered nearby awaiting orders should any of the ships make it off the ground.

A reporter named D'Anna Biers showed up and interviewed both Laura and Bill at the airbase while the transports idled in the background. They were both careful to speak only of the humanitarian goal of what they were doing. As soon as D'Anna went public with the story, Cavil backed down. The ships were allowed to take off.

D'Anna's cameraman got a wonderful shot of the last big transport highlighted by the setting sun just as it left the ground. He used a telephoto lens so that the pilot was visible in the cockpit, sunglasses and headset on, smiling with his thumb raised in the classic A-okay gesture. The flag of the Twelve Colonies, painted just below the cockpit's window, was clearly visible. Laura couldn't remember when she had seen anything more moving. The symbolism was completely lost on the Cylons.

The picture appeared everywhere with the caption of Hope and later won a Rosenthal Prize.

Laura noticed several weeks later that her secretary Adele now had it as her screensaver on her computer. So did Billy. She knew that Billy had probably loaded it for Adele. She motioned for him to come into her office and load it for her, too. She was glad she did because it became a constant source of inspiration to her as she worked for the people in the camps.

Hope. They still had hope.

The newsworthiness of the refugee camps soon died down, but many who were involved remembered the reporter for her courage in standing up to Cavil. Other reporters had done the same thing and had not been as fortunate. Several of the media's most outspoken critics of Cylon policies had simply disappeared. Some of Laura's colleagues began feeding D'Anna information for her stories and passed her name along to their friends. D'Anna Biers was soon a fixture in their lives.

The standoff at the airport had reinforced Laura's resolve. She vowed to fight for the forgotten people of the camps, for their continued survival. She refused to give up the hope they had all fought for. To the Cylons, though, the refugees were expendable.

In exactly the kind of remark she had come to expect from a machine, one of the Cavils said to her, "Humans can reproduce and make babies at will. Why are you making such an issue about a few refugees?"

"Because they all deserve a chance to live."

Cavil didn't seem to understand her sentiment.

Laura became the refugee's advocate in every way.

Bill accepted the position that President Adar offered.

They saw each other often around the capitol buildings and always stopped long enough to chat about what their jobs involved at the current time. He was never entirely clear about exactly what he was doing, but she got the very distinct impression that it was more than simply serving as a liaison between the civilian government and the military, especially the battlestars.

Bill Adama now seemed like a man with a purpose, as driven as she was when it came to her own desire to help the refugees. He still hated the Cylons, that much she knew, and yet he appeared to be cooperating with them. She knew there was definitely something more involved to what he was now doing than he would admit.

Now that he was on Caprica, he and Carolanne had reconciled. In one of the few personal conversations they had, Bill told her that he wanted to try to be a better father to his sons. He worried that it was too late for him to have much influence with Lee, but he wanted to try anyway. He told her that Zak would still be at home for several more years. He told her that having Lee with him on the Galactica made him realize how much of his son's life he had missed, how he realized for the first time that his older son was nearly grown. He said that despite his neglect, Lee had grown into a fine young man. She heard a great deal of pride in his voice.

She wondered later if that was his way of trying to explain to her why he had reconciled with Carolanne instead of going ahead with a divorce. How could she fault him for wanting to be a father to his sons when he had been mostly absent as they were growing up?

He also said something else to her that day, "Sometimes a man has to do what's right. He has to take responsibility. He can't always follow his heart no matter how much he might want to."

He left the interpretation of that remark up to her.

Late in the spring, she saw Bill and Carolanne with their sons at a restaurant in the city. She and Scott Mickelson were having dinner one evening to discuss an issue in the government contracts for the transportation of aid workers to the refugee camps. There were no longer enough hours in the work day. Many of them now carried their work over into dinner. They would never eat if they didn't.

She got up and went over to Bill's table and he introduced her to his family. Carolanne was a very attractive woman and the younger son was nice looking, but the older one, Lee was one of the best-looking young men she had ever seen.

Lee and his father both stood immediately when she walked up to their table. She saw Lee turn his head and hiss stand up to Zak before Zak also stood. They all shook hands. Zak was not nearly as impressed as Lee was at meeting a member of the President's Cabinet. Lee asked about the refugee camps and her work. Bill must have mentioned it to him because very little of what she was doing ever made the news now. It had been many months since the dramatic standoff at the Caprica Airbase.

Lee blushed, but he told her that he wished there were more concerned people like her in the government. She detected nothing but sincerity in his remark. She liked him immediately.

She asked him what he was doing now. He told her that he was going to graduate from high school in six weeks and in the fall would attend the Academy for a year and become an officer. After that he would go to Flight School. He was going to be a Viper pilot.

Across the table her eyes met Bill's. The spark danced in his eyes, she felt the echoing tug at her own heart, and then she smiled, bid them good night, and returned to her table.

Sometimes it didn't pay to keep visiting the past. The past for her and Bill Adama was a very painful place. It would never lose its hold over her if she kept going there. Bill had made the choice this time, an honorable choice, the right choice, the choice to be a father to his sons. He had not followed his heart. She was not part of his choice.

She hoped his handsome, blue-eyed son had better luck when it came to love.

...

Lee watched his father's eyes as the Secretary of Education left their table, watched his eyes follow her as she rejoined her dinner companion, and finally saw something in Bill's gaze that he didn't think he had ever seen before, something so painful to watch that Lee looked away.

It was only later that night as he tried to go to sleep that he remembered his grandmother's remark from two years earlier and made the connection. He finally knew who Laura was. She was Laura Roslin, the Secretary of Education.

He could understand why his father had felt that way about her. She was beautiful, but more than that, she cared. She cared about the people almost everyone else had forgotten and that meant she had a true capacity to love.

He shut his eyes and wondered if she still felt something for his father. He knew his father still felt something for her. He'd seen it in his father's eyes. Thinking about it now, he realized that he had even heard it in his father's voice as he'd often told Lee about her efforts for the refugees. Bill's voice changed when he spoke about Laura. It became softer and held more emotion.

Lee didn't have any idea what had happened all those years ago and he wouldn't dare to ask his father, but maybe there was a lesson to be learned from it. Maybe if he ever met someone he really loved, he should be careful about being proud and stubborn, traits he knew he possessed. Both had served him well when it came to taking pride in his schoolwork and his ability on the athletic field, and in having the stubbornness and tenacity to stick to a project until it was done.

But should they be applied to emotion?

Maybe his father should have swallowed his pride and given in years ago, no matter what it would have cost him. That had to have been better than losing the love of his life, better than having to watch her walk away from their table tonight with so much longing in his eyes that even his son could see it.

Of course, Lee realized as he drifted toward sleep, if his father had stayed with Laura Roslin, he wouldn't be here now thinking about it.

Maybe the lesson, then, was for him.

Maybe when it came to love, pride and stubbornness definitely had no place.

He just hoped that someday he felt about a woman the way his father felt about Laura.

He hoped he would be that lucky.

The last thought he had before he finally fell asleep was of John Gallagher's daughter who had a name as beautiful as Laura, a girl he had often thought about, a girl he didn't even know, a girl who was tough and beautiful and blond and athletic, everything he wanted, a girl he still believed he would meet one day.

He said her name again to himself and liked the sound.

Kara.