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asta77's prompt is here. I even posted it on the day you requested! :p I was gonna try and make myself write something romantic and happy but instead this happened because I kept trying to imagine what their first real interaction, not-in-public-exactly, would have been like.
Title: The truth you need
Word Count: Approx 1,000
Spoilers: Through 4x18 for, um, political shenanigans.
Pairing: pre-Lee/Sonja, references to Lee/Dee.
Summary: Sometimes you lie.
The truth you need.
Lee stood in the middle of the enormous chamber, trying to ignore the thrum of the basestar.
“Those lights,” he said, watching as a red pulse swung back and forth across a wall panel like a sluggish metronome. “Can they be switched off? I feel like I'm being watched.”
Sonja arched an eyebrow. “I suppose,” she said. “I'll have a Two look into it. Did you have any more thoughts on the seating arrangements?”
“I still like roundtable best, but with thirty-five,” he paused, “I'm sorry, thirty-six ship captains I don't think it will be feasible, so we'll need some kind of tiered seating and a podium.”
“Just like the pilot's briefing room we're already using,” Sonja smiled in a way Lee thought was ironic, but he could never tell.
“Bit late for a fresh start now,” he said. “Anyway, this place is gonna dwarf us. Reminds me of my frakking high school mock quorum.”
Lee pushed his hands into his pockets and turned to leave.
Sonja said, “That's not what you said after Earth.”
Lee stopped, turned back to face her. “I'm sorry?”
“That's not what you said after Earth.”
He didn't remember the speech he had given, not clearly. He hadn't meant any of it. But he remembered every word he repeated to Dee as she hung on his arm, ambling through Galactica toward quarters he thought, as she kissed him, might not be hers for much longer.
Well. He'd been right about that.
“What's wrong?”
Sonja seemed genuinely concerned. Lee realised he hadn't answered her; that he was standing, staring at her. Lords only knew what he must look like.
“I'm fine,” he said. When she didn't respond, he added, “I didn't really mean what I said after Earth. I didn't mean any of it.”
“So you lied?”
Lee found himself thrown by her tone. It was sharp, but there was something more complicated than judgement in it. If Lee trusted himself to read her, he might have said it was need. The idea exhausted him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I lied.”
“Why?”
“Because if I didn't, my species would have finished the job yours started.”
It sounded harder, out loud, than it had in his head. He wasn't ready for the cold shape it left in his stomach - acknowledging, aloud, that they had been one step from racial suicide. He wasn't ready for the quiet devastation on Sonja's face.
He wasn't ready to feel sorry for her either. His mother was dead. Every one of his cousins was dead. Duck and Nora and Krys Johnston his best friend from second grade and James Juventis, the Picon Panthers' forward guard. Absolutely everyone on Cloud Nine and five thousand, one hundred and ninety seven people on New Caprica. The last shreds of Felix Gaeta's sanity and Tom Zarek's decency. Dee. Cylons killed them all.
He closed his eyes so he wouldn't need to see Sonja's beautiful face apologise for something he couldn't forgive.
“After Earth,” Sonja said, in a voice softer than he'd heard her use before. “Thirty-three of my brothers and sisters killed themselves. It's still happening.”
“Yeah, well, it's a way out,” Lee muttered, pulling himself together, opening his eyes but refusing to meet hers. “Go see all those dead people who went before you. Never be hungry again, or hurt, or tired.”
“Mr. Adama, you don't understand. For you, maybe that is true, but not for us. Suicide is a sin. My siblings are dead. They're just dead, they didn't go anywhere, their souls weren't received by God.”
“Frak, and you think any of ours were? You think the gods are real? Or your god is real? You want to know what Earth did, Sonja? It killed God. It told us no one up there loved us, or was looking out for us and if they were real, they didn't care. They took our prayers and drank our hopes and left us on a godsdamned radioactive beach. And then my wife,” he felt his voice crack. He closed his eyes and was ashamed to feel tears escape. He swallowed. He meant to stop, turn around, leave. Never talk about any of this again. He kept talking. “My wife,” he said. “Put her sidearm to her temple and pulled the trigger and I think the point was that she wasn't going anywhere. And frak, maybe I understand that, somehow. If I have a soul, you think I want it going to a god who let us come to this?”
Sonja stared at him, with another of those godsdamned expressions he couldn't read for the longest time before she whispered, “So you lie.”
“Yeah,” Lee swallowed. “I lie.”
“Natalie was a good leader,” Sonja said. “I try to emulate her. Be brave, lead by example. She never lied to us. And Cavil, it turns out Cavil lied all the time.”
“Yeah, well, sorry I can't make it nice and neat for you.”
“Maybe it doesn't need to be,” she said. “Maybe I understand. Thank you, Lee Adama.”
She walked up to him, put her warm, slender fingers against his arm and said, “I'm so sorry for your loss.”
She left.
