All Fall Down ((locked to arrow_of_apollo))

[number_eight]

OOC: Takes place after THIS THREAD

Sharon had done a good job lying to her husband while both she and Lee were "trapped" for two days on the cargo ship. She'd talked to Helo and Hera over the wireless a few times, thanks to Admiral Adama being understanding, and Lee had done the same with Dee.

Then, the world fell apart.

The trial against Gaius Baltar was set to begin, and Lee, for reasons she didn't understand, had decided to assist the defense. It didn't matter though, she kept telling herself, because they were back onboard Galactica and Hera was there. Life could go back to normal.

One day, though, Helo had come back to tell Sharon that Lee was being referred to as "Mister Adama". No one really seemed to know what was going on, but Sharon saw Dee later that day looking... well, upset, definitely. Sad? A little bit. But she wasn't about to go up to her fellow crewmember and ask, "So, did your husband tell you about us?"

After all, there wasn't an "us" to discuss. Right?

Still, it didn't stop Sharon from cornering Lee while the deliberation was going on. She was still a little shaken from her shared dream - vision? - with Caprica and President Roslin. Hera was being looked at again by Cottle. She knew she didn't have a lot of time, but the other fellow, Lampkin, was busy talking to Gaius Baltar.

"Hey." It wasn't the best way to start, but Sharon didn't know what to say. She looked around nervously and sighed. "What happened? Did she figure it out? Or did you finally confess?" Either way, it made him a better person than she was, she figured.

Comments

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

Somewhere, he hoped, there was someone who had heard the last testimony given in the trial of Gaius Baltar who understood what happened in those minutes, because Lee Adama was frakking sure he didn't understand at all. He wasn't sure where those words had come from, except maybe from something, or maybe even someone deep inside of him, not afraid to tell all of humanity's dirty little secrets to itself in the hopes that maybe things would change for the better.

And so, on the stand, he'd laid low the society all of them-- him included for sure-- had fought so hard to hang on to and reestablish. Lee had broken down the fleet and the people in it, and held a harsh, unrelenting mirror up to them all. He knew that he didn't like what he'd seen, but Lee also knew that there was no choice but to accept it and move forward from it.

When Lee looked across the courtroom to not quite meet the tired, confused and sad eyes of his wife-- for as long as she was his wife, he supposed-- he couldn't avoid the next truth to hit him. She had been right. Dee had been right. The system is broken, she said. It needs to be torn down and put back together. So that's what he'd done. Or, at least, what he'd tried to do.

The Captains were in their conference room, deliberating over the fate of one man. One man whose fate, really, didn't matter as much as what that decision meant for the human race.

Lee was standing clear of Baltar and Lampkin. The other two men were conversing over the next steps. He was still reeling from his moment in the spotlight when Sharon arrived and all but pulled him aside.

Confused for a moment, Lee finally understood her question and shook his head. "No," he whispered, "no, she doesn't know. It's this-- the trial, my resignation, all of it. Not... not us." He hadn't thought about them and whatever they had in weeks, but Sharon's presence stirred the fire.

"When this is over," he said, even more quietly, but intently, "I need to see you."

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

"But I..." Sharon shook her head, slightly confused. She could have sworn the way Dee had been acting that she'd figured it out. Although, she would have also expected Dee to maybe confront her or...?

No. She didn't know Dee that well, but something about her made Sharon guess that if Dee would confront anyone, it would be her husband and that was it.

"The trial." She nodded, trying to look as if she was talking to Lee on official business -- which was silly, really, considering she was in her blues and he was in a suit. "You... resigned? Why? I don't... I don't understand." Why would he do that? Why would anyone? "What the hell is going on that I'm missing?" Helo told her some of it, but obviously, he hadn't told her anything that had just happened.

She lowered her voice, "Fine. You can see me." He was confusing her even more. Then, it hit her. He didn't need to see her to explain his resignation or to talk. No, he needed to see her. She looked at the ground. "I... I'm not certain that would be a good idea, si-- Mister Adama."

