Commander Adama awoke in the middle of the night, brought to unexpected consciousness by the intrusion of a memory into his dreaming mind. It came from nowhere, origins unknown and unknowable, still echoing through his dreams as he sat up in his bed, shocked by that memory into full alertness. Four words that set his heart pounding in frantic terror.

I have a daughter.

Her name was Athena, she was 24 years old, she was a pilot, although she'd spent more time on the bridge of the Battlestar than in the pilot's seat since the ragtag collection of ships that was all that was left of the twelve human colonies started their deadly game of hare and hound with the Cylons. She had her mother's thick, dark hair and beautiful blue eyes and occasional flashes of temper, and he hadn't remembered the simple fact of her existence for months.

I have a daughter.

His breath caught in his chest as panic clogged his veins. The man who was—he hoped—leading his war-torn people to a place of safety hadn't managed to keep his only daughter safe, and he had no idea as to how he'd misplaced her, let alone how knowledge of her existence had been so cleanly excised from his mind. Nor did he understand what had restored that memory, that knowledge, as he slept.

I have a daughter.

It wasn't only his memory that had been affected, he realized, but her brother's memory, and the memories of her friends and the people she'd worked and lived with on the last Battlestar. Her father and the entire crew of the Galactica had forgotten her as easily as they might forget what they had eaten for breakfast, in the days when regular meals were no more than an accepted fact of life.

I have a daughter.

And she had disappeared from his mind as if she never existed.

His hand groped for the intership communications switch as he swung his feet over the edge of the bed, fingers automatically stabbing the correct sequence of numbers to reach the person he needed most urgently to speak to. Or rather, the one that was currently available to him. "Adama to Apollo."

"Apollo here; is something wrong?" Adama heard the concern in his eldest child's groggy voice and glanced automatically at the chronometer. It was mere hours since his son's last patrol, practically the middle of the night, but he brushed that aside as irrelevant. The sudden return of his missing daughter to his memory certainly warranted disrupting Athena's brother's sleep.

"Apollo, I'm sorry to wake you, but something has...happened." He was unhappy with the hesitation in his voice, but there it was and there it would remain; he wasn't about to launch into a full explanation over the comm system.

I have a daughter. He caught the words before they left his mouth, seized by a sudden doubt. What if this "memory" he was so sure of turned out to be the result of years of stress suddenly overcoming common sense? Was the strain of holding the tattered remnants of humanity together finally manifesting itself as middle-of-the-night hallucinatory memories?

He plunged on before his thoughts caught themselves up yet again and his son crossed the line from muted concern to outright alarm at his father's mysterious—and uncharacteristic—behavior. Time enough for that, he thought fleetingly, once he sees me in person. "Would you mind coming here? I know it's late, but I need to speak to you. My apologies to you as well, Sheba," he added belatedly as he heard the voice of his son's new wife murmuring a sleepy question in the background. "It's important, or I wouldn't interrupt your sleep."

"No problem, Commander." She hadn't completely lost the formality of subordinate to superior, in spite of their new, familial relationship. Adama knew it would take some time for her to stop referring to him by his rank when off duty. And it would be especially difficult when he woke her up in the middle of the night for reasons he wasn't ready—or able—to explain to her.

"I'll be right there."

The grogginess had disappeared from Apollo's voice, and Adama knew his son was even now leaving the warmth of his bed to throw on some clothes, that he would be kissing his new bride—of less than a month, Adama remembered guiltily as he cut off communications and rubbed wearily at his eyes. Kissing her goodbye and adding his own hurried apologies and promises of explanations to those of his father. He might spare a moment to glance in on his sleeping son, but no more than that; the urgency in Adama's voice had been communicated to Boxey's adopted father. Nothing less than a calamity of this magnitude would force Adama to call Apollo away from his family in the middle of the night, and he trusted Sheba to understand that. Later, when he had things better sorted out, then he would construct a more appropriate apology. And, perhaps, the promised explanation. If what he remembered was real, if Apollo could confirm this sudden, inexplicable return of a still-suspect memory...

Adama used the brief minutes before his son arrived to throw cold water on his face, to throw his uniform on—the only clothing he wore these days were the uniforms that defined his life as much as anything—and to force himself not to pace as he awaited his eldest—and only living—son's arrival.

There was a sudden pounding at his door; he must have alarmed Apollo more than he thought. He pictured his son running through the corridors of the Battlestar, as he must have to arrive this quickly at his father's door. "Come," he called, half-rising from his seat in anticipation of his son's face, eyes darker than Athena's but without the exotic tilt, hair several shades lighter but still a dark brown, cheekbones not quite so pronounced, frame not so slight even allowing for the difference in sex. It was regrettable, thinking of his son only in terms of comparing him to his sister, but that was the only way Adama could judge things right now. His frame of reference had been thrown off-balance, skewed in the direction of the one person who'd so easily been excised from his memory.

