Laura both loves and hates the schoolhouse

Title: "A New Caprican Love Story"

Fandom: Battlestar Galactica

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Laura Roslin/Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace

Spoilers/Notes: I'm all turned around by where seasons end (bought the entire series en-lump on iTunes) so I'm just going to say 'all of it' to be safe – but mostly "Lay Down Your Burdens I & II" and "Unfinished Business"

Disclaimer: I do not own, I am making no profit of any kind (losing income if anything), and I have no intention on infringing on any copyrights.

Warnings: Long to get to the point, which takes away from the point - was started to pass the time while downloading files but wanted to post the results anyways. Sorry!

Words: 2,280

"A New Caprican Love Story"

Laura both loves and hates the schoolhouse. It makes her feel young again, standing at the front of a classroom, teaching just like she did when she was fresh out of college. She remembers her first day, no longer a student, no longer a teacher's assistant – but a teacher. Ms. Roslin, a title she'd worked for, earned. Madam President had never really felt natural to her, and she'd missed being just Laura to someone. Only Bill Adama had ever called her that since the Cylon attacks, and only in private. She liked children, they were honest and uplifting and informal.

But at the same time, she hated the dirt floor under her feet. She hated that she only had one classroom and that there were no separate grades because there were no separate classes… they didn't have enough children down on New Caprica to justify multiple levels of education. Not to mention not enough people qualified to teach. Many families believed that education was a luxury that could only be afforded once a society had been achieved, and it had yet to be built on this their new home.

Also, many families opted for home schooling. Particularly Sagitarons and Geminons, the most devoutly religious of the original Twelve Colonies. While they had been the first to believe Laura a prophet they were also the first to abandon her when she presented the New Caprican lesson plan. They felt that, given the circumstances, the content of the Scared Scrolls should be presented as factual history. Many of the other surviving families had long lost their faith, especially after the Prophet's defeat to the new President Baltar.

So Laura missed solid floors that didn't leave stray dirt in one's shoes, she missed her authority and she really missed Billy – but she loved being Laura, and Ms. Roslin, and children laughing, and changing her mind every day about where she was going to build her hypothetical future home. Her tent was drafty, and though she lived in it alone, she felt anything but. Situated between Tyrol and Cally on one side and Maya and Hera on the other, she never felt alone. Hell, she could hear Kara and Anders from her tent if they had a fight. But that might be saying more about Kara and Anders than about the location of her cot.

"What the hell do you mean I can't have a drink?"

"Kara the clothes are soaked and I have to help Galen find a place for the purification generators tomorrow morning!"

"So lay them out! Why do I have to do it? More than half the clothes are yours!"

"Because you left them in the washtub all afternoon! It was your turn to do the laundry and you left it half done! Again!"

Laura could tell by the increasing volume to the man's voice that Kara was already on her way to the Viper Pit, the aptly named make-shift pub across from the Pyramid court. It sold rot-gut from Tyrol's home-made stills, but it did its job. Laura smiled. Folding her glasses and closing her grade book, she turned off the gas lamp on her desk. Walking out of the open flap out into the thoroughfare she followed in the distant wake of Kara Thrace to the bar.

When she got there, the blonde already had a half full jam jar of clear-but-deadly 'Engine Cleaner', a hand in the ongoing card game, and a hand-rolled cigar made of the local plant that was a popular favorite among the young. As they had for the past week when she walked into the tent, most raised their glasses in salute, muttering Madam President under their breath and taking a drink. She nodded at each of them appreciatively; reminding them that such an honor was no longer necessary, and heading towards the former pilots. They all got up out of their chairs briefly to welcome her, all except Kara, who remained pointedly seated with a smirk firmly in place, eyes fixed on her cards as she rearranged them.

"Let me get you a drink, President Roslin," offered a young man she knew only by his call sign, Hotdog, as he headed towards the bar.

"Well, sit down Madam President," Kara muttered mirthfully as she took a long pull from her jar, "Game's right up your alley, I'd think." Her tone was mocking and belittling and the rest of the table squirmed uncomfortably. They thought Kara over-stepping her boundaries. Laura smiled wider.

"And why is that Lieutenant?"

"Not a Lieutenant anymore." Kara answered, subtly avoiding the question.

"Oh, were you promoted?" she asked, feigning a disinterested sort of ignorance or surprise, "Are you a Captain now?"

"Civilian." She said pointedly, "Or did you think setting up the irrigation system for the edibles garden was a military job reserved for officers?" she smiled with a vicious kind of humor as she redealt the cards. Laura smiled back. Her hand was lousy, but she'd learned it was better to bluff a bad first hand than to fold.

"I thought I heard an inordinate amount of swearing coming from outside the school tent today…" she replied coolly, grinning across the table.

The evening wore on, hand after hand after hand of cards dealt, with little more said from the former President. All the pilots called each other by their call signs and called her by formalities. This wore on until they either passed out on the bar or toddled home to tired spouses and lovers –and then it was only Starbuck and Laura in the game.

"You played well tonight," she began, thumbs flitting quickly through her cubits to count her winnings, then stacking her House chips that could be exchanged for glasses of drink. "You're getting better."

"I thought I had you," Laura sighed, hand at her chin as she glared at the last set of cards she still held. "I was so sure I had you…" The former pilot snorted with laughter.

