OPEN

[oldmanhusker]

CHARACTERS: William Adama and OPEN
LOCATION: Around camp
WARNINGS: None currently
SUMMARY: Time to formalize a watch rotation
NOTES:


The memories have been coming back slowly. He knew from the dogtags that he was in some sort of military and his name was W. Adama. But now he knows he's Admiral William Adama of the Colonial Fleet, charged with the survival of the human race.

Of course, here he wasn't. But that wasn't going to stop him from concerning himself with the survival of the people here. It's clear enough that they're at constant risk on this unknown planet. And while they were guarding against it, there was nothing formalized.

Which is what he's trying to change. So he's making his way through camp, approaching anyone who looks like they're in good enough shape to fight in a pinch. "I'm setting up a more formal watch rotation."

These things never organized themselves, after all.

Comments

[thecag]

Though it's been a few weeks since the crash, Lee and Bill either hadn't crossed paths or didn't recognize each other when they had. More recently, the younger Adama has been balancing retrieval missions with wilderness foraging so he's usually asleep whenever he's in camp. It's been non-stop work though and Lee has pushed himself for anywhere from fourteen to eighteen hours without stopping.

After a particularly perilous excursion, one that nearly results in his own demise thanks to a fatigued miscalculation, Lee admits he to himself that he needs a break. He's exhausted and clearly overdue for a few hours of downtime that isn't sleep. A faint part of him remembers days like this. Weeks even, possibly months, of unending shifts and desperate feelings, but the memories are fractured and non-sequential. Stims, firepower, deep space, the hulking interior of an aged ship.

In spite of the downtime Lee finds himself needing to keep busy. Poking the fire with a damp stick loses its appeal after the first hour. So, instead, he's doing some simple patch up and fortifications to the makeshift shelters. It's easy work, something he can lose himself in while he's piecing together flashes from his past. He's made solid progress on several structures in the tent city by the time Bill comes around.

Lost in thought and fragments of images, voices have mostly blended into the din. Until Bill comes around. The voice Lee hears floating over his shoulder registers immediately, cutting through the mental exercises like a knife. It's familiar and not because of time spent in this landscape. Gravelly intonations lodge themselves deep in Lee's brain, piercing the blurry haze of half-memories like flares in the dark.

Lee stands abruptly, ignoring his body's protests from slow healing injuries sustained in the crash. He abandons a jury-rigged hammer carelessly in the dirt before finishing his efforts of staking a tarp back deep into the ground. Nothing else matters beyond getting around the refuge tent and to the source of that voice and the visceral response it's causing to bubble up within.

[oldmanhusker]

He remembers most of it, now. Enough to realize that the woman he'd seen around camp and not spoken to was Laura. But not to realize it before she vanished from camp. By the time he knew she was his wife, she was already gone... wherever it was she'd gone to.

It's a relief to see someone else he can place in his memories. He'd initially approached because he looked relatively uninjured and of appropriate fighting age. But there's more than that. Definitely more than that. The memories are a bit disjointed and he can tell their history is complicated.

But one thing is simple. This is his son. "Lee?"

[thecag]

The face in Lee's life he's known the longest, someone from as far back as he can remember. When his eyes settled on the elder Adama, he knew it was his father. There were glimpses of memories, bits and pieces that he doesn't know what to make of. Still, seeing Bill standing there and hearing what the L on his dog tags stands for, Lee knows this is the first person he can be sure of.

His father.

"Dad," he says simply, closing the distance between them to embrace the older man without any hesitation.

[oldmanhusker]

Right now, the complicated memories didn't even matter. This was his son. The rest of it be damned. He squeezes tight, glad to have found him again. With Laura gone, it wasn't always certain.

"It's good to see you, son." Son. There weren't many here who could use titles like that.

[thecag]

Lee wonders about the memories suddenly bubbling up but he doesn't care. Weaved throughout the confusing tapestry is a thread of forgiveness, of reconciliation. And even if there hadn't been, doesn't a place like this warrant it? Other than the blonde woman Lee saved from the wreckage, a mutual familiarity felt by both parties, Lee hasn't encountered anyone else he could recall as a connection to home.

And a connection like what he is certain is underneath the surface with his father? A priceless commodity in this hellscape. The hug lingers for a while until both men finally pull back. There are the beginnings of unshed tears that Lee does his best to ignore and blink away.

"Lee. Lee Adama," he says the name, sounding it out in his mouth. It's the only solid memory he's been certain of and to have it confirmed is an overwhelming relief. "Good to see you too Dad. Gods, I am so glad it's Lee. I was worried, what if I misremembered and it was some other weird name and I'd been introducing myself wrong this whole time." An awkward laugh but it fades to something more serious soon enough.