He'd seen his daughter's elder brother so sharply with his mind's eye that it took him a moment to realize that it wasn't Apollo who stood in the doorway to his Spartan quarters. Instead the commander faced a man painted in fairer shades than any of his children, blonde hair in uncharacteristic disarray, lighter skin still flushed and blue eyes clouded with equal parts interrupted sleep and bewilderment. They were the eyes and face of a man shaken from slumber by some profound calamity, something so shocking that it keeps him from fully waking, and Adama wondered how much his own face mirrored that expression as he beckoned the dazed-looking Lt. Starbuck: first-class pilot, reckless gambler, easy-going con artist and once, not so long ago, his daughter's lover and almost fiancé-into the room.

The young lieutenant was only half-clothed, uniform pants and boots giving every appearance of having been hastily thrown on, jacket hanging loosely over his bare chest. He gaped at his commanding officer for a moment before stumbling into the room and slumping, uninvited, into the chair by the door. "Commander…how could I…Athena…"

So. Adama wasn't the only person jolted out of sleep by the clamor of a sudden return of memory. Good. That meant the doubts he'd begun to entertain—that his sleeping mind had somehow conjured up an imaginary daughter, or that she wasn't actually missing, that he'd woken from an exceptionally strong and realistic nightmare of her non-existence—were false, and that the memories were, indeed, real. "I know," he interrupted the other man, his voice soothing. "Apollo is on his way."

Another knock, this one followed immediately by the opening of the door. Apollo looked ready to apologize for simply barging in, then obviously changed his mind as he noted the slumped form of his closest friend by the door. "Starbuck?" He turned his bewildered gaze on his father. "What's happened?"

"Do you remember your sister?"

The words, quietly spoken, had the effect of a lightning strike. Apollo stiffened, his eyes widening at the sudden rush of memories his father's question released. "Athena," he breathed, his hand reaching blindly for support against the wall above Starbuck's shoulder. "Why didn't I remember her?" His eyes snapped up to meet those of his father. "Why haven't any of us remembered her?" A sharp, downward glance at Starbuck, who still hadn't spoken. "I didn't remember her until you asked me, and I doubt you called Starbuck before me." A negative shake of his father's head confirmed what his son already knew. "That means you two remembered on your own." It was his turn to grope his way to sit heavily on the edge of the bed as his father lowered himself to the chair by his desk. The effort of standing suddenly seemed too much for all of them.

Adama nodded. "So it would seem. The lieutenant arrived just before you did."

Starbuck finally looked up, his eyes haunted. "How could something like this happen? Who did this to us? Why? And what have they done with her? Where is she?" His voice rose angrily with the last question, and Apollo reached out to touch his arm. The sympathetic, understanding motion calmed the pilot down; he was among friends, friends who had no answers, friends who wanted answers as desperately as he did. "We need to do something…" His voice trailed off helplessly.

Adama allowed himself, finally, to give in to his body's urgent need for action as he sprang to his feet and paced around the small quarters. Small, but still larger than his daughter's; another memory returned at that thought, unbidden. She'd moved out of the pilot's bunkroom at his insistence; he'd wanted her nearer, as if physical closeness would keep her safer, somehow. Not safe enough. He felt himself filling with bitter self-recrimination, but kept it carefully under control. It would do no good now, especially since he still had no memory of what, exactly, had happened to her. The memories that had come back on their own extended only as far as the fact of her existence, the particulars of her life until—and no further than—three months ago. He'd worked out that much, in the time spent waiting for Apollo to join him. The details of her disappearance remained elusive.

"We find out what happened to her," he answered Starbuck. There was no question of "trying," that was understood by all of them. "Do either of you remember an abduction, or anything connected with her disappearance? Anything at all?"

A futile question; the negative response he received from both men was not unexpected, given his own failure in that area. "The last time I remember seeing her," Apollo said slowly, his brow furrowed in concentration, "she was here, working a shift on the bridge." He raised troubled eyes to meet those of his father. "After that…nothing. I literally never gave her another thought"

"What about physical evidence?" Starbuck broke in suddenly. "You know, pictures, computer files, stuff like that. Is that gone too?"

