Picture Perfect (Part 3 of 4)
Picture Perfect (Part 3 of 4)
RETURN TO PART 2
~~**~~**~~
Present Day
Louis loved him, but Felix and his willful blindness could be infuriating sometimes.
“I think we would do fine without her input,” Louis said as they walked down the corridor.
“And I strongly disagree,” Felix said, stopping and grabbing hold of the bulkhead as he adjusted his prosthesis. “What happened? You were fine with it when we talked about setting up this meeting a week ago.”
“I’m not saying that a mother’s input and advice wouldn’t be helpful. But Felix, there are dozens of mothers on this ship, and you pick her? Did she even have a childhood?”
Felix strode on a little ahead of Louis. “She’s my friend. She’s our friend. You worked with her husband in CIC before they made him CAG. Frak, I’ve known the Agathons longer than I’ve known even you.”
“But how long have you known this Sharon?”
Felix stopped again and turned. “Godsdamn it, Louis, you’re such a hypocrite!”
Louis knew they both could sense their disagreement was about to turn into a full-fledged fight. He took Felix by the elbow and led him into an empty side corridor.
Felix continued in a lower but fire-filled tone, “Remember, you were the one who threw me in a psych ward for opposing Cylon upgrades to the FTL drives.”
“One, there is a hell of a difference between a military alliance with the Cylons and inviting a Cylon to be so involved in our kids’ lives,” Louis hissed. This was such an incredibly bad time to get what was coming next off his chest, but he did it anyway. “Two, who’s calling who a hypocrite? ‘Opposing’? You tried to frakking mutiny against Adama because of the Cylons, and you know it. And three, I damn well may have saved your life by hauling your ass to the Inchon Velle when I found out you were stirring up shit with Zarek. Best-case scenario if I hadn’t is that we’d be having this argument through the bars of your cell on the Astral Queen!”
“The regime change wasn’t supposed to be like that!” Felix huffed. “I’m not saying it would’ve been bloodless, but if I’d been there, I would’ve kept it under control. And the Agathons were never meant to be a part of it that way. I know they would’ve fought for Adama, and they would’ve had to have been taken care of somehow from that perspective, but I was clear with Tom that they were not to be classed with the rebel Cylons.”
“You can’t seriously believe that,” Louis said. “I believe that’s what you said, but you can’t think that’s how things would have gone down, no matter how good your plan was. You know you’re frighteningly good at blocking things out that don’t fit into your neat little picture of what reality should look like.”
Felix knew exactly what he was talking about, and he was disgusted. “Of course you’re making this about the Eight. Everything always has to go back to her. It almost makes me miss the days when you assumed all my problems stemmed from Gaius Baltar.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Louis said, shaking his head. “We’re not ready for kids. You can’t even admit what you would’ve been willing to do to innocent people a little over a year ago to make your point. What you would’ve been willing to do to Hera, to an innocent child.”
It was almost as if those words struck Felix physically, the way he slumped against the bulkhead and stared at his shoes. Helo had been in CIC during the mutiny, but one of the execution squads had gone looking for the Agathons in their quarters. Luckily, Sharon had recognized Gage’s voice outside the hatch and known that there could be no good reason for him to be there, so she had Hera hidden and her sidearm already trained on the hatch when they overrode the lock.
She downed all three intruders, but one wounded her, so she grabbed Hera and limped to the only hiding place she could reach. They hid in the space between the walls of two storage compartments, balanced precariously on a pipe that ran over a deep, narrow chasm that reached all the way down to Galactica’s hull. Louis remembered the desperation on Helo’s face as he searched through the pile of Cylon corpses, terrified that one wearing BDU pants might be his wife. Sharon and Hera hid for ten hours before a maintenance crew finally found them.
Felix said quietly, “What would you have done if Ryan Maddox had told you the whole story, if you’d known it was mutiny and not just breaking Tom out of jail and making some kind of protest?”
“I would’ve killed Zarek,” Louis said evenly and automatically. “I would’ve done whatever it took to protect you, and to protect this Fleet. I know you think the mutiny was driven by good reasons, and maybe you’re right. But you have your ideals that you’d do anything for, and I have mine.”
Felix stood up straight and took Louis’s hands in his. He looked him in the eye, and Louis knew Felix would do anything for him as well.
“You didn’t mean that, about us not being ready, right?” Felix asked. “I know I’ve got a lot to work through yet, but I’m ready for this.”
“No, I didn’t mean it. It’s not true, not at all,” Louis apologized. “More than that, it was wrong of me to even bring Tabitha and Nina into the argument. You’re right. You do have a lot to work through-we have a lot to work through-but you are ready.”
“If I’d known Sharon was going to be such a big problem for you-you were fine with it last week,” Felix said, shrugging helplessly. “I just always envisioned that if I ever had a child, especially a daughter, I’d have a female friend’s help.”
Something in Felix’s expression made it finally click. “Dee.”
Felix nodded. “Sharon isn’t Dee, but I don’t have many friends left.”
Louis sighed. He did think Sharon Agathon was an odd choice, but she wasn’t really what was wrong today. “Let’s forget I ever brought it up. The Agathons are probably wondering what happened to us.”
As it turned out, Helo and Sharon had wondered, and Felix came up with a lie about a problem with jump coordinates for the Raptors’ habitable planet search. The four of them sat around the table in the Agathons’ quarters, and Hera sat off to the side at a child-sized table, eyeing them warily as she colored.
“We have a favor to ask of you,” Felix said once they’d all exchanged enough pleasantries. He took Louis’s hand and locked his gaze on Sharon. “You know that we’re planning on adopting two girls. Tabitha and Nina, twelve and five.” Felix was nervous, but he was beaming, too. Sharon nodded and smiled in return. “We were hoping that you’d be willing to give us your input on parenting.”
“We’d be happy to, Felix,” Helo said. “Raising a child on Galactica can be tricky sometimes. We parents gotta stick together, help each other out.”
“We really appreciate it,” Felix said. “And we’d love any insights you can give us on any aspect of parenting, but in particular, since they’re girls….” Felix turned to Sharon again.
Sharon smirked. “You want me to do the bras and menstruation part, right?”
Felix’s cheeks turned pink. “We could do the talk on the physical aspects of puberty as well as a textbook could, but there are going to be questions that require…experience to answer. Not to mention having your dads try to help you figure out what your bra size is might be an unnecessarily traumatic experience.”
Sharon chuckled quietly. “Sure. I’ll help.” She looked at Louis. “I take it you’re not exactly looking forward to dealing with cup sizes and underwires, either?”
Louis had stayed very quiet throughout their visit, knowing that that was the best way to keep things civil and comfortable. “My ex-wife handled all the physical puberty-related things with Amelia, so no experience here, either.”
Louis could see Sharon stiffen. Helo shifted in his chair. “Amelia?” he asked.
“Yes. My daughter.”
Sharon paled, and both Helo and Felix looked uncomfortable. Helo strained to break the silence. “Nina’s five, you said? You should bring her over to play with Hera. Even if she’s shy, we’ve gotten good at drawing Hera out of her shell.”
“Nina’s hardly shy,” Felix said. “In fact, when we first went to the crèche, I told Louis it was strange because it felt like we were going shopping for a kid. But when we left, we laughed about how she basically picked us.”
Helo and Felix laughed half-heartedly, but Louis and Sharon stayed silent. Helo looked over at Sharon, and they silently communicated something.
Helo stood abruptly. “Felix, come over here. I want to show you how we hung the privacy curtains.”
Felix pushed himself up much less gracefully and trailed after Helo. “Privacy curtains?”
“Yeah. We’ve got one around Hera’s bed over here, and one around ours. It’s really useful when Sharon or I need to stay up to do paperwork past Hera’s bedtime.”
“Why do you have one around your bed, then?” Felix asked.
Helo smirked. “Someday, you will want to have sex that isn’t scheduled during daycare.”
Felix blanched and stuttered. “I-hadn’t really thought about that. I don’t know….”
“I know we Picans aren’t nearly as comfortable and free about that sort of thing as most of the Colonies are. But hey, our ancestors lived in one-room huts and cabins and did it that way, too, or we wouldn’t be here.” Felix still looked dubious. “Trust me. The day will come.”
Louis and Sharon sat at the table alone. There was no way he was going to break the stare or the silence first.
“Was Amelia your only child?” Louis didn’t think he’d ever heard Sharon’s voice quaver before now.
“Her little brother’s name was Jordan.”
He watched her contemplate that for a moment. Felix had told him a little about Cylon projection. Louis wondered if that was what she was doing now, and what she was seeing.
Her eyes focused again. “I know that an apology does not even come close to making up for what you’ve lost and my role in it.” Something about the way she spoke gave Louis the feeling she’d made this speech a few times before, though it was no less sincere for its carefully-chosen words. “I don’t expect forgiveness, and I don’t deserve the benefit of excuses. I only say this in the hope that it’ll help you understand. We had no frame of reference then that let us truly realize the horror of what we were doing.”