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

It had been hard enough telling Dee about his resignation. While Lee had explained, he'd watched her silently get angrier and angrier about what he'd done, and when she'd started packing instead of exploding at him, he hadn't been that surprised. But having to repeat the story, to re-live it one more time wasn't going to be any more fun. Especially then, waiting for the verdict to be handed down.

"My father," Lee said as quietly as he could, "thought I was using privileged information to defend Baltar. He accused me of giving Lampkin information about Colonel Tigh-- information I never knew until his testimony-- and when I denied it, he didn't believe me."

Lee's jaw tightened as he replayed his father's reactions in his mind. The disgust had been clear to see on the older Adama's face along with the anger at the supposed injustice Lee had done to the Old Man's best friend. No anger or reproach had ever hurt him worse.

He hadn't been prepared for the frustration Sharon's answer incited.

"It's never been a good idea, Lieutenant. Sharon." Lee shook his head, feeling every tick of the second hand on the watch he was wearing as he pulled his mind further and further away from the trial. "But with all of this..." he gestured at the rest of the courtroom... "I'm lost."

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

She shook her head slightly at his words in disbelief. "No, he wouldn't..." Would he? Her gut reaction was to defend the Old Man, no matter what. He had given her opportunities when no one else had bothered or tried. He'd trusted her, listened to her, and believed in her.

"It must be some sort of misunderstanding," she quietly reasoned, still looking at the ground until Lee said her name. That brought her eyes right back up and she sighed. Her name. That was what had started the whole thing, if she really thought about it. He'd been drunk, and she'd wanted him to simply call her by her name, instead of a "toaster".

"Lee..." It was one word filled with a silent warning, but he didn't listen. Of course he didn't listen. "You're lost? I think we're all lost right about now. There's something going on with my daughter and President Roslin that invloves Caprica..." She shook her head and corrected herself. Lee wouldn't know to refer to her in that way. "It involves the Cylon prisoner we have. It's confusing the hell out of me and I don't know what to do so you think just because we're both going through some trying times right now that we should see each other?"

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

Lee felt anger flush his face when Sharon tried to defend his father, tried to backpedal over what he'd told her. "He called me a liar and a coward," Lee said bitterly, his jaw clenching tightly over the words. "Someone who'd hand the knife to someone else to do my dirty work instead of having the guts to do it msyelf." He took a long, deep breath, trying to calm himself. Hooking a finger under his shirt collar, he pulled it away from his neck, looking back at Sharon.

"That's what he thinks of me right now. What do you think, Lieutenant?" Lee's voice lowered and softened a degree. "Sharon?"

His eyes narrowed as the woman told her own story. "Your daughter? I thought she was safe now that the prisoner helped you get off the base ship."

One of Lee's hands rose as if to grasp Sharon's arm, but it stopped short, hung there for a moment indecisive, then slipped behind his back instead. "Why not now? When everything else is coming down around our heads, don't you want to run away, just for a second? Can you honestly tell me..." his voice dropped down to the barest whisper... "that there's any other time in our frakking lives where that happens?"

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

"I..." She blinked a few times. It was just so hard for her to reconcile the Admiral Adama that she knew and the one that Lee had just described.

Maybe the whole world really was falling apart.

"I'm sorry." It was all she could offer him, since she hadn't been there to know if Lee was speaking out of anger or if it was, in fact, the truth.

Sharon's arms wrapped themselves around her, as if it would somehow hold in all the mixed-up feelings she was going through. Funny, she thought, this is the first time he's ever mentioned any sort of interest in Hera.

"She's..." What could she say? "I don't know. I don't think she's safe." Blowing out a deep breath, she confessed, "The President, the prisoner, and I all shared the same dream. On Kobol at the Opera House and Hera was in danger there, I think... I found out before President Roslin had to go take the stand. We were both in the head and we looked at each other and knew. I don't know how, or why it happened but..." She shook her head.

