arrow_of_apollo | [theatrical_muse] 266

266 - Start something

I was a terrible husband.

I knew it, Dee knew it... hell, the entire fleet must have known it. There are plenty of reasons why I was so bad at it, of course. Dee and I got married during a time when I didn't know what I wanted, back when I was still so damned confused about Kara and her place in my life and in my heart. I was still hurting from Kara marrying Sam, and I was drifting in all of that.

So I reached out for the one thing and the one person I had come to always reach out to when I was drifting: Dee. The voice that sounded like home to me when I was floating in space, dying. The one who sat at my bed, waiting patiently for me to heal after being shot. Dee loved me for reasons I don't think I'll ever understand, and a hell of a lot better than I ever deserved.

When the dream of Earth turned into the nightmare of a barren, irradiated rock, I felt that drift again, and it seemed like everyone in the fleet got swept up by that same tide. We were lost, we were confused, and we were grieving the loss of a home that we'd never really had, but had been wishing and hoping and fighting for, from one end of space to another. Earth was a blasted planet, empty and dead. Despair took root in every person around me, and the person who had led us through so much, President Roslin, had fallen the hardest.

And then Dee looked at me the way she had during those first days on Pegasus, and before we were married-- like she only saw the things that were best about me and the potential for even more. I asked her out for drinks. I reached out for her again, to stop me drifting. And if I stopped, maybe I could help everyone else, too.

Gods, I hadn't laughed that much since... I can't even remember. I had taken her confidence and belief in me to the Quorum and I had made them listen. I stopped the drifting. Or at least I started to stop it, slowed it down. It was like someone had turned back the clock on us, and we were spending our R&R time on Cloud Nine and loving every precious second of time we could make.

I knew at once what I was feeling. Hope. Hope that we could find someplace else, someplace better to live. Hope that our alliance with the rebel Cylons wouldn't come back to destroy us. Hope that the fleet wouldn't fall into the despair I was seeing in every corridor of Galactica.

Hope that now that I understood so much better who I was and what I wanted, that I could be a husband again. That I could make up for lost time and stupid decisions. That I could be the Lee Adama that I could see shining out of her eyes.

Hope that I could start again.

But the only thing I'm doing again is drifting.

The only thing I'm starting is her eulogy.

(528)

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