She looked over at Hera. Helo had picked her up, and she was sitting on his shoulders, arms folded on the top of his head as he showed Felix a toy he’d made for her. “I do now.”
“It’s a hell of a lot more than any of the others have said, even if it isn’t enough,” Louis said. He grimaced. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you go on thinking you did it. If you were responsible for their deaths, there would be no way I could sit at the same table with you. Like I told Felix, even though it shouldn’t matter that the Cylons didn’t…to them, because you would have if they’d been alive that day, it does make a difference.”
Sharon furrowed her brow, but Louis was grateful that she respectfully didn’t say anything. When he had finally gathered himself enough to continue, he said, “It was winter, about six months before the attacks. Jordan needed a ride home from his piano teacher’s studio, and my ex-wife and her husband were both at work. I was on Pegasus. Amelia had gotten her license a few months earlier, so she took the car to get him. The weather got a lot worse on their way home. They hit a patch of black ice on a bridge, and….” He took in a long, shaking breath. “It was nobody’s fault. Sometimes, I used to wish that, if they had to die, it’d happened in the attacks-in some way that was too fast for them to know what was happening, of course, but then, at least I’d have someone to blame.”
“Having thought that Hera died from weak lungs and then finding out she was with the Cylons because the President kidnapped her, I think I can safely say that having a target for blame doesn’t really make it feel any better.”
“I know.”
Sharon thought for a moment. “This is going to sound ridiculous, because I know I’m still responsible for so much. But, what exactly is your problem with me, then? I admit, I was surprised today. You’ve never acted that strangely around me before.”
“It’s not you.” Louis sighed, resigning himself. “It’s Jordan’s birthday today.” Sharon’s face crumpled in sympathy, but Louis pressed on before she could say anything. “Obviously Felix forgot, or he wouldn’t have had us do this today. I don’t blame him. The calendar has basically become a minefield of painful anniversaries. It’s just-I would’ve been taking Jordan to the courthouse to register for the draft today. I was remembering when I took Amelia down to register, how seeing her sign that card and knowing that some Caprican politician could order her to die for her government felt nothing like when I signed over my life to the military.”
Sharon nodded and turned back to watch Hera and Helo. Louis followed her gaze. Felix was saying something to Hera. Whatever it was, it inspired a rare but brilliant smile on the child’s face.
“I lost absolutely everything that mattered to me once,” Louis said. “I learned how to live with nothing. Just having Felix now terrifies me so much most days. The idea of having and loving and risking a whole family again-”
Sharon waited for him to say more, but he didn’t need to. They watched in silence until Sharon finally said, “The Cylon scriptures call Hera ‘the shape of things to come.’ Some think that means she’s a prophet, or a messiah, or the mother of a new race. I think they’re all wrong. When the Cylons destroyed the Colonies, we had nothing to lose. But now, I look at Karl and Hera, and I can’t even think of how I…. If anything, that’s how Hera is the shape of things to come. When you have something so precious to lose, that changes everything.”
They watched Helo set Hera down as he and Felix talked quietly.
“But it’s worth it, isn’t it?” Louis said.
Sharon answered, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
~~**~~**~~
Six years ago; two years before the attacks
Louis dropped heavily into the armchair and sighed. He got the distinct feeling Susannah was getting back at him for something by saving all the kids’ errands for his week. Of course, it could just be that she was busy enough herself that she could use some help, but if she wasn’t going to phrase it that way, Louis wasn’t about to think of her any more charitably than absolutely necessary.
He looked down at Susannah’s list and sighed again. “Amelia, could you come in here for a minute? We need to go over this.”
“Just a second,” Amelia called through the bathroom door.
Jordan sat on the couch, somehow simultaneously watching the vidscreen and playing his handheld videogame.
“Jordan, put that away for a minute, please.”
Jordan frowned, continued playing for a few more seconds, then paused the game when Louis opened his mouth again. Louis turned the vidscreen off, and Jordan rolled his eyes and crossed his arms.
“Just for a minute,” Louis said. Honestly, if he could’ve gotten away with it, Louis would’ve been rolling his eyes himself. “Okay, tomorrow you have a haircut at ten o’clock.”
“But you have to take me to my Anti-Federalists meeting tomorrow morning,” Amelia yelled, still in the bathroom.
Louis tapped his stylus on the list. “Can you walk to the barbershop?”
“I don’t want a haircut anyway,” Jordan said, flipping his shaggy bangs back with a shake of his head. “Especially not the stupid way Mom wants it cut.”
“All she wants is to be able to see your eyes in the wedding photos. Well, that and I’m guessing she wouldn’t be thrilled with a green mohawk.”
Jordan’s eyes lit up. “Yeah!”
Louis shook his head. “Amelia, you’re going to have to get Cassie’s mom to pick you up and take you to the meeting.” Then he said to Jordan, “If you want to take your own life in your hands sometime, fine, but if we screw up your mom’s wedding, she’s going to kill both of us.”
Amelia finally emerged from the bathroom, but instead of coming in the living room, he heard her go into the kitchen and rummage in the fridge.
“Amelia, what are you doing in there?” Louis called.
“Making a natural facemask,” she said.
“With what?”
“Oh, just some fruits and vegetables and other stuff.”
Louis decided it was safest not to ask what the “other stuff” was. “You both need to go to your fittings at the tailor’s on Thursday at four, and then I have to take you back a little early so you’ll be in time for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.”
“Stupid rehearsal dinner. Of course Mom would schedule it during the Archers’ game against the Hydras. It’s like the only game we have half a chance of winning this year!” Jordan complained.
“This season. If you’re going to pretend to be into pyramid to get Magda Horrowitz’s attention, Jordan, you should at least try to get the terminology right,” Amelia said, still in the kitchen. Then all Louis could hear for about a minute was the blender. When the racket quit, she continued, “Someone will bring a vidscreen to the restaurant, I’m sure.”
“Why do we have to rehearse dinner, anyway?” Jordan whined.
Louis tried not to smile. “It’s the dinner you have after the rehearsal of the wedding. The eating part itself isn’t a warm-up for anything. Come on, it’s not that bad. You like the food at Emilio’s, right?”
Jordan shrugged. “It’s okay. The whole wedding thing is just…stupid, though.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s romantic,” Amelia said as cupboard doors closed. “It’s Mom and Randall’s day, and they deserve to have what they want.”
Amelia finally stepped into the living room.
Jordan burst out laughing. “Oh my Gods, it’s the Swamp Thing from the Blue Lagoon!”
Amelia scowled at him, which would have been more effective if her face hadn’t been coated in blue goo.
Louis bit back his own laugh. “What did you put in it to make it that color? There wasn’t anything blue in the fridge.”
“Blue?” Amelia asked, dabbing her finger to her face and looking at it to confirm the color change. “It’s supposed to be white. Maybe with a little blue tinge…”
Jordan was doubled over and laughing into a throw pillow. “Your head looks like a big blueberry.”
Amelia looked to Louis for reassurance that Jordan was overreacting, but Louis could only smile and shrug. “Honey, just wipe that stuff off. If it didn’t turn out right, I don’t want to incur your mother’s wrath if it gives you blue skin for her wedding. I’ll buy you one of those facemask things at the drugstore tomorrow if you want one that badly.”
Amelia tried to scrunch up her nose in distaste, but it didn’t work very well because the mask was already hardening. “I don’t want any of those Caprican pharmaceutical chemicals soaking into my pores. This is fine. I’m sure the blueness isn’t a big deal.”
“Can’t I stay here until Friday night like usual?” Jordan begged. “At least then I’d get to skip the dumb before-the-wedding frilly stuff.”
“It’s just the fluffy wedding stuff you don’t like, then?” Louis asked, setting aside the list. He directed the question at Jordan, but he wanted to see Amelia’s reaction as well. “How are you with Mom getting married again? It seems like you like Randall.”
“He’s pretty okay,” Jordan answered. Louis’s heart sank a little. He wanted his kids to like their new stepfather, but “pretty okay” was about the highest compliment Jordan gave for anything not involving hi-def graphics. Then Louis felt even worse for being jealous at all.
Amelia added, “He’s nice. He is kind of nerdy, but then again, so are you, Dad. But he’s good for Mom.”
“Why don’t you ever date anybody, Dad?” Jordan asked, turning his videogame back on.
That caught Louis completely off-guard. Amelia must have noticed the momentary panic before he regained his composure. Even Jordan glanced up from the game at him.
“Who says I don’t? Your mom and I decided a long time ago that we wouldn’t introduce you guys to anybody we weren’t really serious about.” That wasn’t a lie, per se. Louis breathed a little easier.
“Why not?” Jordan asked.
“It wouldn’t be fair to you, if you got attached to someone and then we broke up.” He was creeping closer to a lie by omission, but he wasn’t there yet.
