A Wise Man's Son

Journeys end in lovers' meetings,
Every wise man's son doth know
Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

1 Sextus 6490, late afternoon
Battlestar Galactica

The shuttle pilot, Flight Sergeant Dietra, brought the little ship into Galactica's Alpha bay. Obviously put out, she'd left him to himself for most of the journey out from Demeter, calling him up to the tiny flight deck only when the Galactica was within visual range. Apollo hadn't minded.

It was just over three yahrens since he'd seen the Galactica last, only then she'd been growing larger in the view from the Raptor's clear tylinium cockpit until she'd loomed so large that she'd blotted out entire galaxies. Then he'd worried about having to be on his father's ship and how that would impact on the job he had to do to get into T18, apprehensive about how they'd manage without his mother there to keep the peace between them.

A laughably inconsequential issue now, he thought.

So, three yahrens since T18.

Two yahrens since Telnos. Two yahrens since leaving Joss and finally abandoning the compromise that was as dead and desiccated as one of his beloved mummies. Two yahrens since other things that he didn't want to think about, not with the Galactica's silvery-grey bulk filling the heavens holding that sobering consequential issue inside its hull.

One yahren since he was sent to Fleet, escaping today's fate by a hair's-breadth, because Galactica's lush of a strike captain hadn't yet hit the bottom of his own particular barrel. Great timing on Simonitz's part, and a damned pity he hadn't stayed sober a few sectars longer.

One sectar since Molecay, and the discovery that there truly was a fate worse than death.

And six centars since he'd lost Rosie.

He shook his head, trying to get hold of himself, to stop the rot. It sounded uncomfortably like a countdown, each beat of the count another disaster, another mistake.

"Not much used to battlestars then, sir?"

Apollo let his mouth close. He'd been staring as if he'd never seen a space ship before. He must have looked moronic. Moronic enough to have amused Dietra, anyway.

"Too used to them to be that impressed," he said; and because she stiffened and her expression closed over, thinking that he was snubbing her, he managed a grin and made himself sound rueful. "Although I always forget what big buggers they are and it gets me, every time. She's huge."

Dietra relaxed again. "You'll soon get used to her, sir."

Apollo hoped so. He just wasn't as confident.

She was a good pilot, he noticed, capable and sure, deftly adjusting the controls to coax the shuttle into a textbook landing. She handled the ship with ease and skill, bringing it down on the spot where he'd landed the Raptor three yahrens before, obscuring it. He didn't know if there was something comfortable about landing on the same spot, or something mockingly ironic, but that it had significance? Yes, of that he was certain.

There was no-one waiting for him this time. There weren't very many people on the deck at all, other than ground crews fussing over a couple of Vipers. Last time he'd had a welcoming committee that had worn colonel's crowns and a stern expression, with a gaggle of pilots hanging around to see him arrive. They'd been unknowns, nothing more to him then than the people whose records he'd scour to find the right pilot for the job, the only pilot for the job. There had been no hint, as he'd glanced at them, that among them was the right pilot for him, the only pilot for him.

Nothing this time. He glanced over to the place where the pilots had stood, but there was no-one there. No-one. Neither known or unknown, right or otherwise. No-one.

Nothing at all.

He was relieved. He was nervous enough with having people watching for him. Really, he was relieved that there was no-one there.

"I'll have everything taken to your quarters sir," offered Dietra. "The Quartermaster will have sorted something out for you by now. I know Corporal Bren's been assigned to you, and he's getting everything sorted out."

He wasn't sure if that meant she'd forgiven him, or only that she'd decided he was even more hapless than most officers. He thanked her.

She took that as her due. "I meant to tell you that a crate of your stuff came through on last secton's freight run. I think the Deckmaster put it into storage, unless Bren's already located it. Want me to check?"

"I'd appreciate that, thanks. Books, mostly, but I don't want to lose them." And his Shield uniform, carefully pressed and neatly folded until it was time to take off this silly disguise and get back to who he really was.

He left the two kitbags with Dietra, keeping only the datapads with him, keeping all the terrible knowledge safe, slinging the strap of the pack over one shoulder. It unbalanced him a little as he walked away. Dietra was protesting innocence to the Deckmaster as he walked into the Decontamination chamber. "Not my fault, Maire, honest!" and her voice cut off abruptly as the door slid shut, shutting him into silence.

