14 Quintus 6490, late
The Adaman family mansion, Osaiya, Caprica

It was very late by the time Adama reached Osaiya and the lower part of the house was dark and quiet. Only a few dimly lit windows showed in the upper storey.

The Supreme Commander had sent a transport to meet him at the spaceport but he hadn't gone straight home, as he'd hoped. He'd been taken to Jak's office to be briefed, instead, and after listening to Jak and reviewing the terrible evidence Apollo had retrieved from Molecay, he'd decided against wasting time on com-link calls, even if it were likely that Ila would still be up to answer. He needed to see for himself, urgently. He headed for Osaiya as fast as he could do it – with one fruitless and worrying diversion on the way. It had to be close on two a.m. when he got home. Ila woke with a start when he appeared, unexpected and unannounced, at the bedroom door. She stared at him for a micron, unfocused.

"Oh, thank God, thank God!" Fully awake, she scrambled out of bed with more speed than elegance and threw herself into Adama's open arms. "You're home!"

"And glad of it." Adama kissed her quickly. "Where's Apollo?"

Ila clutched at him. "I don't know. In his room, maybe – "

"He is here, then? Good. I checked the apartment, but couldn't get an answer there."

Ila pulled back and stared at him. "I wasn't expecting you."

"Jak called me back."

"For Apollo? Is he in trouble? Is that why he's so stressed?"

"It's complicated. This last job he went on went very sour. How stressed?"

"I don't know, but I'm worried about him. There's something wrong and he won't tell me anything. The job with Cain, d'you mean? I knew that had gone badly!"

"Yes. Jak said Apollo was taking it hard."

"Taking what hard? He won't tell me. He got home two days ago but he won't talk to me. He won't eat and he isn't sleeping and he nearly scared the life out of me last night and the night before, wandering around the house all night like a ghost. I found him sitting on the stairs at four-o-clock this morning, shivering, but he just kept saying everything was all right and that he was sorry for waking me. He went back into his room like a lamb. We checked on him, Hanna and I, now and again. He didn't sleep. He walked around his room until dawn. And then he walked around the garden and the bay for most of the day."

Adama felt something in his chest tighten. "That doesn't sound good."

"No. I had Zac come out today to try to talk to him, but Apollo couldn't be bothered. That's about it. You know how close he is to Zac, but he just couldn't be bothered, the way he can't be bothered to eat and he can't be bothered to sleep."

Adama sighed.

Ila echoed it. "He's not cross or difficult, not like he usually is when he's hurt or ill. He's just the opposite, terribly sweet and apologetic about it."

"That's worrying in itself," said Adama.

"I just wish he'd tell us what's wrong." The hands still clutching at his tightened their grip. "We thought about getting a doctor for him, but Apollo didn't want to see anyone. He says he's not sick."

"I hope he isn't!"

Ila shook her head, visibly calmer. "Well, no, I don't think he is, not really. He's very upset about something, but he's not sick. What scares me is that if we let it go on, he might get sick, he might just drift into a breakdown or something. I thought it might help if a doctor gave him something to make him sleep, just to break the pattern he's getting into. But he wouldn't agree."

"It may not be a bad idea, though."

"Well, you know Apollo. He's just like you."

Adama raised an eyebrow, challenging.

"He is every shade of stubborn and he got that from you."

Adama smiled slightly, and freed his hands to drop them onto his wife's shoulders. He turned her to face the mirror on her dressing table. "Take a good look, love, because genetics is a queer science and rarely one-sided. You're hardly spineless yourself, you know."

The smile she reflected back at him in the glass was fleeting, swamped by what he knew was a very real anxiety. "You can't force him when he's like this, and I can't get through to him, no matter how much I try. I know that something awful happened on that last job with Cain but he won't talk to me about it." Her eyes narrowed at him with what he recognised as faint annoyance. "He's more likely to talk to you."

"I hope he will." Adama stooped to kiss her cheek and turned away, shrugging out of his outer tunic. "I expect it's reaction, that's all."

"Reaction to what? What happened on that job and why are you home?"

"I can't tell you much," he said, but she brushed that aside with an impatient gesture, used to his reticence about military matters. "Apollo actually got back to Caprica seven days ago, but there's been a long debriefing session back at headquarters and he wasn't allowed to leave until it was over. You know that he went with the Pegasus and some other ships behind the lines?"