Lee had heard those words so many times, from so many people since Dee died, they had ceased functioning as a meaningful sentence and had become a perfunctory collection of sounds. The absolute sincerity in Sonja's voice caught him so offguard, he felt physically unstable. It wasn't until he had returned to the Galactica, and the impression of her fingers had finally faded from his arm, that he realised, she had wanted absolutely nothing from him in that moment.
asta77's prompt is here. I even posted it on the day you requested! :p I was gonna try and make myself write something romantic and happy but instead this happened because I kept trying to imagine what their first real interaction, not-in-public-exactly, would have been like. Title: The truth you need
Word Count: Approx 1,000
Spoilers: Through 4x18 for, um, political shenanigans.
Pairing: pre-Lee/Sonja, references to Lee/Dee.
Summary: Sometimes you lie.
The truth you need.
Lee stood in the middle of the enormous chamber, trying to ignore the thrum of the basestar.
“Those lights,” he said, watching as a red pulse swung back and forth across a wall panel like a sluggish metronome. “Can they be switched off? I feel like I'm being watched.”
Sonja arched an eyebrow. “I suppose,” she said. “I'll have a Two look into it. Did you have any more thoughts on the seating arrangements?”
“I still like roundtable best, but with thirty-five,” he paused, “I'm sorry, thirty-six ship captains I don't think it will be feasible, so we'll need some kind of tiered seating and a podium.”
“Just like the pilot's briefing room we're already using,” Sonja smiled in a way Lee thought was ironic, but he could never tell.
“Bit late for a fresh start now,” he said. “Anyway, this place is gonna dwarf us. Reminds me of my frakking high school mock quorum.”
Lee pushed his hands into his pockets and turned to leave.
Sonja said, “That's not what you said after Earth.”
Lee stopped, turned back to face her. “I'm sorry?”
“That's not what you said after Earth.”
He didn't remember the speech he had given, not clearly. He hadn't meant any of it. But he remembered every word he repeated to Dee as she hung on his arm, ambling through Galactica toward quarters he thought, as she kissed him, might not be hers for much longer.
Well. He'd been right about that.
“What's wrong?”
Sonja seemed genuinely concerned. Lee realised he hadn't answered her; that he was standing, staring at her. Lords only knew what he must look like.
“I'm fine,” he said. When she didn't respond, he added, “I didn't really mean what I said after Earth. I didn't mean any of it.”
“So you lied?”
Lee found himself thrown by her tone. It was sharp, but there was something more complicated than judgement in it. If Lee trusted himself to read her, he might have said it was need. The idea exhausted him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I lied.”
“Why?”
“Because if I didn't, my species would have finished the job yours started.”
It sounded harder, out loud, than it had in his head. He wasn't ready for the cold shape it left in his stomach - acknowledging, aloud, that they had been one step from racial suicide. He wasn't ready for the quiet devastation on Sonja's face.
He wasn't ready to feel sorry for her either. His mother was dead. Every one of his cousins was dead. Duck and Nora and Krys Johnston his best friend from second grade and James Juventis, the Picon Panthers' forward guard. Absolutely everyone on Cloud Nine and five thousand, one hundred and ninety seven people on New Caprica. The last shreds of Felix Gaeta's sanity and Tom Zarek's decency. Dee. Cylons killed them all.
He closed his eyes so he wouldn't need to see Sonja's beautiful face apologise for something he couldn't forgive.
“After Earth,” Sonja said, in a voice softer than he'd heard her use before. “Thirty-three of my brothers and sisters killed themselves. It's still happening.”
“Yeah, well, it's a way out,” Lee muttered, pulling himself together, opening his eyes but refusing to meet hers. “Go see all those dead people who went before you. Never be hungry again, or hurt, or tired.”
“Mr. Adama, you don't understand. For you, maybe that is true, but not for us. Suicide is a sin. My siblings are dead. They're just dead, they didn't go anywhere, their souls weren't received by God.”
“Frak, and you think any of ours were? You think the gods are real? Or your god is real? You want to know what Earth did, Sonja? It killed God. It told us no one up there loved us, or was looking out for us and if they were real, they didn't care. They took our prayers and drank our hopes and left us on a godsdamned radioactive beach. And then my wife,” he felt his voice crack. He closed his eyes and was ashamed to feel tears escape. He swallowed. He meant to stop, turn around, leave. Never talk about any of this again. He kept talking. “My wife,” he said. “Put her sidearm to her temple and pulled the trigger and I think the point was that she wasn't going anywhere. And frak, maybe I understand that, somehow. If I have a soul, you think I want it going to a god who let us come to this?”
Sonja stared at him, with another of those godsdamned expressions he couldn't read for the longest time before she whispered, “So you lie.”
“Yeah,” Lee swallowed. “I lie.”
“Natalie was a good leader,” Sonja said. “I try to emulate her. Be brave, lead by example. She never lied to us. And Cavil, it turns out Cavil lied all the time.”
“Yeah, well, sorry I can't make it nice and neat for you.”
“Maybe it doesn't need to be,” she said. “Maybe I understand. Thank you, Lee Adama.”
She walked up to him, put her warm, slender fingers against his arm and said, “I'm so sorry for your loss.”
She left.