Jordan paused the game again and exchanged a look with his sister that Louis couldn’t quite read.
“So all this time, there hasn’t been anybody you’ve liked enough to want to be serious with?” Amelia asked. “Mom’s moved on.”
“You deserve to be happy, too, Dad,” Jordan added.
They were both looking at him, waiting for an answer. Louis finally figured out that they’d apparently talked about this with one another before, had been planning to ask him about this. Do they know? he wondered. Do they just want me to tell them?
There was Jude, he wanted to answer. And Frank. Frank wanted to meet you guys so much. He has a son your age, Jordan. Frank wanted me to meet him, too. Frank had been equal parts heartbroken and angry when Louis had said he couldn’t take that step, now or ever. He doubted Frank would take him back now even if that changed, but just to be able to say it to them…
Then doubt crept into Louis’s mind. Maybe they’d heard rumors and wanted him to prove them wrong by uttering a woman’s name. Maybe the thought that their dad might be gay had never crossed their minds, and they simply wanted reassurance that he wasn’t a lonely loser.
He looked at them again. Amelia’s face, usually so expressive, was covered in hardening paste, and Jordan’s expression was carefully unreadable.
“I am happy,” Louis finally said. The tension in the room broke, but he could tell the kids hadn’t gotten the answer they’d been looking for, whatever that was. He picked up the list and stylus again, then chattered on about appointments and fittings and piano lessons and pyramid practices. He put up a good front, but on the inside, he was crumbling. Not completely being himself in front of his children was one thing, but being a liar and a coward in front of them hurt beyond words.
~~**~~**~~
Present Day
Felix sat at the table in their quarters, head bent low over the calculations. Every once in a while, he’d growl in frustration, and even occasionally ball up a sheet of paper and toss it on the floor.
Louis knew he should be working on the next week’s duty roster for CIC, but he couldn’t focus. Earlier that day, he’d looked over the calculations Felix was struggling with now and had independently come to the inescapable conclusion Felix was desperately trying to escape.
Felix raised his eyes from the papers. “Would you please quit staring at me like I’m a ticking bomb about to go off?”
Louis grimaced at Felix’s word choice. “I’m not staring at you,” he lied. “I was looking for a place to hang Nina’s drawing.” He moved some papers around until he found it, then lifted it up for Felix to see again. It was a picture of the four of them; she’d even used her precious silver crayon for his and Felix’s rank insignia and buttons, Felix’s prosthesis, and what looked to be a crown in Nina’s hair. Two brown blobs with eyes also stood next to the stick figures, which must have been Snuffles and Mr. Digger, and there was a green-blue…thing in the corner, which he had no idea what it was. “Where do you think we should put it? Too bad we don’t have a fridge to hang it on.”
Felix gave Louis a suspicious look, then glanced around the room. “Uh, on that wall would be good.”
Louis nodded, tore off a piece of tape, and took the picture over to the far side of the room. Felix went back to his calculations. “Does it look straight?” Louis asked.
Felix sighed and briefly looked up again. “Yes.”
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better on the other side of the room?”
“Since when do you care about interior decorating?” Felix didn’t bother hiding his annoyance.
Since I started wanting you to toss that math into the garbage and to never think about it again, Louis thought, but he answered, “You’re right. It looks good here.”
Louis affixed the drawing to the wall, then stood awkwardly, looking around the room for something else to do. “Did you look through the rest of today’s mail yet, Felix?”
“No,” Felix said. “Private Hayes said there weren’t any priority messages or anything from Tigh or Helo, so I figured it could wait.”
Louis shuffled through the pile of requisition forms and leave requests, searching for something worth talking about. “Oh my Gods, Gaius Baltar sent us a card.”
“What the frak?”
Louis was hardly happy about how he’d gotten Felix’s full attention, but he was glad he had it.
Louis read to himself for a few moments. “He says congratulations. It looks like he heard we’re adopting. It’s actually a nice card, considering.”
He handed the card to Felix, who made a face a few seconds into reading it. “How noble of him to be concerned for our children’s spiritual well-being and then provide a schedule of his services.” Felix tossed the card across the table like he might catch a disease through contact with it. He picked up his pencil again.
“Well, I thought it was nice, for him,” Louis muttered. Felix didn’t answer. “It does bring up something that I think we should talk about.”
“What?” Felix kept writing.
Louis hadn’t been planning on discussing this today, but he did figure it would be something that would get Felix to put his work aside. “I think the girls should go to Saturday temple school once they move here.”
Disappointingly, Felix didn’t even look up. “Yeah?”
Louis continued, “Nina never went, but Tabitha’s talked about it. She liked going, back on Libran before the attacks. I know that religion has never been a part of your life, but Dr. Ramos was talking about how continuity would be good for the girls, Tabitha especially, since she remembers more.”
“Fine.” Felix reached for his calculator, typed in a few numbers, and shook his head.
Louis was starting to get a little annoyed himself. He knew he was bugging Felix-that was the point, after all-but Felix should have the common decency to tell him that he wasn’t listening rather than pretend. “‘Fine’ is not an appropriate answer to this conversation.”
Finally, Felix looked up. “What? I agreed with you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“No. Well, eventually, but Felix, I just said I wanted our children to participate in religious education. Even if you weren’t an atheist, that kind of decision necessitates a little more discussion than ‘fine.’ What if I’d said I wanted to send them to Baltar’s cult’s temple school?”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
Louis huffed in frustration. “I wouldn’t, but what if I did? We should at least talk about it.”
“Can we discuss this later, then? I’m trying to get my work finished, XO.”
Louis gave up. So much for delaying the inevitable. “Fine.”
“Thank you.”
Felix went back to work, and Louis channeled his nervous energy into scrubbing every surface in the head until it shined. When that was done, he moved on to polishing every shoe and button he and Felix owned.
As he changed the pillowcases, he noticed Felix was mumbling to himself. Felix shuffled through the papers, scribbled something down, and then banged his fist on the table in frustration.
Louis’s stomach flip-flopped. This was it.
“Need any help?” he asked, approaching the table.
“No, sir.” Felix ran his fingers through his hair, then tightened his hand into a fist and knocked it against his head.
Louis slid into the chair across the table from him. “I looked at the charts earlier today, and I think it’s time to switch to Plan B.”
“No,” Felix snapped. He pulled a spreadsheet and a star chart towards him. “We haven’t had the Raptors search Sector M7 yet.”
“Because the gamma radiation there is too intense for life to take hold on any of those planets,” Louis answered calmly.
“But they haven’t swept this area just past the asteroid belt in the third quadrant-”
“Because the tidal forces in both of those solar systems are way too strong for a habitable planet to exist there. Felix,” Louis said, placing his hand over Felix’s hand holding the pencil. “It was a great plan, and you’ve done everything anybody could have done to make it work. But we’ve pushed the capabilities of the jump drives of the Raptors and even the Heavy Raiders to their limits. We have to try something else now.”
“No! This will work. I can find a habitable planet this way, even if we can’t move Galactica to set a different origin point for a new search grid.”
“Felix, listen to me,” Louis pressed. He wasn’t looking at the numbers anymore, at least, but he wasn’t looking at Louis, either. “We’re doing this the right way this time. We’ll only install the Cylon FTLs on six ships, we’ll move all the civilians we can off those ships, and we’ll send the ships out in different directions as six new points for the Raptors and Heavy Raiders to jump from. It’s the best way we have to expand the habitable planet search without jumping Galactica. We have tested and re-tested the Cylon technology as much as we can. Nobody’s happy about it, but we’re at the point where we have to take this risk.” Felix let go of the pencil, but he still stared at the wall. “The rebel Cylons need to find a planet almost as badly as we do. There’s no reason for them to trick us or screw us over at this point.”
“Two kids in a frakking hammock, huh, Louis?” Felix said, his expression downright ugly. “Nice story, but guess what? That’s not how real life works. Sometimes people screw each other over just because they have the opportunity, even if they end up screwing themselves in the process. Isn’t that how your story ended, too? Didn’t your kids end up fighting and tipping it over anyway?”
It was the truth, of course, but it still hurt. Louis let go of Felix’s hand and put his hands up in surrender, then left the table without another word.
Louis started reorganizing their lockers, which didn’t need reorganizing, but he didn’t have anything else to do. He was angry at Dr. Ramos, mostly because it was easier to be angry at him than at Felix. On this one subject, though, Louis truly thought Dr. Ramos didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. He kept cautioning Louis about not coddling Felix too much, particularly letting Felix get upset about both the alliance and the mutiny in private. On the surface, Louis could accept that Felix needed to work through his issues if he was ever going to be truly whole again, and that having a breakthrough might require having a breakdown first.