"He wasn't looking forward to working with Cain, I know. I didn't realise he'd been back that long, Adama. He didn't tell me that. What sort of long debriefing session? What sort of debriefing session takes five days?"

"The Pegasus is missing and there's to be a formal Inquiry in a couple of days. Jak wanted me back for that." He had been surprised, at first, at how fear for Apollo had pushed grief for one of his oldest friends into the background. And as he'd read the debriefing reports, particularly the dreadful record that Apollo had written, anger had begun to replace the grief: anger at Cain's action, at the astonishing irresponsibility it showed, and most of all, anger at the impact it could have on his son. Although, he thought, it wouldn't be the loss of the Pegasus that would be weighing heaviest on Apollo.

The pretty, delicate colour drained from Ila's face. "They're blaming Apollo?"

"Not exactly. But there are Council members who'd take great delight in using Apollo to get back at me. At least I can stop that happening, with Jak's help."

"Adama, I'm not stupid and I won't be fobbed off. Is he in a lot of trouble?"

"Not if Jak or General Martens or I have anything to say about it. I don't think it's the Inquiry that's worrying him." She looked unconvinced, so he added, as impressively as he knew how, "I promise. You said he was in his room? I'll go and talk to him."

It took him a few centons to reassure her and persuade her to let him go and see Apollo alone. Apollo's old room, the room that had been his when he was a child, was down the hall and across the landing, in the other wing of the house. All the children's suites were here, in what they'd once called the nursery wing. They still did call it that, although with irony now; until, said Ila hopefully, it's full of grandchildren. Athena's children, she had added. Neither of them were looking to Apollo to provide any and the thought of Zac reproducing filled both of them with horror.

He knocked before going in, but if Apollo gave him permission to enter, he didn't hear it. He went in anyway. The room was dark and quiet, a little light leaking in from the hallway behind him, but this was a big room and the hall light was muted, leaving the room full of shadows. For a micron or two he thought that Apollo wasn't there, but as his eyes adjusted to the dim light and dimmer shadow, he saw that his son was sitting on the wide seat in the big bay window, his knees drawn up, staring out at the sea. Adama closed the door and made his way in the darkness to the window. There was just about space for him sit down. Apollo didn't speak and he didn't look up, but he drew his feet in a little closer, to make room. It was enough to reassure Adama that Apollo realised that he was there and that he wasn't unwelcome.

They sat in companionable silence for long time, while Adama leaned up against the side windowpane and thought about what he needed to say. He waited to let Apollo break the silence first, content to wait for as long as it took. He stared out past his son's dark head at the stars. It was a lovely clear summer night: not a cloud in the sky. The window on Apollo's side was open and Adama listened to the sea; insatiable, innately threatening, the soft, incessant susurration on the shingle in the bay below the cliffs, the sound of water gnawing endlessly at the land. One day, he thought idly, one day this house and everything in it will be gone, eaten up by a sea whose hunger was never appeased.

He heard a clock strike half-after two: the dining room clock, he thought, from the mellow chime. Ila must have left that window open too, for the sound to have drifted up through the night air to Apollo's room. He shifted slightly to manoeuvre a cushion into place to support his back and relaxed again, waiting.

The clock had struck three before Apollo spoke. "Were we expecting you?"

"I thought it was time I came home. Jak told me about Cain."

"Mmn."

"Jak's taken me through the debriefing report." He waited, but Apollo wasn't in the market for a long and detailed conversation, apparently, at least, not without prompting. "Can we have a bit of light, Apollo?"

"If you like."

Adama kept his tone casual, although he worried at the indifferent tone. "Thank you. My eyesight's getting bad enough at my age without straining it further. Lights, forty percent." The house computer brought the lighting up to the muted level he'd specified, but it was more than enough, once his eyes had adjusted, for Adama to see the dark circles under Apollo's eyes, the way his face had thinned down to nothing but eyes and cheekbones. Apollo looked utterly exhausted. His anxiety increasing, Adama asked, "What do you think happened?"

"To Cain?" Apollo shrugged. "Cain happened to Cain. He had a war to fight."

"Don't we all?" Adama reflected that Ila would be furious that she'd been right and that Apollo was talking to him when he wouldn't talk to her. But then, there was so much experience, sub-text almost between one warrior and another, that she couldn't share. Apollo had to know he'd understand a great deal more readily than she could, even if she were more likely to empathise than he was.

"Not Cain's war."

"There's a difference?"

"He wanted one of his own, one where he set all the rules."