Lee had heard those words so many times, from so many people since Dee died, they had ceased functioning as a meaningful sentence and had become a perfunctory collection of sounds. The absolute sincerity in Sonja's voice caught him so offguard, he felt physically unstable. It wasn't until he had returned to the Galactica, and the impression of her fingers had finally faded from his arm, that he realised, she had wanted absolutely nothing from him in that moment.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-28 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 01:50 pm (UTC)Anyway, I'm glad I wrote it convincingly and it sounds like something that might have happened in the show.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-28 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 01:52 pm (UTC)Anyway, thanks again for letting me know you enjoyed it.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-28 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 01:55 pm (UTC)I was never a huge fan of the Lee/Dee thing more because of how it ended up playing out on screen than any aversion to it on principle, but ironically, it was in the episode where Dee died that I finally saw a good, clear relationship between them and chemistry and found myself thinking, hey, you know, maybe they could work it out. And then. *heartbreak*
Plus I just finished vidding Dee a few weeks ago so I guess she's on my mind. (Though vid won't be released for a long time yet as it's part of a wider project).
Anyway, I haven't read that many Lee fics from this time period but it makes me doubly glad to know I included her here if it's something that is often missing. Whatever anyone's opinion on her character or how the relationship played, just, just, *wibbles and points to Lee's crushed expression as he takes her number off the whiteboard* LEEEEEEE! *hugs him* ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 01:23 am (UTC)I have a hard time forgiving the cylons (I guess I have something in common with Lee), but this feels like a tiny moment of connection and grace.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 01:58 pm (UTC)I'm like the poster girl for CYLONS ARE AWESOME but you can't pretend that's something Lee would or even should feel. Originally I was going to write something in some fantastical future where they were already good friends but it felt false to do that not having written a moment like this first. Lee's POV toward the end of the show, as the one main cast character who was still really angry at the cylons for what they did wasn't always given the justice it was due. But I did really like how he was the architect of the truce, fought against the mutineers, but still was able to make the point that none of this was okay. So I'm really glad I managed to keep that while still creating a realistic moment of connection. That was actually something that worried me and that I didn't want to "force".
Thanks again for your comment.
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Date: 2010-01-29 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-29 02:00 pm (UTC)Thanks again for taking the time to comment.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-31 01:58 am (UTC)But then again, even though I do throw out the Demetrius, the Hub, FakeEarth, the mutiny, anything and everything to do with CAVIL, Kara's magic piano Dad, the Colony, RonEarth :P...this is still a totally NECESSARY moment so it CAN be fit in after (in my canon now) the Cylons wiped out over half the fleet at the Ionian Nebula and Natalie and her group escaped the Mechanicals rebellion when they learned the Human models were a screwed up as the Humans, and proceeded to carpet bomb every planet they could find in an attempt to drive the fleet into a fight and drive the Humans/Human models into extinction once and for all...see, mine's even darker before the end...it fits SO WELL because the Cylons were NEVER confronted by the show about the implications of how they're actions made the Humans FEEL. Sure, they felt a degree of regret over their own actions, but they never had a moment were they saw what it was really doing to the other side. Without that, I can't see them having real empathy at all...that is unless you add in this moment. ;)
Great stuff. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 05:59 am (UTC)Although I asked for Lee/Sonja, I'm very glad you addressed Dee. Lee never got to grieve for her the way I think he wanted to (THANKS BILL! :p), so it's nice to see him let his guard down for a moment and share what he's feeling. (I hadn't considered that, as an atheist, Lee believed that Dee was choosing nothingness and saw it as more favorable than the uncertain future they were facing.) And Sonja (of course!) understands what Lee is feeling.
I also like how you have Sonja mention 33 Cylons have committed suicide since the discovery of earth. Gina chose to commit suicide, but that was after horrible abuse and a past she could not psychologically escape. It didn't occur to me that Cylons would choose suicide as an escape from the future. I almost wish that was canon. It would have been another way to connect the human and Cylon races.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 02:48 pm (UTC)I'm glad you liked the tack I took on this - I originally intended to write something happier and more "oh, it's later when they've resolved their issues and stuff!" but...then this happened instead and yes, I think a really big part of it was my feeling that Lee never got a chance to grieve for her.
I don't think Lee will ever be certain why Dee killed herself (will any of us?) but I did think that his atheism would play a part in his response and any ability he did have to come to terms with it. I'm also really glad that you liked the Cylon suicides. It again wasn't something I was originally planning and the strong taboos against suicide made me wonder if I could get away with it. Gina's was SUCH a big deal, but then, that's part of why I wanted to put it in here.
I think that probably far, far fewer Cylons killed themselves than humans, but I do think some would have - because, like D'Anna, they feared the future and Cavil and are really only now having to face the reality of their situation as rebels. I imagine there was a similar spate of suicides among the Colonials in the early days of the Fleet as they really realised what their life would be from now on.
I always liked the way they created the section of Rebel cylons, not many, just a few who had made a stand and lost something enormous as a...Large Scale way of justifying the Colonials being able to cope with the necessity of allying with them. But I also always wished there was more about it on a personal scale. With the Cylon growing and learning and coming to emotionally understand the loss the humans had suffered via losses of their own.
Anyway, thanks for your comment and thanks for the prompt. I enjoyed writing this more than I would have guessed. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 12:49 am (UTC)