No matter what he said, though, Dr. Ramos didn’t understand just how hard they’d worked and how long they’d waited to have a chance to simply be together. Dr. Ramos didn’t have to face what they risked losing again. Yes, Dr. Ramos may have been there for those first few days after Felix had been committed, when Felix was so angry he wouldn’t even acknowledge Louis’s presence. Dr. Ramos wasn’t there now every day when Felix and Louis walked home from work together, bouncing navigational strategies and personnel rotation ideas off each other almost as easily as Adama and Tigh used to do, though. He didn’t understand what it was like to take Tabitha and Nina to lunch in the mess when the girls visited Galactica and have all their friends stop by the table to meet them. He couldn’t possibly know what it felt like for Louis to hold Felix in his arms after they’d made love and see Felix looking at him in the way Louis had waited his whole life to be seen.
And what were they risking giving up all that progress for? So Felix could come to the realization that a mutiny Louis hadn’t let him participate in had been pointless in the end? It wasn’t worth it.
Louis thought he heard a soft sob from the other end of the room. Then he heard another, followed by a loud clatter. He spun around and saw Felix crumpled on the floor, crying and clinging to a table leg.
“Are you okay?” Louis was across the room and beside Felix on the floor in seconds.
Felix didn’t answer, but he didn’t appear injured, either. “What have I done?” he asked, voice shaking. “My gods, Louis, what have I done?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I kept telling myself it would’ve been different if I had been in CIC, that I could’ve kept things under control.” Felix was looking through Louis, horrified. “But it would’ve been just as bad.”
“You don’t know that,” Louis said. He’d prepared for a lot of different confessions and break-down scenarios, but not this one. He wanted to touch Felix but afraid of what might happen.
“Adama never would have backed down, even if I’d had time to try to reason with him,” Felix went on. “I either would have had to kill him, or do like what happened, kill Lee and make the rest of the Fleet such a bloody mess that you and Helo and the Colonel had your hands too full keeping the Fleet from spinning apart to make any upgrades.”
“Maybe you would’ve failed.” It was poor consolation, but it was the only thing Louis could think of. “You’re a good man. You would’ve pulled back before things got that bad.”
Louis wasn’t sure Felix was listening. “They used my plan. It was my idea, my fault. What happened to Tyrol and Anders and Maddox and so many others…what could’ve happened to the Agathons, and to you.”
Louis finally summed up the courage to touch Felix’s arm. “Don’t do this to yourself, baby. I know you wouldn’t have hurt me, and you know it, too.”
Felix focused on Louis. “I would’ve tried to keep you safe, but what if it had gotten out of my hands? What if I’d locked you up and you’d refused to swear loyalty to me and to Tom? He would’ve done it, and I couldn’t have stopped him. Oh gods, what have I done?”
Louis pulled him into an embrace as best he could with the awkwardness of sitting on the floor and maneuvering around Felix’s prosthesis. Felix buried his face against Louis’s neck. Louis wanted to say the right thing so badly, but he was at a total loss for words.
“How can I ever face Tabitha and Nina, after what I’ve done? Gods, how can you even look at me?”
He might not entirely understand what Felix was struggling through, but Louis understood guilt. He took hold of Felix by his arms and pulled away far enough so they could look each other in the eyes. “Felix? Felix, look at me.”
You’ve got it all wrong, Louis wanted to say. I’ve been there. After I lost my kids, I tried to die inside, too, and that’s how I stood by and let the Scylla happen. But love is what pulls you out of the guilt and the shame. Love is what makes you take the risk of feeling again, after you’ve lost everything. You are what saved me, Felix.
Someday, Louis would tell Felix all that, but not today. He wasn’t going to make this about him or the Scylla. This was about Felix and helping him find his way back.
Louis put his hand on Felix’s cheek, searching for words. “I love you, Felix. Just please, don’t pull away from me again.”
Felix looked shocked that that was what Louis had been most afraid of. Louis could see his anxiety break and subside like a wave. Felix wrapped his arms around Louis’s shoulders, and Louis pulled him in as tightly as he could, gently rocking them back and forth as Felix cried until he couldn’t anymore.
~~**~~**~~
Five years ago; eight months before the attacks
Louis rapped gently on the open door. “Amelia? Could we talk for a minute?”
Amelia was lying on her stomach on her bed. Her head popped up from her book. “Sure. What’s up?”
Louis sat on the edge of the bed. Amelia sat up and scooted over so she was sitting beside him. “Dad?”
Louis twisted his fingers in his lap. “I know it’s awkward for a young woman to talk to her dad about something like this, but, um…”
He looked at Amelia, who was waiting patiently for him to find the right words but not doing anything to help make this easier.
He looked at the ceiling and blurted, “Your mom says you won’t go to the gynecologist.”
“Ah,” was all Amelia said. Louis stole a glance at her. From her expression, it seemed she wasn’t surprised that this had come up.
Louis continued, “I said you’re young enough you don’t need to go to a gynecologist anyway.” Louis swallowed hard. “You are too young for a-um…”
Amelia’s coolness faltered a little, but not nearly as much as Louis’s. “Are you asking me if I’ve had sex?”
“Er…”
“I haven’t.”
Louis exhaled in relief. “Good. That settles it, then. You’ll just go to a GP until you’re eighteen, or until that changes-and I know you and your mom have talked about it, but let me just add that I really, really don’t want that to change-”
Amelia shook her head resolutely. “I’m not going to a GP, either.”
It took Louis a moment to switch gears. “Well, okay, I suppose you can stay with your pediatrician a little bit longer, but eventually my insurance is going to make you switch to somebody else.”
“Dad, you don’t get it. I’m not going to any Caprican-trained doctor.”
“Oh yes, you are,” Louis said without thinking.
He expected a teenager backlash of whining that he wasn’t being fair, but instead, Amelia sat up straight and met his eyes. “No, I’m not,” she said respectfully but firmly. “I’m fifteen. That means I’m old enough to make my own medical decisions if I have special dispensation from a priest-which I do-even if my choices go against my parents’ wishes. It’s the law.”
Louis sat slack-jawed, shaking his head in disbelief and confusion. The only thought he could pin down was how angry he was at Susannah for not telling him the full story of why Amelia had refused to keep her doctor’s appointment.
“Daddy, it’s not like I’m completely disregarding my health,” Amelia continued. She only called him “Daddy” when she knew he was upset with her. “I’m planning on going to a Sagittaron healer regularly, and Daddy-Daddy, no, it’s not just a bunch of chanting and soma bracelets and smelly herbs,” she said when Louis opened his mouth to protest. “Our people have refined these methods over hundreds of years. Caprican-based medicine-it’s so cold and impersonal, and how can it possibly heal, the way it divides the body from the soul?”
Louis’s voice broke. “But x-ray machines and blood tests and cancer screenings-they work, Amelia. You’re young, so you think you’re invincible, but those things catch problems before it’s too late. Not to mention the treatments-”
“Let the Capricans and the Picans and the Virgonese have all that. Our ways work, and they’re ours. Of course the wealthy planets are going to discredit our ways. They’re not satisfied with controlling and colonizing our land. They want to colonize our bodies and our minds-”
“Amelia, stop it!” Louis didn’t yell, but he said it with enough force that Amelia let her argument die mid-sentence, which didn’t happen very often. He took Amelia’s hand in his. “Honey, this is not the same as picketing and circulating petitions. This isn’t just another cause to fight for. You are not a cause.”
Louis could see that Amelia hated to upset him like this, but not enough to give in. “Even if I’m wrong about Sagittaron medicine, I’m not hurting anybody but maybe myself.”
Louis shook his head. He’d never cried in front of his kids, but he wasn’t sure if he could hang on now. “That’s where you’re wrong. You and your brother are the most important thing in my life. I know your mom feels the same way. You two are my life, and I don’t know what I would do if anything ever happened to you.”
Amelia reached out and drew Louis into a hug. “Daddy, I’m so sorry,” she said. He believed her, but he also knew she wasn’t changing her mind.
Louis held her tight, trying to regain his composure before she could see his face again. He wasn’t giving up for good, but he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere with her right now. “How did you ever become so damn sure of yourself?” He tried to laugh, but it didn’t work.
“I got it from you.”
“What?” That stunned Louis enough that he pulled back.
Amelia’s expression was completely serious. “I did, from the way that you’re so proud of being in the military, and so sure that it was the right thing for you to do, even when almost everybody else either hates you for it or thinks you’re crazy.”
“It’s a job, not a statement. I needed a way to support you.”
Amelia shook her head. “You say it’s just a job, but I can tell that you really believe in defending our family and the Colonies. Even if I’m not sure I agree with you, I respect that: doing what you believe in, no matter what.”
Louis tried and failed to laugh again. “It’s not fair, you using myself against me.”
Louis hugged her again, wishing fervently that they could go back to the days when he could give Amelia a time-out, back when her biggest questions about life were why is the sky blue and the grass green, and she took his answers on faith. He knew he couldn’t hang onto her forever, and that on the whole, she was growing up into a fine young woman. That didn’t make any of this hurt less.
“The truth is rarely fair, Daddy,” Amelia said.