Her voice lowered itself too. "Helo doesn't know yet, and I'm just... scared. Okay? So right now might not be the best time for either of us."

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

Lee breathed deeply once, twice, calming himself down. The argument with his father had hit him harder and cut him deeper than even he'd realized, but dealing with it and the feelings it was inspiring in him was going to have to wait. Now, there was the trial to deal with... and the situation literally right in front of him. He was in full realization that he'd created the latter, at least for the moment, but he found it hard to care.

"Is it... is it one of the President's... visions?"

He'd never really put all that much stock in the whole thing, but Lee couldn't deny the fact that he'd seen with his own eyes how the things that Laura Roslin saw and heard in her head kept coming true. Lee had been there in the Tomb of Athena and stood on what someone had said was Earth, and he'd seen the supernova, the Eye of Jupiter, as he'd narrowly escaped its destruction.

Whatever it meant, it was important.

But so was this. Lee's eyes fixed Sharon's as calmly and seriously as he could.

"There's a time when you're not scared, isn't there? When there's nothing in the frakking universe? When you don't have to think or feel?" They were only technically questions. "If I'm wrong, you tell me now."

[number-eight.livejournal.com]

She shrugged. "I don't know. We haven't really talked about, but even if it was, how could I have had the same vision? How could we have been there, together? With Caprica?" She shook her head, even as she hugged herself tighter.

"It doesn't matter what it was. It happened. And now I have to deal with it somehow. Me. Not you. You've got the case going on and... and I guess your father..." Which she still didn't quite understand, so Sharon made a mental note to go and speak with Admiral Adama after everything had quieted down.

Lee's eyes on her own were troubling her, though. "Stop that," she whispered, looking around the corridor to see if there was anyone else watching or listening. She'd come here to talk to him about Dee, not her daughter or her own problems.

"You're not wrong," she admitted quietly, and shut her eyes so he couldn't see into them. "But you knew you weren't wrong before you asked the question, didn't you?"

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

Lee let out a long breath. Things were spiraling out of control in the fleet. Baltar's trial was tearing at the population, the military especially, as divisive as it was between the mobs screaming for the former President's blood and the faction still trying to desperately cling to due process and the rules of the old civilization. The idea that somehow, the Cylons were either getting into the heads of both Sharon and Roslin or that the current President's "visions" were spreading didn't bode well.

And clearly, it shook Sharon to the core. Lee supposed he shouldn't have been surprised by that. Cylon or not-- and in the last years, it had become more and more difficult to think of her as one, especially in recent months-- she was still a mother, and a protective one at that. In fact, it was much how he'd imagined Dee would be as a mother. Somehow, Lee didn't like seeing Sharon like this... not at all.

"It could turn into something we all have to deal with," he commented simply. So many other presumably small things had been the same way.

She avoided his eyes. Sharon never looked at him when she admitted things. He'd gotten used to it. Lee wondered if he did the same. He wondered if he was about to do the same thing now.

"I did," he confessed. "Half the time, it feels like I'm being selfish, and using you to make myself feel better or, I don't know, just feel anything. But the other half?" Lee leaned in, just a few degrees. A casual passerby would never know the difference, but he thought Sharon might. "The other half, it feels like I'm just getting you to see what's already right there in front of you that you won't acknowledge."

"Now can I see you later?"

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

She shrugged. "I don't know. We haven't really talked about, but even if it was, how could I have had the same vision? How could we have been there, together? With Caprica?" She shook her head, even as she hugged herself tighter.

"It doesn't matter what it was. It happened. And now I have to deal with it somehow. Me. Not you. You've got the case going on and... and I guess your father..." Which she still didn't quite understand, so Sharon made a mental note to go and speak with Admiral Adama after everything had quieted down.

Lee's eyes on her own were troubling her, though. "Stop that," she whispered, looking around the corridor to see if there was anyone else watching or listening. She'd come here to talk to him about Dee, not her daughter or her own problems.