Adama thought that showed a surprising amount of perception. Apollo was smart, there was no denying that. But unlike Zac, he was usually a lot smarter about things than he was about people. Adama thought that for Apollo, things were safer than people any day of the secton.

"Did he say as much?"

"Say?" repeated Apollo. He added, thoughtfully, "A lot of what Cain says is crap. You have to add everything together to hear what he was really saying and then only after the event. He's cleverer than he looks."

Adama wondered what experience had created this new, perceptive Apollo. Infuriating as he'd sometimes found the original, he wasn't entirely certain he was comfortable with the new version.

"He tried to get me to go along with them, I think. Sheba did, anyway, and Bojay. They tried to find out if I would go. I didn't work it out at first. I thought they were just talking, just curious about Shield, the way everyone's curious about Shield."

And that was rather more like it. The oblivious Apollo, that was the familiar one who Adama thought he could cope with.

"Jak said he didn't take up position over the base, and all the Hertford picked up was an ion trail leading out of the system."

"No. He saw what he wanted and he went for it. We weren't what he wanted."

Adama could feel the sweat prickling at the corner of his eyes at the heavy going. "The evidence the Hertford gathered should be enough to show... well, even if we don't really know exactly what happened, we know the Pegasus wasn't destroyed and that Cain abandoned the agreed plan to go towards the military base in that sector. I don't think that the Inquiry will find any differently than that Cain deliberately abandoned the Molecay mission. For whatever reason."

"Inquiry? Oh. Oh yes, there's going to be one, isn't there?"

"Fifthday. I'll be there."

Apollo just shrugged again.

"Are you worried about it?"

"No."

"Then it's the base that's bothering you." Adama had read Apollo's debriefing report with growing horror and disgust. If it had been him, he'd be as leery as Apollo was about it all, unwilling to sleep in case he dreamed.

Apollo looked at him for the first time. "Oh yes. You knew, didn't you? You sent me a message before we went."

"Yes. Jak promised he'd give it to you."

"Thank you," said Apollo, politely. "It was nice."

Adama knew if there was one parental truth, it was that with most children, patience was a virtue. With Apollo, right then, it just wasn't even an option. He repressed the urge to shake his son until Apollo snapped out of it and kept his tone calm and uninflected. "I saw the holopics and the other things you brought back."

Apollo unwound his long legs and got up quickly. Alarmed, Adama jumped up to follow him, but Apollo only got as far as the bed before losing momentum. When Adama reached him, he was trembling. "I'm tired, that's all," he said, when Adama exclaimed about it. "I'm tired and I can't sleep."

"There were too many of them, Apollo. And they were beyond help."

Apollo sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed. When Adama sat beside him, Apollo scooted around to sit with his back against the headboard. Adama followed him and waited.

He didn't have to wait as long this time. It was only a few centons before Apollo spoke. "The Cylons were using them to grow nodes for the IL series, did Jak tell you that? Felix told me that the preliminary tests were all positive. The IL Cylon and the ones I brought back, they had the same brains, Cylon and human together... a hybrid."

"Yes. I know."

"A whole new class of Cylons. Felix has taken to calling them the IL-A series. I don't think Mamma would be too impressed, if she knew; such a parody of her name."

"No, I don't think she would."

"Did you hear about the others? The ones I brought back?"

"Jak told me that most seem to be recovering, now they're not exposed to whatever drugs they were being given. Most are more aware, able to be debriefed."

"Interrogated," corrected Apollo, gently. "Felix is going out there next secton."

"Not you, though. Your part's ended, Apollo."

"Is it?" Apollo shifted slightly. "Did Uncle Jak tell you everything about the ones I brought back?"

"He told me that they had to isolate some of them, when the proper medicals were done."

Apollo glanced sideways at him, running a hand through his overlong hair. "The ones who've had brain surgery."

"I know."

"That's the advantage of using an old penal colony. Plenty of places to keep the cuckoos in the nest secure."

"Jak said that they seem tractable enough."

"Lobotomised, apparently. Harmless, Felix said." Apollo's eyes gleamed in the dim light. "A new definition of harmless."

Adama nodded.

"The ones I left behind were the lucky ones, after all. I'd thought nothing could be worse than having the top of your head sawn off for the Cylons to play with, but maybe I was wrong."

"It looked... well, I saw the holopics, of course. There aren't words to describe it."

"Eighty of them. There were so many of them. Men and women and—" Apollo broke of abruptly. "Eighty. So many."