CONTINUE ON TO PART 4
RETURN TO PART 2
~~**~~**~~
Present Day
Louis loved him, but Felix and his willful blindness could be infuriating sometimes.
“I think we would do fine without her input,” Louis said as they walked down the corridor.
“And I strongly disagree,” Felix said, stopping and grabbing hold of the bulkhead as he adjusted his prosthesis. “What happened? You were fine with it when we talked about setting up this meeting a week ago.”
“I’m not saying that a mother’s input and advice wouldn’t be helpful. But Felix, there are dozens of mothers on this ship, and you pick her? Did she even have a childhood?”
Felix strode on a little ahead of Louis. “She’s my friend. She’s our friend. You worked with her husband in CIC before they made him CAG. Frak, I’ve known the Agathons longer than I’ve known even you.”
“But how long have you known this Sharon?”
Felix stopped again and turned. “Godsdamn it, Louis, you’re such a hypocrite!”
Louis knew they both could sense their disagreement was about to turn into a full-fledged fight. He took Felix by the elbow and led him into an empty side corridor.
Felix continued in a lower but fire-filled tone, “Remember, you were the one who threw me in a psych ward for opposing Cylon upgrades to the FTL drives.”
“One, there is a hell of a difference between a military alliance with the Cylons and inviting a Cylon to be so involved in our kids’ lives,” Louis hissed. This was such an incredibly bad time to get what was coming next off his chest, but he did it anyway. “Two, who’s calling who a hypocrite? ‘Opposing’? You tried to frakking mutiny against Adama because of the Cylons, and you know it. And three, I damn well may have saved your life by hauling your ass to the Inchon Velle when I found out you were stirring up shit with Zarek. Best-case scenario if I hadn’t is that we’d be having this argument through the bars of your cell on the Astral Queen!”
“The regime change wasn’t supposed to be like that!” Felix huffed. “I’m not saying it would’ve been bloodless, but if I’d been there, I would’ve kept it under control. And the Agathons were never meant to be a part of it that way. I know they would’ve fought for Adama, and they would’ve had to have been taken care of somehow from that perspective, but I was clear with Tom that they were not to be classed with the rebel Cylons.”
“You can’t seriously believe that,” Louis said. “I believe that’s what you said, but you can’t think that’s how things would have gone down, no matter how good your plan was. You know you’re frighteningly good at blocking things out that don’t fit into your neat little picture of what reality should look like.”
Felix knew exactly what he was talking about, and he was disgusted. “Of course you’re making this about the Eight. Everything always has to go back to her. It almost makes me miss the days when you assumed all my problems stemmed from Gaius Baltar.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Louis said, shaking his head. “We’re not ready for kids. You can’t even admit what you would’ve been willing to do to innocent people a little over a year ago to make your point. What you would’ve been willing to do to Hera, to an innocent child.”
It was almost as if those words struck Felix physically, the way he slumped against the bulkhead and stared at his shoes. Helo had been in CIC during the mutiny, but one of the execution squads had gone looking for the Agathons in their quarters. Luckily, Sharon had recognized Gage’s voice outside the hatch and known that there could be no good reason for him to be there, so she had Hera hidden and her sidearm already trained on the hatch when they overrode the lock.
She downed all three intruders, but one wounded her, so she grabbed Hera and limped to the only hiding place she could reach. They hid in the space between the walls of two storage compartments, balanced precariously on a pipe that ran over a deep, narrow chasm that reached all the way down to Galactica’s hull. Louis remembered the desperation on Helo’s face as he searched through the pile of Cylon corpses, terrified that one wearing BDU pants might be his wife. Sharon and Hera hid for ten hours before a maintenance crew finally found them.
Felix said quietly, “What would you have done if Ryan Maddox had told you the whole story, if you’d known it was mutiny and not just breaking Tom out of jail and making some kind of protest?”
“I would’ve killed Zarek,” Louis said evenly and automatically. “I would’ve done whatever it took to protect you, and to protect this Fleet. I know you think the mutiny was driven by good reasons, and maybe you’re right. But you have your ideals that you’d do anything for, and I have mine.”
Felix stood up straight and took Louis’s hands in his. He looked him in the eye, and Louis knew Felix would do anything for him as well.
“You didn’t mean that, about us not being ready, right?” Felix asked. “I know I’ve got a lot to work through yet, but I’m ready for this.”
“No, I didn’t mean it. It’s not true, not at all,” Louis apologized. “More than that, it was wrong of me to even bring Tabitha and Nina into the argument. You’re right. You do have a lot to work through-we have a lot to work through-but you are ready.”
“If I’d known Sharon was going to be such a big problem for you-you were fine with it last week,” Felix said, shrugging helplessly. “I just always envisioned that if I ever had a child, especially a daughter, I’d have a female friend’s help.”
Something in Felix’s expression made it finally click. “Dee.”
Felix nodded. “Sharon isn’t Dee, but I don’t have many friends left.”
Louis sighed. He did think Sharon Agathon was an odd choice, but she wasn’t really what was wrong today. “Let’s forget I ever brought it up. The Agathons are probably wondering what happened to us.”
As it turned out, Helo and Sharon had wondered, and Felix came up with a lie about a problem with jump coordinates for the Raptors’ habitable planet search. The four of them sat around the table in the Agathons’ quarters, and Hera sat off to the side at a child-sized table, eyeing them warily as she colored.
“We have a favor to ask of you,” Felix said once they’d all exchanged enough pleasantries. He took Louis’s hand and locked his gaze on Sharon. “You know that we’re planning on adopting two girls. Tabitha and Nina, twelve and five.” Felix was nervous, but he was beaming, too. Sharon nodded and smiled in return. “We were hoping that you’d be willing to give us your input on parenting.”
“We’d be happy to, Felix,” Helo said. “Raising a child on Galactica can be tricky sometimes. We parents gotta stick together, help each other out.”
“We really appreciate it,” Felix said. “And we’d love any insights you can give us on any aspect of parenting, but in particular, since they’re girls….” Felix turned to Sharon again.
Sharon smirked. “You want me to do the bras and menstruation part, right?”
Felix’s cheeks turned pink. “We could do the talk on the physical aspects of puberty as well as a textbook could, but there are going to be questions that require…experience to answer. Not to mention having your dads try to help you figure out what your bra size is might be an unnecessarily traumatic experience.”
Sharon chuckled quietly. “Sure. I’ll help.” She looked at Louis. “I take it you’re not exactly looking forward to dealing with cup sizes and underwires, either?”
Louis had stayed very quiet throughout their visit, knowing that that was the best way to keep things civil and comfortable. “My ex-wife handled all the physical puberty-related things with Amelia, so no experience here, either.”
Louis could see Sharon stiffen. Helo shifted in his chair. “Amelia?” he asked.
“Yes. My daughter.”
Sharon paled, and both Helo and Felix looked uncomfortable. Helo strained to break the silence. “Nina’s five, you said? You should bring her over to play with Hera. Even if she’s shy, we’ve gotten good at drawing Hera out of her shell.”
“Nina’s hardly shy,” Felix said. “In fact, when we first went to the crèche, I told Louis it was strange because it felt like we were going shopping for a kid. But when we left, we laughed about how she basically picked us.”
Helo and Felix laughed half-heartedly, but Louis and Sharon stayed silent. Helo looked over at Sharon, and they silently communicated something.
Helo stood abruptly. “Felix, come over here. I want to show you how we hung the privacy curtains.”
Felix pushed himself up much less gracefully and trailed after Helo. “Privacy curtains?”
“Yeah. We’ve got one around Hera’s bed over here, and one around ours. It’s really useful when Sharon or I need to stay up to do paperwork past Hera’s bedtime.”
“Why do you have one around your bed, then?” Felix asked.
Helo smirked. “Someday, you will want to have sex that isn’t scheduled during daycare.”
Felix blanched and stuttered. “I-hadn’t really thought about that. I don’t know….”
“I know we Picans aren’t nearly as comfortable and free about that sort of thing as most of the Colonies are. But hey, our ancestors lived in one-room huts and cabins and did it that way, too, or we wouldn’t be here.” Felix still looked dubious. “Trust me. The day will come.”
Louis and Sharon sat at the table alone. There was no way he was going to break the stare or the silence first.
“Was Amelia your only child?” Louis didn’t think he’d ever heard Sharon’s voice quaver before now.
“Her little brother’s name was Jordan.”
He watched her contemplate that for a moment. Felix had told him a little about Cylon projection. Louis wondered if that was what she was doing now, and what she was seeing.
Her eyes focused again. “I know that an apology does not even come close to making up for what you’ve lost and my role in it.” Something about the way she spoke gave Louis the feeling she’d made this speech a few times before, though it was no less sincere for its carefully-chosen words. “I don’t expect forgiveness, and I don’t deserve the benefit of excuses. I only say this in the hope that it’ll help you understand. We had no frame of reference then that let us truly realize the horror of what we were doing.”
