Her heart was made of pages. Lines and lines and lines of life written throughout her years. Decades (volumes) of story with twists and turns. A composition over which she had little control, could only read along with and wait in suspense of the outcome. She was dying (again). She had thought before that her story was coming to a close, that there would be no more pages, no more words, the cover would close and she would be finished. But there had been more. A love story woven discreetly within the overall theme. Hints along the way, the groundwork laid down so delicately that she had missed the subtext on the first read. But it was there. A narrative building. A style juxtaposed to what she was used to. No distinct planning, no set rules, a stream of consciousness that flowed like water, so clear, like glass.

They sat as they had come to always sit when away from their desks and from standing. Not always away from work but never away from each other. Her head propped up against the couch's back, her hand intermittently travelling from his hair to her own, exploring the contrast between his coarse strands and her softer waves, neither as thick as once they had been (his through age, hers through disease). Her legs were stretched across his. His hand was warming her toes, a report balanced on her shins as he read and frowned.

"Cottle..." She paused. His frown moved from the report to her (from annoyance to concern). She steadied. "...says I could go back to Colonial One full time, for a while." Reprieves to let her body recover before poisoning it with treatment once again.

She watched as he blinked, the action slower than was entirely necessary. She could see him retract, hold himself tight. She knew she knew she knew he would abide by whatever she decided. There was no excuse they could fall back on now for her to be here. The press had steered clear of their living arrangement in the wake of her treatments but if they did not have that to pardon them...

She looked at him, looked into him, studying his face, his heart as much a novel as hers, beloved to her. Eyes skimmed familiar passages, favoured words, the rolling timbre of his voice an accompanying score to the images replaying in her mind. She knew she knew she knew he would not ask her to stay. He would not ask for something he wanted if there was even the slightest chance that it was in opposition of her own wants. He would not risk this.

She broke from his gaze and looked around the room. Her own features relaxed as her legs stretched further, her heart assuaged like crinkled pages being straightened out and put back as they should be. Her heart was made of pages. She ached with desire to see the next page, read the next line, press pen to paper and become the author of her own story. She ached she ached she ached.

She wanted to write her own life, she wanted him to be its only reader."Thing is, all of my books are here now - I'd have nothing to read. I can hardly take them back." He looked as if he was about to protest her statement but she cut across him, looked straight at him, straight into him. "We don't lend." Books were gifts they gave forever, entrusted to one another's care.

She begged him silently to hear what she was really saying. Read between the lines. They could talk and argue and give voice to all words except these ones, the ones that really mattered. The ones they saved, substituting metaphors and symbols and passages from books they wanted each other to keep. Her heart was made of pages. Lines and lines and lines of life and love and him and them. She longed for his fingers to stroke the paper, to caress the phrasing, to stain themselves with the ink of her life. To know her story, their story by heart. She knew she knew she knew he would ask nothing of her while she was alive to be asked.

She looked down at her own hands, she looked and looked and looked. Her vision started to blur with words that bled out from her pores, words and words and words of William Adama. ADMIRAL FATHER MAN HONOUR FAMILY TRUST LOVE FAITH HUSBAND. She was impossibly, irreversibly, irrevocably stained with him.

"Laura." His voice drew her eyes back, his own flitting ceaselessly across her face as they absorbed her. More words did not follow. His heart was made of pages too; but she knew she knew she knew he would not give voice to those passages.

She freely offered what he would not ask for. "I'd like to stay." So much meaning contained in so few words, drenched in bravery. "I want to stay." (desire to stay, desire you) "If you'd..." (like me to stay, want me stay, desire me to stay, desire me)
Words and words and words. All she needed was one.

"Yes."

She smiled and pushed forward into arms that wrapped around her.

Her heart was made of pages. His hands caressed her spine.

She was writing her own story, for a readership of two.