Ten centons to get through the cycle. He welcomed the little delay, the chance to think about what he was feeling and deal with it, try to deal with it. He really shouldn't be this apprehensive about having to work with his father, he thought, practicing the slow, even breathing that the Shield psychs had said would help calm the flutters. He couldn't remember for a centon when that advice had come. Part of the debriefing from the job when he'd had to kill that Jack, he thought; yahrens ago, at least five long yahrens, when it was only one death that defined him.

They usually worked, the breathing exercises, clearing his mind and leaving him calmer, more grounded. He couldn't say the psychs' nostrum was effective this time, though. There was a coldness in his gut that felt like a hand closing about them, to yank them, and he had to concentrate to keep the breathing even. The flutters were so un-calm they were wearing lead boots and turning somersaults. They somersaulted all the long way up to the bridge.

There was a little buzz when he stepped out of the turbolift and onto the bridge, faces turning towards him in open curiosity. He knew a few of them. Athena, of course, looking trim in her navy command uniform, her expression guarded. And he knew the tall bridge captain standing at Colonel Tigh's shoulder. What was his name again? Omaha? Orion? Something like that.

Athena's mouth cracked into a brief smile. He smiled back, pleased to see her. He noticed that she kept a wary eye on the Colonel and suspected that even the Commander's children didn't get away with too much familiarity on duty.

"How nice of you to join us, Captain," said Tigh.

The day he'd first stepped aboard this ship, Tigh's welcome had been cool. Second impressions were little better than the first, then. Apollo opted for discretion over valour, lowered the pack to the deck and offered a snappy salute in lieu of a defence.

"I'm glad to be here, Colonel," he said, perjuring his immortal soul without a second thought.

Tigh looked him up and down, and snorted. "The Commander's waiting for you in his office. When he's finished with you, come and see me."

"Sir."

Athena smirked at him. He wasn't at all sure if it was sympathetic or not, so he kept the return grimace light, grabbing up the pack again.

The office looked just the same: the same painful tidiness, the same group of holopics on the desk, the same commander sitting behind it regarding him with marked disfavour.

"You're late," said his father.

The flutters made an effort to be full-blown quivers, and he had to take a calming breath to beat them into stillness again. As a precaution, he stiffened into a salute. Not perhaps, as snappy as the public one he'd given Colonel Tigh, but acceptable, he hoped. "I got held up on Demeter. Shield business, sir," he added, as the cool glare continued to intimidate.

Adama scowled. "Martens is not getting you back any earlier!"

"No. She hasn't tried it. It was just something I had to do. I'm sorry."

"Not the best impression on your first day."

Apollo went for both rueful and self-deprecating. "So Colonel Tigh has already intimated, sir."

And finally, his father laughed, got up and came around the desk to embrace him. Apollo submitted to it as gracefully as he could, pleased that he was so welcome and remembering, too, the support Adama had given so unstintingly.

Adama didn't let him go, just moved back enough to be able to look at him properly, one hand smoothing down the back of his hair. "All right?"

"Fine." Apollo endured the hair smoothing. He met the watchful, measuring gaze and smiled. "Really. I'm okay."

"It got to you badly."

"As you know, since you almost had to smack me at the Inquiry." Apollo felt a little burn of humiliation at the memory, but he'd deserved the set-down. "I'm fine. You know. Dealing."

"You were a little on edge." Adama hugged him again. "I'm glad you're here."

Translation : where I can keep an eye on you. Apollo sighed. He wished he could feel the same, but he truly dreaded the yahren to come.

"I know you're more doubtful," said Adama. "But we will make it work. I remember that when I was posted here all those yahrens ago I wasn't that thrilled to be serving with your grandfather Noah."

"I don't remember him very well."

"Unfortunately for you, I'm very like him." Adama grinned, hugged him again and finally released him. He noticed the case of datapads for the first time and frowned.

"Yes," said Apollo. "I'm still working on it."

Adama shook his head. "Look, I'm serious about this. Don't let it get to you to that extent again, do you hear me? Come and talk to me if you need to."

"Yes. It'll be all right. But, yes, okay."

Another long searching glance before his father nodded. "All right. Now, then, I know you've had a yahren with Fleet and I'm very sure that being under Dalton's command has taught you a lot, and yes, I did see her report and very flattering it was too, although no more than I'd expect, but—"

And for the next ten centons his father talked battlestars at him until Apollo, making valiant efforts to keep up, thought that the old man could probably write the manual. He made interested noises and welcomed the diversion, allowing the part of his mind that wasn't pretending to be attentive, to pass literary criticism on the Adaman book of instructions. He'd just decided on how he would run the publishing and PR plan for The Care and Feeding of Young Battlestar Captains and was wondering if he'd dare share the more creative ideas, when his father drew the lecture to a halt.