She looked over at Hera. Helo had picked her up, and she was sitting on his shoulders, arms folded on the top of his head as he showed Felix a toy he’d made for her. “I do now.”
“It’s a hell of a lot more than any of the others have said, even if it isn’t enough,” Louis said. He grimaced. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you go on thinking you did it. If you were responsible for their deaths, there would be no way I could sit at the same table with you. Like I told Felix, even though it shouldn’t matter that the Cylons didn’t…to them, because you would have if they’d been alive that day, it does make a difference.”
Sharon furrowed her brow, but Louis was grateful that she respectfully didn’t say anything. When he had finally gathered himself enough to continue, he said, “It was winter, about six months before the attacks. Jordan needed a ride home from his piano teacher’s studio, and my ex-wife and her husband were both at work. I was on Pegasus. Amelia had gotten her license a few months earlier, so she took the car to get him. The weather got a lot worse on their way home. They hit a patch of black ice on a bridge, and….” He took in a long, shaking breath. “It was nobody’s fault. Sometimes, I used to wish that, if they had to die, it’d happened in the attacks-in some way that was too fast for them to know what was happening, of course, but then, at least I’d have someone to blame.”
“Having thought that Hera died from weak lungs and then finding out she was with the Cylons because the President kidnapped her, I think I can safely say that having a target for blame doesn’t really make it feel any better.”
“I know.”
Sharon thought for a moment. “This is going to sound ridiculous, because I know I’m still responsible for so much. But, what exactly is your problem with me, then? I admit, I was surprised today. You’ve never acted that strangely around me before.”
“It’s not you.” Louis sighed, resigning himself. “It’s Jordan’s birthday today.” Sharon’s face crumpled in sympathy, but Louis pressed on before she could say anything. “Obviously Felix forgot, or he wouldn’t have had us do this today. I don’t blame him. The calendar has basically become a minefield of painful anniversaries. It’s just-I would’ve been taking Jordan to the courthouse to register for the draft today. I was remembering when I took Amelia down to register, how seeing her sign that card and knowing that some Caprican politician could order her to die for her government felt nothing like when I signed over my life to the military.”
Sharon nodded and turned back to watch Hera and Helo. Louis followed her gaze. Felix was saying something to Hera. Whatever it was, it inspired a rare but brilliant smile on the child’s face.
“I lost absolutely everything that mattered to me once,” Louis said. “I learned how to live with nothing. Just having Felix now terrifies me so much most days. The idea of having and loving and risking a whole family again-”
Sharon waited for him to say more, but he didn’t need to. They watched in silence until Sharon finally said, “The Cylon scriptures call Hera ‘the shape of things to come.’ Some think that means she’s a prophet, or a messiah, or the mother of a new race. I think they’re all wrong. When the Cylons destroyed the Colonies, we had nothing to lose. But now, I look at Karl and Hera, and I can’t even think of how I…. If anything, that’s how Hera is the shape of things to come. When you have something so precious to lose, that changes everything.”
They watched Helo set Hera down as he and Felix talked quietly.
“But it’s worth it, isn’t it?” Louis said.
Sharon answered, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
~~**~~**~~
Six years ago; two years before the attacks
Louis dropped heavily into the armchair and sighed. He got the distinct feeling Susannah was getting back at him for something by saving all the kids’ errands for his week. Of course, it could just be that she was busy enough herself that she could use some help, but if she wasn’t going to phrase it that way, Louis wasn’t about to think of her any more charitably than absolutely necessary.
He looked down at Susannah’s list and sighed again. “Amelia, could you come in here for a minute? We need to go over this.”
“Just a second,” Amelia called through the bathroom door.
Jordan sat on the couch, somehow simultaneously watching the vidscreen and playing his handheld videogame.
“Jordan, put that away for a minute, please.”
Jordan frowned, continued playing for a few more seconds, then paused the game when Louis opened his mouth again. Louis turned the vidscreen off, and Jordan rolled his eyes and crossed his arms.
“Just for a minute,” Louis said. Honestly, if he could’ve gotten away with it, Louis would’ve been rolling his eyes himself. “Okay, tomorrow you have a haircut at ten o’clock.”
“But you have to take me to my Anti-Federalists meeting tomorrow morning,” Amelia yelled, still in the bathroom.
Louis tapped his stylus on the list. “Can you walk to the barbershop?”
“I don’t want a haircut anyway,” Jordan said, flipping his shaggy bangs back with a shake of his head. “Especially not the stupid way Mom wants it cut.”
“All she wants is to be able to see your eyes in the wedding photos. Well, that and I’m guessing she wouldn’t be thrilled with a green mohawk.”
Jordan’s eyes lit up. “Yeah!”
Louis shook his head. “Amelia, you’re going to have to get Cassie’s mom to pick you up and take you to the meeting.” Then he said to Jordan, “If you want to take your own life in your hands sometime, fine, but if we screw up your mom’s wedding, she’s going to kill both of us.”
Amelia finally emerged from the bathroom, but instead of coming in the living room, he heard her go into the kitchen and rummage in the fridge.
“Amelia, what are you doing in there?” Louis called.
“Making a natural facemask,” she said.
“With what?”
“Oh, just some fruits and vegetables and other stuff.”
Louis decided it was safest not to ask what the “other stuff” was. “You both need to go to your fittings at the tailor’s on Thursday at four, and then I have to take you back a little early so you’ll be in time for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.”
“Stupid rehearsal dinner. Of course Mom would schedule it during the Archers’ game against the Hydras. It’s like the only game we have half a chance of winning this year!” Jordan complained.
“This season. If you’re going to pretend to be into pyramid to get Magda Horrowitz’s attention, Jordan, you should at least try to get the terminology right,” Amelia said, still in the kitchen. Then all Louis could hear for about a minute was the blender. When the racket quit, she continued, “Someone will bring a vidscreen to the restaurant, I’m sure.”
“Why do we have to rehearse dinner, anyway?” Jordan whined.
Louis tried not to smile. “It’s the dinner you have after the rehearsal of the wedding. The eating part itself isn’t a warm-up for anything. Come on, it’s not that bad. You like the food at Emilio’s, right?”
Jordan shrugged. “It’s okay. The whole wedding thing is just…stupid, though.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s romantic,” Amelia said as cupboard doors closed. “It’s Mom and Randall’s day, and they deserve to have what they want.”
Amelia finally stepped into the living room.
Jordan burst out laughing. “Oh my Gods, it’s the Swamp Thing from the Blue Lagoon!”
Amelia scowled at him, which would have been more effective if her face hadn’t been coated in blue goo.
Louis bit back his own laugh. “What did you put in it to make it that color? There wasn’t anything blue in the fridge.”
“Blue?” Amelia asked, dabbing her finger to her face and looking at it to confirm the color change. “It’s supposed to be white. Maybe with a little blue tinge…”
Jordan was doubled over and laughing into a throw pillow. “Your head looks like a big blueberry.”
Amelia looked to Louis for reassurance that Jordan was overreacting, but Louis could only smile and shrug. “Honey, just wipe that stuff off. If it didn’t turn out right, I don’t want to incur your mother’s wrath if it gives you blue skin for her wedding. I’ll buy you one of those facemask things at the drugstore tomorrow if you want one that badly.”
Amelia tried to scrunch up her nose in distaste, but it didn’t work very well because the mask was already hardening. “I don’t want any of those Caprican pharmaceutical chemicals soaking into my pores. This is fine. I’m sure the blueness isn’t a big deal.”
“Can’t I stay here until Friday night like usual?” Jordan begged. “At least then I’d get to skip the dumb before-the-wedding frilly stuff.”
“It’s just the fluffy wedding stuff you don’t like, then?” Louis asked, setting aside the list. He directed the question at Jordan, but he wanted to see Amelia’s reaction as well. “How are you with Mom getting married again? It seems like you like Randall.”
“He’s pretty okay,” Jordan answered. Louis’s heart sank a little. He wanted his kids to like their new stepfather, but “pretty okay” was about the highest compliment Jordan gave for anything not involving hi-def graphics. Then Louis felt even worse for being jealous at all.
Amelia added, “He’s nice. He is kind of nerdy, but then again, so are you, Dad. But he’s good for Mom.”
“Why don’t you ever date anybody, Dad?” Jordan asked, turning his videogame back on.
That caught Louis completely off-guard. Amelia must have noticed the momentary panic before he regained his composure. Even Jordan glanced up from the game at him.
“Who says I don’t? Your mom and I decided a long time ago that we wouldn’t introduce you guys to anybody we weren’t really serious about.” That wasn’t a lie, per se. Louis breathed a little easier.
“Why not?” Jordan asked.
“It wouldn’t be fair to you, if you got attached to someone and then we broke up.” He was creeping closer to a lie by omission, but he wasn’t there yet.
Jordan paused the game again and exchanged a look with his sister that Louis couldn’t quite read.