"You're not wrong," she admitted quietly, and shut her eyes so he couldn't see into them. "But you knew you weren't wrong before you asked the question, didn't you?"

Lee let out a long breath. Things were spiraling out of control in the fleet. Baltar's trial was tearing at the population, the military especially, as divisive as it was between the mobs screaming for the former President's blood and the faction still trying to desperately cling to due process and the rules of the old civilization. The idea that somehow, the Cylons were either getting into the heads of both Sharon and Roslin or that the current President's "visions" were spreading didn't bode well.

And clearly, it shook Sharon to the core. Lee supposed he shouldn't have been surprised by that. Cylon or not-- and in the last years, it had become more and more difficult to think of her as one, especially in recent months-- she was still a mother, and a protective one at that. In fact, it was much how he'd imagined Dee would be as a mother. Somehow, Lee didn't like seeing Sharon like this... not at all.

"It could turn into something we all have to deal with," he commented simply. So many other presumably small things had been the same way.

She avoided his eyes. Sharon never looked at him when she admitted things. He'd gotten used to it. Lee wondered if he did the same. He wondered if he was about to do the same thing now.

"I did," he confessed. "Half the time, it feels like I'm being selfish, and using you to make myself feel better or, I don't know, just feel anything. But the other half?" Lee leaned in, just a few degrees. A casual passerby would never know the difference, but he thought Sharon might. "The other half, it feels like I'm just getting you to see what's already right there in front of you that you won't acknowledge."

"Now can I see you later?"

[arrow-of-apollo.livejournal.com]

"Half the time?" Sharon shook her head. "Try most of the time. You are... incredibly selfish and it bothers the frak out of me because, yes. You are using me to make yourself feel better. Look at yourself right now!" She tried to keep her voice down since they were still in the hallway. "You just want to frak me so that whatever problems with your wife of Kara or your father or, hell, even this trial? You just want to frak me so it'll all go away, just for a moment."

She kept her eyes down. "Why are you doing this to me?" Sharon's voice was quiet when she asked him.

"Yes, I might have some things going on in my life right now that don't make sense or that I'm stressing about, but I love Helo. I'm not going to leave him for you, if that's what you're thinking about me doing, okay?"

She looked up. "But it's not, is it? You want the quick fix." Sharon ran a hand through her hair. "To hell with it. Yeah, you can see me later." And she'd hate herself later, too. She wondered when it would ever end...

Lee's jaw tightened, as he struggled to keep himself calm. "You can frakking well say 'no', Sharon." His voice had lowered to nothing more than a rough, harsh whisper. "You keep saying how much you don't want to do this, and how wrong it is, and how sorry you are that it ever happened." Shaking his head, Lee put his hand on Sharon's shoulder. Outside of the pair, it would seem like nothing more than a friendly gesture between a former CAG and his former pilot. But there was an electric jolt when Lee made contact, and by the placement of his hand, he was sure Sharon realized it was a hair's breadth away from cupping the back of her neck and pulling her in to crush his mouth against hers.

"I'm not doing anything that you don't want me to. We both know what this is. Everyone escapes, or tries to. Some people drink, some people take stims, you and I..."

There was a sound from the room. Something was happening with the trial. Lee stood, took his hand off Sharon's shoulder and straightened his suit.

"You and I will see each other later."

She nodded, almost numbly. "I said it already, didn't I? We'll see each other." At times like this, she hated him. But there were noises coming from the room behind Lee and she motioned to the door. "You better go. After the trial... I'll see you. And you better live up to all these promises of making life better, or this is it."

Sharon knew it wasn't the end, but she had to say it anyway. She hated complications, and it seemed like that was all Lee Adama was lately.

"Just get your act together before I see you next, got it?" And without another word, she walked away, intent on finding Hera to make sure she was all right, as she tried to figure it all out.