Shadows
by Charis
Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica and all associated characters belong to people who are not me. I'm just borrowing.
Notes: Ellipsis. No, really. I think this was written on too little sleep and too much cold medication; there is no other rational explanation. The character voice is probably Roslin, though it might be Pythia, and people have suggested others.
There are nights when she wakes in his arms and in his bed, and it is unfamiliar to her, odd in a way that has nothing to do with her conscious wonder at where their relationship has gone; nights when she wakes and does not know the world around her for real, and thinks that perhaps this is the dream. Sometimes that alternate possibility is impossibly vivid, making it hard to distinguish between the two.
What is real? The man who holds her while she trembles and weeps and sometimes lashes out at him in her delirium, or the cold empty bed among the stars and the frantic post-apocalyptic exodus she lives? The taste of laurels bitter in her mouth in a way not even his kisses can erase, or the metallic tang of stale air that seems to constantly press at the back of her throat? Is she dying or already dead, waking or still asleep?
Most days it is hard to even remember her name, let alone more esoteric things. Charnel ashes and the gutting light of hope blur together against dry whispers: scales, bare feet, rumour, a kiss. She sits in the dimness with lank hair curtaining her face and refuses to concede to madness, striving to part that veil and find the truth - or, after a time, any truth at all, just to know something is still real. Just to assure herself that she is sane, or even to know that she is mad, as long as it is one or the other.
Most days, she finds nothing more solid than the cobwebs of might-have-beens and other possibilities, even with the solidity of his arms around her.
- finis -