A/N: From the look of things as of Revelations/SAGN arc Lee Adama and Anastasia Daulla might have started to cautiously rediscover their way back to each other a bit prior to these particular episodes. This little drabble takes place somewhere on the outside margin of Sine Qua Non.

Disclaimer: None of the characters, situations, plot-lines mentioned/alluded to belong to me.

Quacum sum*

- Guess, you aren't ever going to tell me about your promotions, Mr. President…

The tone of her voice is only half-teasing, yet filled with mirth, that washes over him, leaving a tingling wake. She is proud. She saw it coming. There's a special assuring gravitas about her appreciation that has always made him long for it to be truly earned.

The warm solemn tenderness of her gaze is all the blessing he needs, yet self-consciousness lingers. That's all too familiar a sensation for him to feel about fourteen, oddly tentative and smug at the same time, around this particular girl he is so fond of. Through the buzz and fury of his new political vocation he's nearly forgotten how much he missed that. Missed her. His smile is an instinct as she enters the hatchway and the President's office is instantly flooded with homeliness and soothing comfort. That's where he belongs. She knows it too. Her matching smile reveals as much.

That's when he finally blushes and calls out a sheepish "Dee", lowering his eyes. It amuses him to think they were capable to actually build up extensive meaningful conversations employing not much more but their quirkily rhyming names for the code. This particular one is the "I'm humbled beyond words by your approval and I have no idea what I'll have to do to ever deserve it" Dee. He wonders if she finds it amusing too.

His gaze catches the picture placed sideways on the office table – a smiling president Roslin and her late, then smiling, aide. He could feel his expression shift by the awakening memory of how come he is here, assuming the presidential rank, and how come Dee is here, on Colonial One, to address the press on behalf of Admiral Tigh, regarding the most recent changes in military command. His father chose to stay behind, to wait alone in the dark in pursuit of a ghostly hope the light would somehow find its way back to him. Lee's had quite graphic nightmares so far of the black void swallowing the lonely Raptor whole, lunging after the rest of them, consuming them all sooner or later.

A quiet "Lee", spoken with soft, fluid intensity, snaps him out, the luminous determination in her eyes ushers him yet again away from desolate places where desperation resides, urges to get to grips with who he is and where he is capable to take them all for reasons valid in and of themselves.

He nuzzles her forehead and lets his eyes drift shut, once she steps silently into his embrace, and for some precious moments just basks in the balmy fulfillment her proximity has a way of bringing to fractured parts of his soul still ragged by insecurity. Maybe, if she allowed him to hold her glow close enough further on, they could keep the darkness firmly at bay this time.


*quacum sum – lat. with which I am