“So all this time, there hasn’t been anybody you’ve liked enough to want to be serious with?” Amelia asked. “Mom’s moved on.”
“You deserve to be happy, too, Dad,” Jordan added.
They were both looking at him, waiting for an answer. Louis finally figured out that they’d apparently talked about this with one another before, had been planning to ask him about this. Do they know? he wondered. Do they just want me to tell them?
There was Jude, he wanted to answer. And Frank. Frank wanted to meet you guys so much. He has a son your age, Jordan. Frank wanted me to meet him, too. Frank had been equal parts heartbroken and angry when Louis had said he couldn’t take that step, now or ever. He doubted Frank would take him back now even if that changed, but just to be able to say it to them…
Then doubt crept into Louis’s mind. Maybe they’d heard rumors and wanted him to prove them wrong by uttering a woman’s name. Maybe the thought that their dad might be gay had never crossed their minds, and they simply wanted reassurance that he wasn’t a lonely loser.
He looked at them again. Amelia’s face, usually so expressive, was covered in hardening paste, and Jordan’s expression was carefully unreadable.
“I am happy,” Louis finally said. The tension in the room broke, but he could tell the kids hadn’t gotten the answer they’d been looking for, whatever that was. He picked up the list and stylus again, then chattered on about appointments and fittings and piano lessons and pyramid practices. He put up a good front, but on the inside, he was crumbling. Not completely being himself in front of his children was one thing, but being a liar and a coward in front of them hurt beyond words.
~~**~~**~~
Present Day
Felix sat at the table in their quarters, head bent low over the calculations. Every once in a while, he’d growl in frustration, and even occasionally ball up a sheet of paper and toss it on the floor.
Louis knew he should be working on the next week’s duty roster for CIC, but he couldn’t focus. Earlier that day, he’d looked over the calculations Felix was struggling with now and had independently come to the inescapable conclusion Felix was desperately trying to escape.
Felix raised his eyes from the papers. “Would you please quit staring at me like I’m a ticking bomb about to go off?”
Louis grimaced at Felix’s word choice. “I’m not staring at you,” he lied. “I was looking for a place to hang Nina’s drawing.” He moved some papers around until he found it, then lifted it up for Felix to see again. It was a picture of the four of them; she’d even used her precious silver crayon for his and Felix’s rank insignia and buttons, Felix’s prosthesis, and what looked to be a crown in Nina’s hair. Two brown blobs with eyes also stood next to the stick figures, which must have been Snuffles and Mr. Digger, and there was a green-blue…thing in the corner, which he had no idea what it was. “Where do you think we should put it? Too bad we don’t have a fridge to hang it on.”
Felix gave Louis a suspicious look, then glanced around the room. “Uh, on that wall would be good.”
Louis nodded, tore off a piece of tape, and took the picture over to the far side of the room. Felix went back to his calculations. “Does it look straight?” Louis asked.
Felix sighed and briefly looked up again. “Yes.”
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better on the other side of the room?”
“Since when do you care about interior decorating?” Felix didn’t bother hiding his annoyance.
Since I started wanting you to toss that math into the garbage and to never think about it again, Louis thought, but he answered, “You’re right. It looks good here.”
Louis affixed the drawing to the wall, then stood awkwardly, looking around the room for something else to do. “Did you look through the rest of today’s mail yet, Felix?”
“No,” Felix said. “Private Hayes said there weren’t any priority messages or anything from Tigh or Helo, so I figured it could wait.”
Louis shuffled through the pile of requisition forms and leave requests, searching for something worth talking about. “Oh my Gods, Gaius Baltar sent us a card.”
“What the frak?”
Louis was hardly happy about how he’d gotten Felix’s full attention, but he was glad he had it.
Louis read to himself for a few moments. “He says congratulations. It looks like he heard we’re adopting. It’s actually a nice card, considering.”
He handed the card to Felix, who made a face a few seconds into reading it. “How noble of him to be concerned for our children’s spiritual well-being and then provide a schedule of his services.” Felix tossed the card across the table like he might catch a disease through contact with it. He picked up his pencil again.
“Well, I thought it was nice, for him,” Louis muttered. Felix didn’t answer. “It does bring up something that I think we should talk about.”
“What?” Felix kept writing.
Louis hadn’t been planning on discussing this today, but he did figure it would be something that would get Felix to put his work aside. “I think the girls should go to Saturday temple school once they move here.”
Disappointingly, Felix didn’t even look up. “Yeah?”
Louis continued, “Nina never went, but Tabitha’s talked about it. She liked going, back on Libran before the attacks. I know that religion has never been a part of your life, but Dr. Ramos was talking about how continuity would be good for the girls, Tabitha especially, since she remembers more.”
“Fine.” Felix reached for his calculator, typed in a few numbers, and shook his head.
Louis was starting to get a little annoyed himself. He knew he was bugging Felix-that was the point, after all-but Felix should have the common decency to tell him that he wasn’t listening rather than pretend. “‘Fine’ is not an appropriate answer to this conversation.”
Finally, Felix looked up. “What? I agreed with you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“No. Well, eventually, but Felix, I just said I wanted our children to participate in religious education. Even if you weren’t an atheist, that kind of decision necessitates a little more discussion than ‘fine.’ What if I’d said I wanted to send them to Baltar’s cult’s temple school?”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
Louis huffed in frustration. “I wouldn’t, but what if I did? We should at least talk about it.”
“Can we discuss this later, then? I’m trying to get my work finished, XO.”
Louis gave up. So much for delaying the inevitable. “Fine.”
“Thank you.”
Felix went back to work, and Louis channeled his nervous energy into scrubbing every surface in the head until it shined. When that was done, he moved on to polishing every shoe and button he and Felix owned.
As he changed the pillowcases, he noticed Felix was mumbling to himself. Felix shuffled through the papers, scribbled something down, and then banged his fist on the table in frustration.
Louis’s stomach flip-flopped. This was it.
“Need any help?” he asked, approaching the table.
“No, sir.” Felix ran his fingers through his hair, then tightened his hand into a fist and knocked it against his head.
Louis slid into the chair across the table from him. “I looked at the charts earlier today, and I think it’s time to switch to Plan B.”
“No,” Felix snapped. He pulled a spreadsheet and a star chart towards him. “We haven’t had the Raptors search Sector M7 yet.”
“Because the gamma radiation there is too intense for life to take hold on any of those planets,” Louis answered calmly.
“But they haven’t swept this area just past the asteroid belt in the third quadrant-”
“Because the tidal forces in both of those solar systems are way too strong for a habitable planet to exist there. Felix,” Louis said, placing his hand over Felix’s hand holding the pencil. “It was a great plan, and you’ve done everything anybody could have done to make it work. But we’ve pushed the capabilities of the jump drives of the Raptors and even the Heavy Raiders to their limits. We have to try something else now.”
“No! This will work. I can find a habitable planet this way, even if we can’t move Galactica to set a different origin point for a new search grid.”
“Felix, listen to me,” Louis pressed. He wasn’t looking at the numbers anymore, at least, but he wasn’t looking at Louis, either. “We’re doing this the right way this time. We’ll only install the Cylon FTLs on six ships, we’ll move all the civilians we can off those ships, and we’ll send the ships out in different directions as six new points for the Raptors and Heavy Raiders to jump from. It’s the best way we have to expand the habitable planet search without jumping Galactica. We have tested and re-tested the Cylon technology as much as we can. Nobody’s happy about it, but we’re at the point where we have to take this risk.” Felix let go of the pencil, but he still stared at the wall. “The rebel Cylons need to find a planet almost as badly as we do. There’s no reason for them to trick us or screw us over at this point.”
“Two kids in a frakking hammock, huh, Louis?” Felix said, his expression downright ugly. “Nice story, but guess what? That’s not how real life works. Sometimes people screw each other over just because they have the opportunity, even if they end up screwing themselves in the process. Isn’t that how your story ended, too? Didn’t your kids end up fighting and tipping it over anyway?”
It was the truth, of course, but it still hurt. Louis let go of Felix’s hand and put his hands up in surrender, then left the table without another word.
Louis started reorganizing their lockers, which didn’t need reorganizing, but he didn’t have anything else to do. He was angry at Dr. Ramos, mostly because it was easier to be angry at him than at Felix. On this one subject, though, Louis truly thought Dr. Ramos didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. He kept cautioning Louis about not coddling Felix too much, particularly letting Felix get upset about both the alliance and the mutiny in private. On the surface, Louis could accept that Felix needed to work through his issues if he was ever going to be truly whole again, and that having a breakthrough might require having a breakdown first.