"We'll adjust, you know," he said again. "This will be a good posting for you, Apollo, and I promise you won't regret it. And now you'd better go and settle yourself in, and you're having dinner with me tonight, you and Athena. We'll discuss there how we'll get through the next yahren without murdering each other."

Apollo nodded. "Fine. I've got to go and see Colonel Tigh first." He sighed. "No doubt to explain myself about being late."

"Don't worry. He'll just want to see you so he can deliver his usual welcome speech. It's a little different to mine. You don't have to listen to it.. After all, you weren't listening to me just now—"

Apollo felt his face burn with juvenile guilt, as if he were ten yahrens old again and having to confess he'd got less than perfect marks on his maths test.

"—and I outrank him, but please don't yawn in his face or I'll never hear the end of it. All you need to know is that it's about duty and discipline and decorum, and respect for the regulations, of course."

"Is it that alliterative?" admired Apollo.

"And respect for your elders and betters," said his father, quellingly. "He'll tell you what he wants you to do for the rest of the day, what's left of it. Go and get that over with and I'll see you at dinner." He waited until Apollo was almost at the door. "I am glad you're here, son."

"There's a 'but' hanging at the end of that." Apollo turned, the flutters reminding him of their presence by an impromptu tap-dance against his ribs.

"There are going to be difficulties here, I realise that. Over and above the adjustments we're going to have to make personally if this is going to work out."

"You're the one who connived with the Supreme Commander to get me here, so if it's difficult, you can hardly blame me."

Adama hesitated. "The rules help. That's what they're there for."

Apollo let himself stiffen up. "I don't recall breaking any. Sir."

"No. And I'm sure you won't."

Just for a micron, Apollo trembled on the edge of a retort that would likely see him sitting out his first day in the brig. He cut it back to a coldly official, "It's reassuring to have your confidence, sir."

"Apollo—"

"If I might be excused, Commander? I'd better go and get my lecture from Colonel Tigh."

Adama sighed. "I'll see you later for supper. We'll talk about it then."

"I don't think so, sir," said Apollo and marched out before his father could say anything else.

He stashed the data-pack beside Athena and listened to Colonel Tigh's welcome talk with only half an ear, still seething. He'd thought they'd made a lot of progress over the last few yahrens, since T18, but there it all was again, echoes of everything Adama had said all those yahrens ago in the library at the Kobolian. He'd be willing to bet that Adama wouldn't say anything even faintly that insulting to a straight-A heterosexual officer. Of course not.

He spent the next centar taking the tour of the bridge, trying to absorb the information being fired at him, keeping a watchful eye on his datapads, fuelling his anger at his father and trying to get the flutters—by now, evolving into fully-adult jitters—under control. He must have managed the multi-tasking, because Tigh warmed slightly as the centar progressed, looking approving once or twice. He even smiled once.

The Commander returned to the bridge about eighty centons in. Although no-one had to snap to attention when the duty sergeant roared out the timeless "Commander on deck!", they did all straighten in their seats and turn to look at him, until he told them to stand easy and return to their duties. The bridge's subdued hum subdued itself a little further, but it was comforting, right. Even in his jittery condition, Apollo found it comforting. Tigh nodded at Adama, but didn't stop his lecture on the need for more rigour in the patrol schedule. Apollo listened dutifully and kept his attention on the Colonel until he was dismissed, pretending his father wasn't standing on the command dais watching him with the disconcerting gaze that was measuring and anxious and, somehow, full of trepidation.

As if, thought Apollo, the old man was finally facing up to the fact that he might, just might, have made a monumental mistake.




The quarters had been Simonitz's, but there wasn't anything in there that hinted at their previous owner. Not so much as an empty bottle was left. The place was bland and empty and still smelled faintly of new paint. It had to be better than smelling of old booze.

Colonel Tigh had told him that they'd sent Simonitz back to Caprica early. We let him go, he'd said, as if talking about freeing a prisoner on licence, granting him probation for good behaviour. Apollo had wondered if Simonitz had viewed the Galactica as a prison, or if it was his own peculiar circumstances that made the strong metal walls close about him, trapping him where he dreaded to be.