Adama remembered the holopics. Each one of the dead prisoners had been photographed by Apollo and Shield Captain Van Trion. Every single one, old and young. "I know. I was surprised that you photographed every one of them."

"They'll get no other memorial."

And Apollo was right about that. The dead were nameless and unknowable. Adama reflected that that was true: even when the dead are our beloved dead, loved and mourned and regretted, in the end they become nameless and unknowable.

"I left them," said Apollo.

"I spent a lot of time this evening looking at what you brought back with you, Apollo, including the two bodies in the laboratory. They were beyond our reach. They were dead."

Apollo had drawn his knees up again, as if in protection and had looped his hands around them. He stared down at his hands, so that all Adama could see of his face was the gleam of eyes under the dark lashes. "Did you know I killed a man, yahrens ago?"

"No," said Adama, startled.

"We found some Jacks raiding a Piscean trading outpost, when I had the Hype. They'd killed the traders and I guess they thought they didn't have any choice about fighting it out with us. One of them tried to get me as we came through the airlocks. I blew his head off."

"And if you hadn't, he'd have killed you, right?"

"Yes."

"It was self defence, Apollo."

"I know. But it wasn't on Molecay, was it? How do I argue that one away?"

"They were dead," repeated Adama, pleased with the calm certainty he was achieving. He could only hope that it would influence Apollo. "All of them. They were beyond your power, or anyone else's, to save."

Apollo was silent for a moment or two, as if thinking. "Felix gave me a full set of hypos. I don't know exactly what was in them. I didn't want to know."

"In case you couldn't bring the people back."

Apollo nodded. "In case I had to leave them to be blown up. We didn't want them to... to suffer. We didn't want them to suffer any more than they had already."

"No-one would want that," said Adama, after Apollo's voice had trailed off into a too-long silence.

"I only used the hypos on the two I brought back, not on the ones I left behind. I didn't have time to take eighty of them out of the pods and poison them to make sure. I left them to the solenite instead."

"It didn't look to me as if they were aware." Adama chose his words with care. "Captain Van Trion thought they were all dead. She said so, in her debrief report; and so did Sergeant Haydn from the glimpses he got. And from everything you and she and the Shield Warriors said, you used two, three times as much solenite than you needed just to blow that place up. You made sure that every single one of them went in the initial blast. I don't think they can have suffered, Apollo. I don't think they can have felt anything. They were already dead."

Apollo shuddered, Adama feeling the bed shake slightly. His voice was very quiet and low. "The lights in her head went out when I used the hypo on her."

Adama grimaced, glad that Apollo wasn't looking at him at that moment. Apollo wouldn't like to be pitied. It took him a micron or two to gather his thoughts, and in that short time Apollo seemed to shrink in on himself, waiting for the blow, the condemnation. "She was very young, I think. About Athena's age?"

Apollo's head jerked up. He stared, eyes wide, audibly catching his breath.

"I thought about Athena when I saw her. I thought that if it had been Athena, or your mother, they'd have thanked you for what you did, for releasing them from that torment." He paused, and added, sincerely, "And so would I, from my heart. I don't think that poor child would be anything but grateful to you, Apollo. She was dead." Apollo murmured something and he spoke over the top of it, not letting Apollo voice the futile guilt, putting everything he had into reassurance. He put his arm around Apollo's shoulders, feeling him shake, and pulled him close. "If, as you seem to fear, there was some terrible parody of life in her, then you gave her the peace the Cylons denied her. I don't think there was—"

"I can't be sure!" interrupted Apollo, agonised. "I'm not sure!"

"She was dead, really. You did the right thing, and I'm not sure I could have done it myself. I'm very proud that you're my son. I always have been. I'm so very proud of you, Apollo."

He let Apollo cry for a long time, and when Ila quietly opened the door and woke him from a doze, he wasn't sure at all how long he'd sat there with Apollo curled up beside him, the dark head resting on his lap the way Apollo-the-child might have slept twenty-five yahrens ago. He had one hand resting on Apollo's hair, and as Ila watched them, her expression rueful, he resumed the comforting stroking that he hoped had helped soothe his son to sleep.

"He'll be all right. He just needed to tell someone. You go to bed. I'll stay with him."

The rueful expression softened into a smile. "He always was Daddy's boy," she said, and closed the door, softly.

Adama leaned back and closed his eyes again, tired. Not always, he thought, remembering Joss. Not always