"You got a ways to go though, that much is obvious." She laughed. "You know that Full Colors beats damn near everything but a Set of Six, but the finer points elude you." Laura gently tossed the cards back on the center of the table and sighed. "For someone who's only been playing for a couple of days you're sure picking it up faster than I did." Anyone else listening might have been surprised at the former CAG's comforting tone, which may have been why it was quickly abandoned. "Of course, I was twelve when I learned to play." The bar wasn't empty, just emptier.

"I'll get you in the end." She smiled, knowing her confidence was far beyond reasonable as she met eyes with the younger woman. Kara smiled back.

"You're the prophet." She joked. She also held Laura's eyes as she tucked her winnings securely into her tanks.

"May I ask you something?" she began, noticing that her voice had taken on that flat, authoritative tone it had once held. Kara nodded, but her smile had faded. "Why did you marry Anders?"

"Excuse me?"

"Married, Ms. Thrace, I want to know why." A silence lapsed, but not a pointed one. The former pilot's mouth was slightly open and moving as though she'd come up with ten different responses and felt condemned by all of them. "I don't mean to pry into your personal affairs," she began, unable to quell the Teacher inside of her wanting to rescue a student who was ashamed not to have the 'correct' answer, "I merely asked because it seems unlike you. And ever since our landing on New Caprica you seem the sole person willing to speak to me as a human being." Kara smiled at this.

"You tellin' me you enjoy it?" she asked the table-top as she shoved drink vouchers into the pockets of her cargo pants. "Here I thought it annoyed you, me calling you 'Laura'. No wonder it never helped me beat you - only advantage I had was your ignorance." She enjoyed the genuine smile that crossed Kara's mouth when she laughed at this.

"I have spent most of my life as a teacher, Ms. Thrace; the Presidency was one of those rare occasions of greatness thrust upon someone." She felt her voice lower as it quieted, "And I honestly think, that if I hadn't already been told my time was up? I don't think I could have done it." She laughed derisively, breaking their gaze. "Pathetic as that sounds."

"Not at all." Kara cut in quickly. "I never get into a ship unready to die." The serious tone of this young woman before her was almost unnerving. "You fight better, think clearer. Telling yourself you're already dead keeps you from over-thinking, makes you ready to take risks that otherwise would seem too high. But the voices of your friends coming through your coms remind you that they're still alive. And if you're already dead then it's always worth the risk to try and keep them alive."

"That why you're such rebel?" she asked kindly, quietly, admiring what she realized was a somewhat vaguely shared belief between them.

"I'm a pilot by profession. My whole life is getting myself and others ready to jump into that cockpit. I chose to live that way. I like to live that way. I have not regretted a single thing I've done from the moment I earned my wings to-" she cut herself off abruptly. "Well, until the day I took them off." She finished quietly, her expression saddening. "I've questioned choices I've made, hands that I've gambled and lost, but I don't regret the decisions I've made in the moments that I make them. Because I learned a long time ago that the choices I make in that instant I will have to live with until I am actually dead." Laura smiled sadly at her.

"You're 28 years old, Captain Thrace." She felt the need to point out.

"And I have lived twice as much as you have, for better or worse, because I take those risks."

There was a long moment between them there, rolling across the seconds as a late-night breeze invaded the tent. When the wind was gone the connection faded too and Kara got up.

"Lemme walk you to your tent." The didn't speak until baby Hera could be heard fussing, Maya shushing her through the thin canvas walls. "Same time tomorrow?" the blonde asked casually. Laura nodded, opening the flap and walking through it.

Sighing as she laid down on her cot, a tick sweater and her blanket wrapped around her, Laura Roslin smiled. She could hear Tyrol and Cally discussing baby names as 'William' was being seriously considered, along with the creaking of the screws in Hera's aluminum crib and the Anders' arguing yet again. It seems that Sam was upset that one drink had become many and the fact that he would have to work in clothes that were still wet tomorrow. Apparently it was Thrace's opinion that it served him right – washing all his pants at once.

Laura never made it back to the Viper Pit the next night. Somehow she'd ended up alone in her schoolroom again, her glasses on the desk and her grade book open in the dim light of the gas lamp. But on top of her grade book sat Kara Thrace; her breath warm against Laura's face in tents that always seemed cold, and her fingers tangled in the large knit-pattern of her threadbare sweater. The girl's eyes were focused as they stared at her.

"Laura," oh, how she'd missed just being Laura to someone… "I'm not a Viper pilot anymore."

"Are you planning on regretting this?" she asked quietly. Kara shook her head.

"I regret not doing this sooner."

She could smell the dirt under the girl's nails as her clutching hands pulled her forward. She tasted thinly like moonshine and smoke, her pale thin lips soft as Laura had ever allowed herself to imagine. She remembered thinking this girl a servant sent from the gods to help her on her quest to Earth. But this was New Caprica, this was their home, here there were so prophets or saviors or saints.

Images flashed in her mind: a cabin with wood floors, a bed with a mattress, a view of the alluvial hills, a glassy stream and this young, alive, living woman helping her build it. She wanted to be Laura, not Madam President – because she couldn't be both. Kara would never be anything but Starbuck, that much she knew and loved, but a president and a pilot wouldn't work, it couldn't work; it just couldn't be allowed.

A teacher and her young lover, however, on a planet that stood for rebirth and a second chance at a new beginning? Maybe they'd get the chance to find out.

The End

VixenRaign