Billy could hardly process the events of the past few days. He'd faced down armed men, ready to give his life, as Colonel Tigh burst into Colonial One to arrest the president. He'd watched as Laura Roslin, the closest person to him in the world, suffered through chamalla withdrawals, more weak and vulnerable than he'd ever seen her. He'd found Dee, the stronger of the two most important women in his life, badly injured when the Cylons boarded the ship and committed a massacre below deck. He'd helped Captain Adama organize President Roslin's escape, drawing his friends into the dangerous plan. And then he'd left the president, eyes hurt and questioning at his betrayal, on the hangar deck before she was whisked away.
He'd told her it was because he couldn't be party to sparking a Civil War. His answer was honest, though not completely.
If Billy was truly honest with himself, he had to admit that he'd been uncomfortable with her visions since the first time she'd shared them, trembling in her quarters after he'd roused her, drawn to her bedroom by a loud scream. There was not a fiber of his being with which he didn't believe the president trusted the visions and that she was sure about the route to pursuing their instructions, at all costs.
That in itself was the problem. His parents had been devout atheists. The religion of his childhood was one that worshipped practicality, pragmatism, and the pursuit of human-oriented solutions to the world's ills. He'd been taught to view the Gods as a tool of oppression and domination and to give that up now would be to relinquish the last bit of the person he'd been before boarding the shuttle that fateful day on New Caprica.
Had President Roslin decided to use the scrolls of Pythia as a political means of holding onto power and exerting her will over the fleet, he might have disapproved but he would have at least understood. But she believed, without a doubt, that she was the Dying Leader and that, for him, was a step too far. His minimal and admittedly biased knowledge of the Gods' servants told him that they were formed into existence to serve a single purpose and nothing else. He'd tried but failed to rationalize this knowledge with his knowledge of Laura Roslin. The woman who playfully teased him about not knowing anything about women, who made him tea before their late night chats and unconsciously fixed his frazzled hair during those conversations simply couldn't be a prophet. Smart, determined, strong and sometimes but usually with justification ruthless? Sure. A prophet? He couldn't wrap his mind around it.
She'd been one of the most practical people he'd ever met when he boarded that shuttle to Galactica with her. She'd further proven the point with her actions that day, forcing by sheer will the salvation of the remainder of the human race and the cessation of a doomed war. He made a decision that day that he would follow Laura Roslin anywhere as she had the brains and the heart to stare down any situation.
Even the cancer hadn't shaken his faith in the president. Every time he thought her condition was about to deprive her of those qualities he'd cherished she'd rallied and proven him wrong, stronger than ever.
But the chamalla had changed her. Those visions, to him, seemed like a cruel trick of the mind played on a dying woman, preying on her most profound hopes and deepest fears.
And he had seen what it could do in its worst form. There could be nothing holy about a drug that left a formidable woman writhing in pain on the floor of her cell in the brig. He'd been more terrified during those moments than he had been since the whole ordeal of the end of the world began. He thought he was going to lose her, if not physically but practically. The visions were stealing her mind and that was more painful than watching her die.
Billy paused his train of thought to analyze his own feelings. His parents had been fans of psychoanalysis as well. His view on religion were strong but not strong enough to make him abandon the people he loved. Was it really the prospect of Civil War that convinced him to stay behind? Or, did he leave her because he couldn't bear to watch her die on that planet? Or, he thought with a sudden pang of guilt, because he wasn't sure if he was strong enough to make sure she didn't?
The preceding days had been rough. It wasn't the spot on the floor of the brig that got to him but the utter helplessness as he watched the president decline into a state of madness. He'd somehow managed to convince the guard to get her that wretched drug but it had been pure dumb luck that Venner was religious and amenable to helping.
But he'd always known that there was going to come a time when he couldn't help the president fight her battle against mortality. There were only so many meetings he could have mysteriously disappear from her schedule and so many times he could coax her to rest and then out of bed again before her body failed and none of those options were possible. He'd been spared watching his parents die and for that he'd come to be grateful. He wondered if he was being selfish in trying to spare himself from watching the closest thing he still had to a mother waste away.
Billy was wrestled from his reverie by a rough hand on his shoulder. Commander Adama looked at him with kind eyes, motioning him toward a waiting Raptor. "Come on, our chariot awaits."
Billy had no idea why he was along for this mission. He'd betrayed the president when he refused to go to Kobol and he knew all too well how she coped with those who betrayed her. She wouldn't airlock him. She probably wouldn't even yell. She'd simply paste on her practiced smile, purr platitudes at him, and lock him out of her personal realm forever.
As he boarded the Raptor, he shuddered at the idea of hearing about her death over the wireless, a passive viewer rather than a protective, comforting participant. He wondered if the Commander knew what they were in for when they found their quarry.