2 Years before cylon attack
William Adama age 62
Location: Caprica Regional Space – Galactica Docked at Brimir Anchorage
He wondered if they could see it, the gaping wound left behind by Zak's death. The sudden quiet followed by concerned looks when he passed them in the corridors made him think that they could. His grief enveloped him like a dark cloak. It was a persistent ache in his chest, a shortness of breath he hadn't felt since his crash landing on Leonis, and there was no escape.
He did whatever he could to take his mind off the pain. Braddock takes first watch. He turned a corner into an empty stretch of hallway. Braddock takes first watch. Down a ladder and past a crowd of enlisted crewmen. Quincy checks the roster. He passed the pilot's ready room and walked by a dimly familiar junior lieutenant who offered an academy perfect salute. Quincy checks the roster. He responded with an inattentive wave of his hand and tried to remember her name. Val—something…
-x-
The sun shone bright, but it provided little warmth this time of year. Not that he very much cared. The chill from the air had sunk into his body in the time it had taken him to walk from the shelter of the transfer station tent to the Raptor that waited for him on the airfield. A bright-eyed young pilot that reminded him vaguely of Nia Tikaru stood at attention on the Raptor's wing. She greeted him with a smile and a salute.
"My name's Lieutenant Sharon Valerii and I'll be your pilot back to Galactica," she said in that over formal way particular to new officers. "It's an honor to finally meet you, sir," she continued while he boarded the craft. The lieutenant was one of about a dozen new transfers Galactica had received that he hadn't had the chance to review given the present circumstances.
Her copilot leaned to look back over his shoulder.
"Come on, Boomer," he called. "Let's not keep the commander waiting." Helo gave Adama a knowing smile and a nod of acknowledgement as Valerii paused to let Adama settle into the vacant ECO seat and then scrambled to get to her own.
"Sorry, sir," she replied to no one in particular and ran through her flight checklist.
The flight back to Galactica was well over an hour and even though he was personally exhausted, the scarcely functioning part of him that was still a Colonial commander knew that his presence was making the lieutenant nervous, so he made an attempt at small talk.
"Where you from, Lieutenant?"
"Uh, I grew up with my foster parents in Ithaca, but I'm from Troy originally."
Adama had to fight down a sudden surge of emotion as memories flooded back of the Zopyros and his conversation years ago with President Kearney.
"Troy was a tragedy. My condolences."
"I was too young to really remember anything," she replied and they lapsed into an awkward silence for the remainder of the trip.
She was practically as green a pilot as they came and there was no small amount of coaching from Helo during her final approach to Galactica'sstarboard landing deck. When she finally touched the Raptor down it was with a jarring thud that had probably put a dent in the deck and had certainly made Adama wish he'd been strapped in. When his head stopped throbbing, he made a mental note to have Tigh check Valerii's flight record, and to leave orders with the CAG not to assign shuttle runs to frakking rooks when he was the one being shuttled.
-x-
Valerii flies with Helo. He made it down to the hangar deck as they were towing in the Raptor that had just touched down. Valerii flies with Helo. Adama spared a curt hello to Chief Tyrol and waited for the knuckledraggers to finish with their deck procedures. The Raptor had brought with it yet another new transfer.
Kara Thrace ducked through the half-open Raptor door, duffel bag slung across one shoulder. When she tried to hop down off the wing, she lost her balance and stumbled into her waiting commander. He caught a faint whiff of Ambrosia before she righted herself.
"Sorry." She flashed him an impish grin. "Sir."
He didn't care that she wasn't following procedure or that she was obviously intoxicated. Ever since the funeral he'd found military rituals and procedures to be empty and frankly, irritating, even though it was one of the few things he had left that kept him from falling completely apart. That it was nearly all he had left was precisely why he hated it.
"I'll show you to your quarters," he sighed.
"Nice ship you got here," she quipped as she followed him off the deck.
-x-
One of the advantages to being the commander of a half-derelict battlestar was that no one in the admiralty had bothered to object when he had turned Galactica toward the nearest available anchorage and taken a Raptor straight to Caprica upon receiving the news of Zak's death.
