Lee Adama

This is frakking ridiculous.

Though Lee Adama isn't particularly inclined to, if he wanted, he could come up with a list of his own accomplishments as long as his arm. War college graduate, test pilot school acceptance, CAG, commander, near the top of his class— so far— in law school. He's lived through a war, through more combat missions than he can count, more encounters with cylons and firefights and close calls than any person should see in a lifetime. He's somehow traveled through dimensions and made it through to the other side in one piece.

He should be able to put together a crib. This should be frakking easy.

But as it is, Lee is sitting on the floor of the extra bedroom of his and Molly's apartment, surrounded by parts, trying to work out the instructions, which he's unfolded from a neat little square into an unwieldy large sheet of paper, the steps printed in different directions.

"This is a frakking nightmare," Lee says to himself. At the very least, he's figured out that the poles marked A go into slots marked B, but now that he's ready to connect that part— before the C poles come in— he's finding himself one A short.

"Gods... you've got to be genius just to put one of these things together," he grumbles.

Lee still doesn't feel like he's completely up on Christmas. It's a holiday where people bring trees inside, and give gifts, and there a religious part about a baby and some farm animals. He thinks that maybe traditions he remembers from back home might seem just as frakking crazy to someone on the outside, but with each year that goes past, it seems less and less like the case.

Either way, Molly celebrates it, and after being empty-handed last year when it came to presents, Lee is determined to make sure that's not the case this year. After all, she's already decorated their apartment, so he doesn't think there's going to be any escaping the holiday, no matter how much he might want to.

Lee has already picked out a few things, but wandering through Darrow's mall today, he thinks that he could stand to pick up one last gift. He feels like maybe he's got a lot to make up for.

Pausing at a shop window, though, he thinks he recognizes the person leaving it.

Maybe he and Katie don't really know each other, but he's seen her in passing, and Molly's friend Russell has mentioned her. He figures he should say hi, at the very least.

"Katie? Katie, hi," he says, and he really hopes it's not just someone who looks like her.

By all accounts, Lee has no cause for complaint. Even rough days in Darrow, ones where he's spent an entire afternoon trying to get a handle on a specific bit of court case precedence that's been eluding him for weeks, are better than his worst days on Galactica. He's not fighting for his life here, running and watching his back at every turn. He can makes mistakes in Darrow and not worry about some metal motherfrakker— as Starbuck so eloquently put it once— blowing him away.

In a lot of ways, Darrow is what he'd spent so long fighting for.

In a lot of other ways, it's the worst parts of what they'd hoped to leave behind.

By the time Lee reaches High Gate Terrance, he's frakking exhausted. Not in his bones, like after a dogfight, but mentally. He doesn't think he can even look at another book tonight without losing his mind. Reaching into his pocket for the key to the front door of the building, Lee yawns, even though he knows he's not going to be able to fall asleep once he gets inside for hours yet.

A lot of the time, Lee doesn't know how he feels about the coffee shops in Darrow. Truthfully, they're not a whole lot different from the ones in Caprica, but even after all this time, Lee finds that he still sometimes has trouble with the currency. He's used to cubits, to cornered coins, and the money here feels weird in his palm. It's something the people behind him always seem to notice as they yell at him to hurry up with his order.

Today, the lady behind him is about as obnoxious as they come, sighing loudly and making broad statements about the time.

"Just give me a regular coffee," Lee says to the guy behind the counter, and the woman behind him nearly pushes him out of the way to get the counter after him.

"Soy cappuccino," she demands, only for the server to evenly tell her that they don't have anymore. She huffs an "unbelievable" under her breath before storming out, and Lee looks down at the counter to see that she's left a folder on the counter.

"Hey, wait!" he calls behind her, and grabs the folder, though by the time he makes it outside, she's long gone, off to ruin someone else's day.

Hoping that maybe there's something in it that'll give Lee an idea of who she is and how he can find her, Lee opens the folder, only to see something he didn't plan on.

PASSENGER MANIFEST: OLYMPIC CARRIER

He nearly drops it then and there, his head starting to swim as he pours over the list of names. Pages and pages of names of the people who left on what was supposed to be a short voyage only to either get taken over by the cylons and killed, or killed because he pulled that trigger.

He hadn't been able to look at himself in the mirror for a long time after that, and just now, remembering that day, he doesn't think he can move from his spot on the sidewalk.

Lee Adama has lost his mind. He's gone frakking crazy. That's the only explanation he can think of for why he's agreed to get in the ring with Tommy. Kara mentioned it once, mostly as an aside and he'd shrugged it off, but boredom brought him around to taking the idea seriously. He's restless, running out of things to do, and apparently, this is how he's going to spend the afternoon.

Great.

Not only has it been forever since he's done anything even remotely like this— months, even before Darrow, at his last count— but he's not even sure he knows exactly what MMA is.

"Okay, so, you're going to take it easy on me, right?" Lee asks, as he pulls at the wrap on his left wrist, making sure it's tight enough.