No matter what he said, though, Dr. Ramos didn’t understand just how hard they’d worked and how long they’d waited to have a chance to simply be together. Dr. Ramos didn’t have to face what they risked losing again. Yes, Dr. Ramos may have been there for those first few days after Felix had been committed, when Felix was so angry he wouldn’t even acknowledge Louis’s presence. Dr. Ramos wasn’t there now every day when Felix and Louis walked home from work together, bouncing navigational strategies and personnel rotation ideas off each other almost as easily as Adama and Tigh used to do, though. He didn’t understand what it was like to take Tabitha and Nina to lunch in the mess when the girls visited Galactica and have all their friends stop by the table to meet them. He couldn’t possibly know what it felt like for Louis to hold Felix in his arms after they’d made love and see Felix looking at him in the way Louis had waited his whole life to be seen.
And what were they risking giving up all that progress for? So Felix could come to the realization that a mutiny Louis hadn’t let him participate in had been pointless in the end? It wasn’t worth it.
Louis thought he heard a soft sob from the other end of the room. Then he heard another, followed by a loud clatter. He spun around and saw Felix crumpled on the floor, crying and clinging to a table leg.
“Are you okay?” Louis was across the room and beside Felix on the floor in seconds.
Felix didn’t answer, but he didn’t appear injured, either. “What have I done?” he asked, voice shaking. “My gods, Louis, what have I done?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I kept telling myself it would’ve been different if I had been in CIC, that I could’ve kept things under control.” Felix was looking through Louis, horrified. “But it would’ve been just as bad.”
“You don’t know that,” Louis said. He’d prepared for a lot of different confessions and break-down scenarios, but not this one. He wanted to touch Felix but afraid of what might happen.
“Adama never would have backed down, even if I’d had time to try to reason with him,” Felix went on. “I either would have had to kill him, or do like what happened, kill Lee and make the rest of the Fleet such a bloody mess that you and Helo and the Colonel had your hands too full keeping the Fleet from spinning apart to make any upgrades.”
“Maybe you would’ve failed.” It was poor consolation, but it was the only thing Louis could think of. “You’re a good man. You would’ve pulled back before things got that bad.”
Louis wasn’t sure Felix was listening. “They used my plan. It was my idea, my fault. What happened to Tyrol and Anders and Maddox and so many others…what could’ve happened to the Agathons, and to you.”
Louis finally summed up the courage to touch Felix’s arm. “Don’t do this to yourself, baby. I know you wouldn’t have hurt me, and you know it, too.”
Felix focused on Louis. “I would’ve tried to keep you safe, but what if it had gotten out of my hands? What if I’d locked you up and you’d refused to swear loyalty to me and to Tom? He would’ve done it, and I couldn’t have stopped him. Oh gods, what have I done?”
Louis pulled him into an embrace as best he could with the awkwardness of sitting on the floor and maneuvering around Felix’s prosthesis. Felix buried his face against Louis’s neck. Louis wanted to say the right thing so badly, but he was at a total loss for words.
“How can I ever face Tabitha and Nina, after what I’ve done? Gods, how can you even look at me?”
He might not entirely understand what Felix was struggling through, but Louis understood guilt. He took hold of Felix by his arms and pulled away far enough so they could look each other in the eyes. “Felix? Felix, look at me.”
You’ve got it all wrong, Louis wanted to say. I’ve been there. After I lost my kids, I tried to die inside, too, and that’s how I stood by and let the Scylla happen. But love is what pulls you out of the guilt and the shame. Love is what makes you take the risk of feeling again, after you’ve lost everything. You are what saved me, Felix.
Someday, Louis would tell Felix all that, but not today. He wasn’t going to make this about him or the Scylla. This was about Felix and helping him find his way back.
Louis put his hand on Felix’s cheek, searching for words. “I love you, Felix. Just please, don’t pull away from me again.”
Felix looked shocked that that was what Louis had been most afraid of. Louis could see his anxiety break and subside like a wave. Felix wrapped his arms around Louis’s shoulders, and Louis pulled him in as tightly as he could, gently rocking them back and forth as Felix cried until he couldn’t anymore.
~~**~~**~~
Five years ago; eight months before the attacks
Louis rapped gently on the open door. “Amelia? Could we talk for a minute?”
Amelia was lying on her stomach on her bed. Her head popped up from her book. “Sure. What’s up?”
Louis sat on the edge of the bed. Amelia sat up and scooted over so she was sitting beside him. “Dad?”
Louis twisted his fingers in his lap. “I know it’s awkward for a young woman to talk to her dad about something like this, but, um…”
He looked at Amelia, who was waiting patiently for him to find the right words but not doing anything to help make this easier.
He looked at the ceiling and blurted, “Your mom says you won’t go to the gynecologist.”
“Ah,” was all Amelia said. Louis stole a glance at her. From her expression, it seemed she wasn’t surprised that this had come up.
Louis continued, “I said you’re young enough you don’t need to go to a gynecologist anyway.” Louis swallowed hard. “You are too young for a-um…”
Amelia’s coolness faltered a little, but not nearly as much as Louis’s. “Are you asking me if I’ve had sex?”
“Er…”
“I haven’t.”
Louis exhaled in relief. “Good. That settles it, then. You’ll just go to a GP until you’re eighteen, or until that changes-and I know you and your mom have talked about it, but let me just add that I really, really don’t want that to change-”
Amelia shook her head resolutely. “I’m not going to a GP, either.”
It took Louis a moment to switch gears. “Well, okay, I suppose you can stay with your pediatrician a little bit longer, but eventually my insurance is going to make you switch to somebody else.”
“Dad, you don’t get it. I’m not going to any Caprican-trained doctor.”
“Oh yes, you are,” Louis said without thinking.
He expected a teenager backlash of whining that he wasn’t being fair, but instead, Amelia sat up straight and met his eyes. “No, I’m not,” she said respectfully but firmly. “I’m fifteen. That means I’m old enough to make my own medical decisions if I have special dispensation from a priest-which I do-even if my choices go against my parents’ wishes. It’s the law.”
Louis sat slack-jawed, shaking his head in disbelief and confusion. The only thought he could pin down was how angry he was at Susannah for not telling him the full story of why Amelia had refused to keep her doctor’s appointment.
“Daddy, it’s not like I’m completely disregarding my health,” Amelia continued. She only called him “Daddy” when she knew he was upset with her. “I’m planning on going to a Sagittaron healer regularly, and Daddy-Daddy, no, it’s not just a bunch of chanting and soma bracelets and smelly herbs,” she said when Louis opened his mouth to protest. “Our people have refined these methods over hundreds of years. Caprican-based medicine-it’s so cold and impersonal, and how can it possibly heal, the way it divides the body from the soul?”
Louis’s voice broke. “But x-ray machines and blood tests and cancer screenings-they work, Amelia. You’re young, so you think you’re invincible, but those things catch problems before it’s too late. Not to mention the treatments-”
“Let the Capricans and the Picans and the Virgonese have all that. Our ways work, and they’re ours. Of course the wealthy planets are going to discredit our ways. They’re not satisfied with controlling and colonizing our land. They want to colonize our bodies and our minds-”
“Amelia, stop it!” Louis didn’t yell, but he said it with enough force that Amelia let her argument die mid-sentence, which didn’t happen very often. He took Amelia’s hand in his. “Honey, this is not the same as picketing and circulating petitions. This isn’t just another cause to fight for. You are not a cause.”
Louis could see that Amelia hated to upset him like this, but not enough to give in. “Even if I’m wrong about Sagittaron medicine, I’m not hurting anybody but maybe myself.”
Louis shook his head. He’d never cried in front of his kids, but he wasn’t sure if he could hang on now. “That’s where you’re wrong. You and your brother are the most important thing in my life. I know your mom feels the same way. You two are my life, and I don’t know what I would do if anything ever happened to you.”
Amelia reached out and drew Louis into a hug. “Daddy, I’m so sorry,” she said. He believed her, but he also knew she wasn’t changing her mind.
Louis held her tight, trying to regain his composure before she could see his face again. He wasn’t giving up for good, but he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere with her right now. “How did you ever become so damn sure of yourself?” He tried to laugh, but it didn’t work.
“I got it from you.”
“What?” That stunned Louis enough that he pulled back.
Amelia’s expression was completely serious. “I did, from the way that you’re so proud of being in the military, and so sure that it was the right thing for you to do, even when almost everybody else either hates you for it or thinks you’re crazy.”
“It’s a job, not a statement. I needed a way to support you.”
Amelia shook her head. “You say it’s just a job, but I can tell that you really believe in defending our family and the Colonies. Even if I’m not sure I agree with you, I respect that: doing what you believe in, no matter what.”
Louis tried and failed to laugh again. “It’s not fair, you using myself against me.”
Louis hugged her again, wishing fervently that they could go back to the days when he could give Amelia a time-out, back when her biggest questions about life were why is the sky blue and the grass green, and she took his answers on faith. He knew he couldn’t hang onto her forever, and that on the whole, she was growing up into a fine young woman. That didn’t make any of this hurt less.
“The truth is rarely fair, Daddy,” Amelia said.
CONTINUE ON TO PART 4