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Triptych
the life effect
by Raven

PG, gen, Battlestar Galactica. What happened to Lee Adama.

I

Starbuck has a way of always being right. She once asked him, "Do you believe in nominative determinism?" and then disappeared back under the Viper undercarriage she was working on. When she re-emerged, he asked her what the frak she was talking about, and she reminded him of the call sign that remains his glory and bugbear - he remains among the gods.

No, is the answer. He doesn't believe in any kind of determinism; that would mean Zach's death, the holocaust, the Cylons, they were meant to happen, and Lee won't accept that. He would tell her, but she's dancing with Doctor Baltar - she looks over his shoulder at Lee, and gives him a thumbs-up. He grins back. And there is his father, commander of the fleet, dancing with the President of the civilian population. It's a pretty picture and the press will love it. Lee doesn't.

Suddenly everyone at the party is having a better time than him.

Starbuck appears, in a rush of perfume and colour in that gorgeous, swirling blue dress; it’s an amazing transformation under any circumstances, but particularly now (Where did she dig up that dress? What did she have to go without for that perfume?) but he’s too preoccupied to enjoy it. In another life he would have danced through the night with her and hung the consequences, but now he’s military adviser to the President as well as the CAG and he couldn’t and wouldn’t forget it for a moment.

Yes... he is responsible and dedicated to his cause, even though the President herself seems to have relaxed, moving in slow, graceful circles around the dance floor with his father. His father, Commander William Adama, who wouldn’t understand civilian considerations if they hit him in the eye, but somehow learned to dance without his son noticing. He drifts by like a stately galleon and gives Lee a brief nod and mock salute; Lee is too surprised to react at all, blinking like a surprised codfish.

That’s when Lee decides to stop thinking and just dance with Starbuck, with Kara, and screw everything else. Innocently, she asks him: “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing, nothing.”

She isn’t listening, though, and he doesn’t blame her.

II

At the oracle at Delphi, Pythia was the priestess of Apollo. She breathed the mystical vapours of the earth and gave Apollo’s wisdom to the people. It is a part of the scripture, holy and sacrosanct, and yet Lee puts his book down and blushes thoroughly. Colonial One is still and silent at this time of night; there are people moving like peripatetic ghosts around the seating and laying papers on the desks, but they make almost no sound and the lights are dim.

Above the President’s head is the big whiteboard with the big number, that tells them exactly how many humans of the Twelve Colonies are alive out in space. There has been no occasion to change it today, and for that Lee is grateful. Not because it means there have been no deaths, not because there will be more of them to seed their new race, but because the silence has been maintained, with the equanimity, and Laura Roslin has not had to get to her feet and draw a new figure with shaking hands.

Lee wonders in passing if his priorities are changing.

Billy, the President’s aide, who always looks to Lee as though he should be in school uniform, like one of the kids Starbuck used to push around when they were all younger, ventures up to Roslin’s desk and says something. They converse in quick, low voices, shuffling papers, and he glances meaningfully up the clock, but their words shift to become part of the background hum and Lee does not worry that he cannot hear what they are saying. He picks up his book again, reads of Apollo as god of sunlight and prophecy, and takes himself away from this dim and drifting ship.

Time slips on by. Gaius Baltar, brilliant scientist, vice-president and madder than a bat out of hell, clambers to his feet, swats an insect only he can see and ambles in ungainly fashion out of the main cabin and towards wherever it is he sleeps. Lee ignores him. At length even Billy moves, although his gaze remains on Roslin, noting her every move with wide, sad eyes.

She stands up, and stops beside her military adviser. “Burning the midnight oil, Lee?” she asks quietly, and Lee looks up.

“I’ll go back soon,” he says.

“You should. Get some rest while you can.” She smiles, and leans slightly on Billy as she walks towards her own quarters.

He’d do anything for her. Lee watches her go.

III

Starbuck teases him about his new, almost civilian post. That he can understand, and almost welcome, because it makes the whole thing seem inevitable and normal – Kara’s teasing is part of the natural order of things. His father, however, is a different story; he is unhappy about his son’s allegiance and hides that fact from no-one. He has defined Lee’s life, in his presence and in his absence, and it is he who is commander of the fleet. Lee may be Apollo, may be the CAG, and Roslin may be the democratically elected President of the civilian population, but it is William Adama who is ruler of all he surveys.

So in quiet moments when he isn’t flipping a Viper or losing all his money to Starbuck or shouting at one of the civilians spreading Cylon rumours, Lee worries that he might be turning his back on all that has made him what he is. And then he reasons that he was trained for a different sphere, a different universe, one where they weren’t on the run from their own creations, where the sun was bright and Zach was alive and Starbuck ate pistachio ice-cream by the litre – that if this brave new world has not changed him, than he should worry about his own humanity.

Lee is stubborn, he knows what he wants and what is right. His father represents the past, and Laura Roslin the future. A schoolteacher guiding the fleet makes a certain amount of sense to Lee; as before, she is shaping the future and he is following her beyond the end of the world.

But in the end, the President sends Starbuck for the arrow of Apollo. I’m here, he wants to say and doesn’t. I’m here, I’ll go. But Kara is gone and Roslin is close to death and his father is William Adama. This is not how the world ends.

That happened a long time ago.