"I had a picture on my desk, of Athena and her mother," Adama replied, heart quickening at the thought of finding some trace of his daughter, but braced for disappointment. He turned, reaching automatically for the picture, only to find it missing as well. "It's gone," he confirmed after opening the drawers of the desk and quickly rifling through the jumbled contents. He didn't bother masking the disappointment in his voice.

"Well, how about computer files, then?" Starbuck pressed doggedly on. "Maybe something's there, and we just didn't know to look for it. Why would we access files on someone we didn't remember, right? So maybe there's something there. Or something in our own personnel files." Desperation hoarsened his voice. "There has to be something."

Adama turned to the desk, accessing the personnel files with smooth efficiency. The other two crowded around him, Starbuck back in control of himself, at least for the moment, Apollo tense with not knowing and the need to find something, anything, that might lead to his sister. "There's nothing listed for her, either under the pilot's program or under personal files." Another bitter disappointment. "I'll cross-reference her name to see if it appears anywhere." He tried to sound confident, but both Starbuck and Apollo heard the hopelessness he couldn't completely conceal.

That hopelessness was confirmed when the computer beeped a polite negative at them. "She's not even listed in the updates of the occupants of the other ships," Adama reported, his voice heavy with defeat. The recently completed census was a triumph of patience; the names of every survivor of the Cylon attack and destruction of their homeworlds were now listed in the Galactica's database, with every death and birth meticulously kept track of. Other details were practically non-existent, except for the Battlestar's crew, of course, but the fact that Adama had a way to at least name all of his people was a great comfort to him. Or it had been, until now. "As far as the computer is concerned, she doesn't exist and never did."

"But we remember her," Apollo protested, jabbing a thumb at his chest. "You both seem to have spontaneously remembered her, and all it took for me to do so was for you to ask me about her."

"Then we need to find out how we suddenly remembered her, and why," Adama replied. "Someone or something altered not only our memories, but the physical evidence that she was ever here. That implies someone familiar with our computer systems, able to purge only specific information without altering anything else. Nothing immediately obvious," he corrected himself. "But were our memories meant to be erased temporarily, or was this supposed to be permanent?"

"What does that matter?" Starbuck demanded, raking agitated fingers through his blonde hair, causing it stand even more wildly on end. "Whether it was meant to be permanent or not, the fact that it happened at all is the main thing here, isn't it? That and the small fact that Athena happens to be missing," he added with rising sarcasm.

"Those things frighten and concern me as well," Adama agreed, his voice tight, "but it might be a clue as to how the memories were hidden, and for so long. Dr. Salik might be able to tell us if it was because of some sort of drug—"

"Given to everyone who knew or heard of her?" Starbuck interjected skeptically.

"We don't know for a fact that everyone who's heard of her has lost their memories." It was Apollo's turn to interrupt. "The only thing we can safely assume is that people who knew her well, who worked with her and saw her on a daily basis, have had their memories tampered with. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of transfer of information from this ship to the others," he added glumly. "We know when someone dies or is born, but not necessarily right away, and the flow of information trickles back even slower."

"Whoever has done this has gone to a lot of trouble to cover up their tracks," Adama agreed. "But I don't think it would make sense for them to only take the memories of those who knew her well."

"Yeah," Starbuck interjected eagerly. "If all it took was one mention of her name to bring someone's memories back, then even one casual mention by some crewman would have gotten all this started sooner." A doubtful expression crossed his face. "Unless it was something that's wearing off now, so it wouldn't matter who remembered her." Back to square one, his voice implied.

"We can spend from now until we find Earth speculating on this," Adama replied. "But it won't do us any good without facts. Our next step is to see if there's a physical or medical reason for our memory loss."

"Let's go see the Doc," Starbuck agreed, sparing only a moment to shrug fully into his jacket and glance down with a grimace at the sight of his bare chest. "I was in a hurry," he murmured, but the commander merely nodded his understanding as he ushered them out of his quarters.

Author's Note: Judging by the small amount of new stories in this category I am taking a wicked chance posting a classic Galactica story here, but I've literally had this one kicking around unfinished for about 10 years now and figured if I get at least one review per chapter it'll be worth my finally filling in the missing bits between this start and the ending I have in mind. The reason I started the story in the first place was because I was incredibly frustrated, even as a kid, when a character would just disappear from a TV show with no explanation. This is my response to the way Athena just vanished from the show. Plus I never liked Cassiopea anyway.

I also want to stress that I did, indeed, start this story and the later plot developments many, many years before the new version of the show (which I also love). The reason I want to point out the fact that I started my story FIRST will become obvious later, so no one can accuse me of stealing from the new series. Well, nothing I say can stop the accusations, but I can rest easy knowing they won't be true. Enjoy, and be sure to tell me if you do!