Lee had done what he always did when his younger brother was concerned and had taken care of things, this time by handling the funeral arrangements. It was just as well. It had left him free to meet with Zak's former flight instructor.
"Are you Lieutenant Thrace? I'm Commander Adama, I'm Zak's father."
He'd been fully prepared to use what little influence he had left in the Colonial Fleet in order to see to it that the lieutenant spent what was left of her career at a desk alphabetizing requisition forms.
"I know, sir. I'm sorry, sir, I was planning o n coming to see you tomorrow before the funeral."
He almost immediately changed his mind.
"You don't need to explain anything."
It didn't take him very long to see why Zak had taken such a strong liking to her.
-x-
"Gods. And here I thought Triton was a sardine can." The other residents in the officer's quarters were all on midday duty running test flights with Captain Spencer. Kara tossed her duffel onto the only obviously unused bunk and glanced back at the doorway where Adama stood. "Let me guess, in the ad for this place they used the word 'cozy' didn't they?"
That managed to get a smile out of him, short lived though it was.
"You're probably tired from your trip, so we can go over your assignment tomorrow if you want to catch some rack time."
"Nah, I'm fine. I could really use another drink though."
Part of him worried. The last thing I need is another Saul Tigh… And part of him sympathized. He hadn't exactly started his day sober and didn't plan on ending it that way either.
"I think I have some to spare."
Besides, he already knew what to expect.
-x-
"…So after Riley and I get thrown out of the officer's club we—we decide to head down to this ground-pounder bar, because we've got Karl with us and we figure if you got a guy that big, they're not going to take you on right?" Kara paused to pour more Ambrosia into her glass from the bottle they had on the table between them.
"Yeah," Adama scoffed, "right." He leaned back in his chair and watched the other patrons of Morrigan's from his spot in the corner while the lieutenant continued with her story.
"Well we walk in, just us three nuggets in a bar full of Marines, they probably figured we were there as a prank or on a dare or something, it happens."
He nodded in agreement.
"I'm all smiles and I tell 'em my mom served way back in the war and everything so it's cool. This sergeant, he comes up to me and I don't remember what he says, doesn't matter, he finishes with 'I think it's time for you to go home, princess.'"
He smiled at that.
"And I say, 'oh, is that a fact?' I move like I'm gonna hit the guy, but when he gets his hands up, at the last second I duck and pants him right in the middle of the bar! He tripped all over himself trying to get his pants back on and go after me at the same time—once the rest of 'em were done laughing, oh we ran outta there so fast..."
Adama finally laughed and Kara broke into a sudden fit of giggling.
The alcohol had done its work to cover up their grief, and the stories kept them even further distracted from it.
"Oh, it was great, it was great… I think I spent a week in the brig for that one."
When they had fallen quiet again, Adama filled the silence.
"Couple years after the war, Galactica was in dry dock for a big overhaul and I'd been temp assigned to Atlantia. Atlantia was shiny and new back then, and the frakkers permanently stationed there had the biggest frakkin' egos in the fleet."
"Ugh, they still do."
"Well, when I was there, the worst was this LSO, Captain Jonas Ratchet. Frakker thought he was hot shit because he'd graduated first in his class and had a girl on every Colony, or so he said. He was on duty for my thousandth landing and I figured I'd really stick it to the guy…"
Their conversation kept going past midnight until closing time and after they half-staggered into the chill, early morning air, they didn't say good night. Insomnia and sitting for several hours had made them restless, so they walked away from the bright lights at the edge of the Delphi Airbase toward Pilgrim Bay. There, the only illumination was from the perpetual twilight cast by the city lights behind them. They wandered for a while and when he was starting to feel tired, they found a place to sit and rest on a smooth rock plateau that overlooked the water. The stillness that settled over them was punctuated by the sound of gently lapping waves against the worn pebbles that lined the shore.
It was Kara who spoke this time.
"I still can't believe he's really gone." Adama could only see the faint outline of her face silhouetted against the distant city glow, but he didn't need to see her expression to understand what she was feeling. "Gods, I thought—I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him and now—" She took a shuddering breath. "I don't know what to do anymore. I just, I don't." He could hear the tears building in her voice. "Gods, I already miss—I miss him so much and I—" After that came a poorly stifled sob.