"How have you been? Not too badly injured from the crash I hope?" Said with tentative relief, given how able bodied Bill presently appears to be. His father isn't a young man anymore.

[oldmanhusker]

"I thought I was Walter for a while." In those first days, when all he had to go on was W. Adama. It could have been Walter just as easily as William. But there was history to the name William Adama. A long and sometimes painful history. An important history.

"A few scrapes and bruises, but nothing that isn't healing." Maybe a new scar in there somewhere. Would anyone even notice with how many he already had? "You're well?"

Given the circumstances doesn't need to be said. There have been circumstances for years now.

[muscovy]

Well, Muscovy is currently taking care of his bow, seeing to it being in a good or at least reasonable shape. But he also still doesn't look older than six or seven, and knowing how adults can be... And being part of this watch might be good, not only for the settlement's safety but also for forging alliances and relationships and having people not think of him as a just-a-child.

He runs after Adama when he hears him ask someone else and is turned down, and circles around him so that he'll stand before the man, smile fixed on his face. Ask!

[oldmanhusker]

He wasn't around as much as he should have been when his boys were this age. He regrets that a lot. And of course, children have a whole new significance at home. They're valued. They're the only hope any of them have.

All of this naturally adds up to him smiling back at the boy. He notices the bow, though he doesn't translate that to being old enough to stand watch. "What can I do for you?"

[muscovy]

...That is not the start to this conversation that he was hoping for, but the one that he expected. Well. He'll have to introduce the question into the conversation himself, then.

"You are looking for people that can be part of a "more formal watch rotation", yes? And my lord father taught me how to fight with knives and I can use a bow." All that for hunting and self-defence, and he knows that there are people that have more effective weapons around here, and adults that simply would be able to put more weight into a fight, but a watch isn't primarily there to fight anyway... "...And I have good eyes."

[oldmanhusker]

That... was certainly not what he was expecting from a child this young. While he admires the desire to help, how much to ask of the younger members of the Fleet was a sticking point.

"Doesn't a boy your age need a lot of sleep?" He was not so absent as to not have some knowledge of when the boys had to be in bed on school nights.

[muscovy]

Of all objections, that was the one that he had expected the least, and one that he wasn't really prepared to answer.

"But I don't have to sleep all the time, yes?" Sure, he sleeps more than adults, and especially more than his current guardian, but - maybe he can use that. "And humans have to sleep more than elves, and they are still allowed to be a part of your watch, yes?" Going by whom Bill spoke to before Muscovy approached him, at least.

[oldmanhusker]

"We have traditional schedules for adult humans. It would be a lot to ask of a child. Wouldn't want to risk your health." Not to mention the earful he'd get from a guardian. "Not asking too much of children is one of the things we need to hang onto to be human."

[muscovy]

"I don't get sick a lot like other children do." Or at least he shouldn't. "I haven't been sick at all since I came to the ship." So a little bit of missed sleep won't hurt him, either. "And I have worked before, in the med bay, and before that I made things and sold them. And I've helped on farms."

The last comment confuses him a bit, and he shakes his head. "But humans are human just because they were born as humans." What would be "too much" even be? Sure, children can't do some things that adults can do, and the younger they are the less they can help with the family's tasks, but how is any of that connected to humans being humans?

[oldmanhusker]

"There's being born part of a species, and then there's the spirit, the culture. What makes us more than another animal trying to survive. THere are only so many things we can sacrifice and still call ourselves what we were." How many speeches has he given on that topic? To groups, to people on their own, to himself? Too many, he's sure. Because they're constantly at risk of losing that. When they're constantly at risk of losing everything.

"And one of the things we have to preserve is the value we place on our children." It has to be about more than just having children to continue the species. THough that matters too.

[muscovy]

"But if you don't use what you have even though it is useful, you don't value it, either. If I have a knife but still try to rip my food instead of cutting it because it looks pretty, that is very silly, yes? Because then you will forget that you have the knife at all." And children only start to be taken seriously when they really start to help their households, in his experience. Or at least be taken a little more seriously than otherwise.

[oldmanhusker]

"There's time enough for children to work when they're grown. No matter how bad things get, they deserve a chance to just be children." A child wasn't a knife, wasn't a tool. ANd if they started seeing them that way why were they even fighting the Cylons?

[muscovy]

"Dead children can't be "just children", either." No family puts their children to work just for fun. Or at least most families won't do that. Those who can afford it will even send them to school or have teachers come in for them. But more often than not, in his experience, all hands that are available are needed.

And right now he wants to be needed.