Title: Black Water
Author: Trialia
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Rating: T
Word Count: 531
Character(s): Laura Roslin, Hera Agathon, Maya
Pairing(s): implied Laura/Maya
Spoilers: through Crossroads II & S4 speculation
Summary: They used to call you naïve, but now?
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(The water in the fountain is rising... rising over your ankles and up your calves, and you can't see where it's all coming from.)
It's like the darkness, somehow. You stare out the window, or porthole, or whatever it's called (you can never remember) and you wait, shaking off the threads of the dream. Something is going to happen, and though it may not be soon, you feel it. Something dark is coming.
Isis - no, Hera - is out there, in the fleet. She's not on Galactica: the Agathons, Helo and Athena (what a name, for a Cylon), want to keep her away from you, now. You try to remember what her first word was, and suddenly, you miss Maya, who would have been there when the child said it, and probably was the one to tell you what it was. Poor, dead, little, dark Maya: so pretty and so naïve.
People called you naïve when you first took this position. What would they call you now? And does it even matter what they think?
Of course it matters. You'll keep the Presidency whatever happens - you're certain now, that after New Caprica you would do anything to stay in charge - but Tory would worry about public opinion. She always does, has since she was reinstated as your press secretary, and you don't really want to make her job harder than it has to be. Not when you consider the sleep-deprived, fearful expression in her eyes when she looks at you now.
She's afraid of you. Afraid of what you'll do, and you're not sure why that is.
What would you do, if it came to another of those momentous decisions that might get people killed? More to the point... what would you not do?
Survival is more important than democracy in this situation. You hate to admit it to yourself since it goes against everything you ever stood for as part of Adar's cabinet, all your principles, but after New Caprica... after that... you'd sell your soul if it could only be enough to make sure everyone lives and finds a new place to thrive and that things don't go wrong. You're sure of it.
You'll be a sacrifice if the need arises, but you're not sure that the people will agree with what you know they need. Bill Adama won't, and where he leads many of the military follow. He'll think you're suicidal. You may dislike politics, but that doesn't mean you're a bad politician. You know that much, and so do they.
You may as well do something meaningful and worthwhile with the rest of your life, since you're unsure how long it will be until the Diloxin takes too great a toll on your health to allow you much of anything. Your mother's face crosses your mind, and you blink her away. You are not your mother. Even if you are battling the disease she passed onto you a tendency to get.
But who you are... you're no longer sure. You're all different, since the attack; everyone is.
(How are your hands still clean, when you're face down and so close to drowning?)
-fin