Still he was glad not to have to deal with the man's probable and completely understandable resentment. Back on Caprica for the Inquiry, all his father had said about it was that Simonitz had not taken it well.

No! Really? And his pilots wouldn't be feeling lost and bereft, either, then, with their captain tossed aside like that to make room for the Commander's son? Apollo was astonished that his father didn't realise that made an already difficult posting almost impossible. Or did realise and thought it wasn't important?

Apollo had brooded about that all through Tigh's long monologue. The way he'd brooded about his father's lack of faith. The way he'd brooded about other things. He'd been quite relieved when Tigh had dismissed him and told him to go and get settled in. At least here, with the door closed, he could do his brooding in peace.

A member of the Quartermaster's staff had been summoned to the bridge to take him to his quarters. Corporal Bren, young and rather shy, had reassured Apollo that he'd already overseen the delivery by Dietra of Apollo's kit and the box of books. He'd been assigned to be Apollo's batman, he'd said on the way to the command quarters deck; just page me whenever you need anything and I'll have the place cleaned up daily while you're on duty, sir. Apollo preferred looking after himself, really, but he'd known better than try and alter ship's procedures this early in the game. It could wait, and in the meantime he allowed Bren to set the place to rights and put his kitbags into the sleeping quarters for him to unpack at his leisure. The Corporal must have spent the morning giving the rooms one final cleaning—there was an faint scent of polish competing with the paint—and scurrying back and forth to the Quartermasters to collect all the supplies Apollo might need to start housekeeping; linen and enough basic foodstuffs to stock out the tiny kitchen area. He had everything he needed.

When Bren had gone, Apollo looked the place over with more care. The quarters had the same layout as the Columbia and the Pegasus: one large room with the sleeping quarters off it, divided off by sliding opaque glass doors; a fresher with real water in the turboshower (a blessing and a boon to be prized beyond rubies, and the biggest benefit of being assigned to Fleet); one tiny spare room with a couple of bunk beds in it, relics of the time when Fleet officers' families would join them for extended periods. He'd shared a very similar room with Athena and Zac for a few sectons, not long after his father had taken command of the Galactica. Zac had been what? About three? Appallingly noisy and energetic, anyway and a damp bedfellow. Apollo had envied Athena having the top bunk to herself. Four yahrens later he'd slept alone in the same room, visiting his father for a birthday treat and discovering his sexuality by falling in adolescent love with one of Adama's dashing pilots.

Well, and hadn't that started a habit he didn't seem able to break.

That he didn't want to break.

He sighed, thought regretfully of Rosie, settled onto the sofa with a cup of tea in his hands, and faced up to it. One hurdle past, a hurdle that a few yahrens ago would have seemed insurmountable, but now – well, on the shuttle he'd decided it was laughably inconsequential. That wasn't doing his father any disservice, but recognised the distance they'd come in three yahrens. Or rather, the distance he'd thought they'd come, until, with a flash of his earlier resentment, he remembered that insulting reminder.

He doesn't really know me at all.

That aside, they would find a way to work together. He would let his father know exactly what he felt about the insult and they'd probably have a yelling match, and then they'd be stiff as two alpha daggits around each other for a few sectons until it all settled down. There was no way he was going to let Adama get away with it. Compromising everything to keep the peace - shit, he'd done enough of that with Joss. He wasn't about to start with his father.

If it was still a hurdle, it was one that didn't intimidate him. The other one, the real one, though – he sighed and sipped his tea, savouring its delicacy. That one he didn't even know how to begin to deal with. So many sleepless centars spent worrying over it, agonising over it, and he still didn't know what to do.

Except that he knew that he couldn't bear it if his first run at the hurdle was in public, in the briefing room or the OC or somewhere equally full of people to wonder at his reaction. He wasn't sure how he'd react, that was the trouble. He knew how he wanted to react, but wishes weren't horses and he wasn't so sanguine about his own acting abilities. He didn't think he'd be able to hide what he felt.

The door chime sounded.

He froze, the cup half-way to his lips, looking sideways at the door.

The door chime sounded.

He got up slowly, his hands trembling so much that the cup rattled on its saucer when he replaced it. He glanced around, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Breathe. Deep and slow and even. Breathe.

The door chime sounded.

He wet suddenly dry lips, and metaphorically started his run, heart pounding in his chest, muscles bunching for the effort, for the reaching leap that would take him over this last, immense hurdle.

"Enter," he said, quietly. His voice was surprisingly steady.

The door slid aside.

"Hey," said Starbuck.