Despite not knowing how she might react, he reached out instinctively to put an arm around her. She nearly collapsed into his embrace and hugged him tightly. For a moment, he forgot about his own anguish and simply held her until he felt her start to pull away.
"I'm sorry," she said when he released her. "I didn't mean to, um, I'm not usually so—"
"It's okay."
"I don't know whether I've had too much to drink, or not enough," she said with a tired laugh.
"Situation like ours, I'd say the answer's both."
"Hm, yeah."
-x-
"Now these are real quarters."
Ever since his divorce, home was a battlestar and so he had furnished it accordingly. Over the years, he had built up a small library of books that had long since overflowed the space available on his bookshelf and his appreciation for history had garnered him a diverse collection of artifacts.
"Is that a Montclair?" Kara moved to examine the painting above his couch while he poured a glass of Caprican Gold for each of them.
"An original. I got it as a promotion gift from my last commander."
"I always thought Montclair was a little overrated, especially once they started slapping his stuff on bumper stickers and the covers of bad novels, you know? I'm more of a Serreno fan myself."
"You're into art then?" He handed her her drink and gestured for her to sit.
"Uh, you could say that." She took a sip from her glass, smiled appreciatively then took a bigger swallow. "I've been known to paint, on occasion."
"Really?"
"I don't seem the type I know, but my dad, he uh had this artistic streak in him that I sort of inherited. He played piano. I paint."
"My father was a lawyer. The only thing I inherited was a lesson in how to argue with him. Seems like I did a helluva job in passing it along."
-x-
"You're late," snapped Lee.
"I had a long night."
He and Kara had stayed out almost until dawn and he'd barely had enough time to get back to his hotel room, clean up, eat something, and get to the cemetery for the memorial service. His whole body ached from a combination of dehydration and sleep deprivation and the bright morning sunlight only exacerbated the headache that left him squinting in an effort to attain some semblance of relief.
"That's just great. It's always some excuse with you, while I have to pick up the pieces. You can't ever take responsibility, can you? Do have any idea what mom has been doing the last hour waiting for you to—"
Before Lee could work himself up into a tirade, Kara interposed herself between them.
"Hey, Lee! Lay off all right. You wanna be mad at someone you can yell at me. It's my fault okay. We got to talking, had a few drinks—"
"No. Don't you dare defend him! You have no idea what he has put this family through, that he can't even show up on time for his own son's—He's the reason we're all here in the first place, Zak never would have joined if he hadn't pushed him, so you can just stay the frak out of it!"
"Lee, son, this isn't the time…"
Adama's weak attempt at diffusing the situation before it turned into a fistfight between Lee and Kara nearly failed, but Lee's rage had rendered him momentarily speechless and a second later he shook his head, his voice cold.
"I'm done. I can't—I'm done." He turned to walk toward the small gathering of mourners behind him. "You can both go to hell for all I care."
-x-
"You know, what Lee said at the funeral about why Zak—he was wrong. Zak wasn't trying to impress anyone, he just wanted to fly, more than anything," offered Kara. "I'm sure after Lee's had some time to cool off he'll accept that…"
"Maybe," he said, even though in his heart, he knew better. Lee's anger hadn't been entirely without cause. Adama knew his family had suffered from his absence and from the demands of his service that had taken precedence over anything else. But it was too late to go back and change things, to undo the damage he had wrought. He could only look to the future.
Part of that future was sitting beside him.
He had been warned, by no less than three commanders, that he shouldn't request Kara to transfer to Galactica because she was poorly disciplined and impossible to control. He had ignored them for the same reason that, at the funeral, he had reached over to hold her hand. She was lost and he thought that he could save her. He could save her like he always managed to keep saving Saul. He had to try. No one else was willing.
Galactica was a good ship. It was a safe ship.
Kara had settled back into the couch with her feet up on the corner of a small table stacked with books and finished off her drink.
He thought she needed someplace safe.
"Permission to stay here, sir?" she asked.
He needed someone who made the pain of losing Zak easier to bear.
"Granted."