Title:Fearful of the Night
Author: miabicicletta
Summary: She imagined the stars wheeling around them, glaring upon their feeble fleet as only heavenly creatures could, taunting and indifferent to human woes.
Rating: PG
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Wordcount: ~850
Concrit: Welcome
Disclaimer: All borrowed characters are property of RDM, NBC Universal, and their respective owners.
Authors Note: Many thanks to my dear sunshine_queen for the cheerleading and beta. Title is derived from "The Old Astronomer to his Pupil" by Sarah Williams
In the darkness Laura reached out for him, but found emptiness instead. Where he had lain beside her was only a vacant stretch of abandoned sheets. Her eyes adjusted gradually to the heavy blanket of artificial night in the room, bleary from sleep and tired dreams. A pair of candles flickered somewhere, and subtle rays of lesser shadows broke the blackness surrounding her. She blinked, vision and awareness both slowly focusing.
In their insubstantial light was a solitary figure who sat in silence, staring at maps of star patterns as though studying the banner of the heaven itself.
She imagined the corner of universe beyond these collared bulkheads and latticework of iron plating: an endless sky of restless stars twinkling from their godly perch, uncaring for and unchanged by the bitter struggles of lonely men.
Transfixed on some singular luminosity for his eyes alone, Bill gave no sign he had heard her stirrings.
How someone could sit so sadly, she would never know. It was in the curve of his neck, the slight drooping of his shoulders, the arching forward of his back that offered suggestions of some elemental melancholy. It pained her to see his misery. It hurt more to know she could not take it away. That, in fact, there were many ways she made his grief that much worse.
Without question she knew the tightness in her chest was not a symptom of the disease growing in her again. Dying was easy, and her own impending demise was nothing compared to the oppressive suffocation of heartache. She felt the clarity he had brought into her life fading as their few precious, golden moments were obscured by dense clouds of anguish.
He was not taking Kara's death well, to say the very least. He spent his days working without end, laboring as though possessed…or maybe haunted was a better word. What he lacked in faith in the gods, Bill Adama made up for in devotion to his ghosts. He saw his lost family everywhere, both blood and adopted, in his crew members, marines and in his pilots. Though they both wore the same thorny crown, her reign was coming to an end.
When she was gone, Laura wondered where he would see her.
She pushed back the covers and crept quietly out of bed. Around her Galactica groaned and Laura could hear, could feel, her pain. Some days she and this ship seemed to be of one body. He half-turned his head towards her so that his profile was silhouetted in the candlelight. She knelt by his side, taking his hands in her own, feeling their warmth and texture.
She loved his unbeautiful hands, white-pink with scarring, calloused and weathered in ways that seemed only to emphasize gentleness. Weaving his fingers through her own, she heard him softly speak.
"I didn't mean to wake you."
"You didn't."
"Sorry."
"Don't be."
It was the game they played. There was a methodology in the steps, precision, and they took care to make always either the right moves or none at all.
She was tired of sparring.
She was weary of the rules of engagement. Of tension headaches and biting back on her concern. Of waking alone and wondering when he would let her try to ease the pain.
"Come back to bed," she asked and he obliged, smiling thinly with false comfort that only made her feel cold. Once under the pleasant weigh of the blanket and in his arms again, he pressed his lips to her temple and fell back into restless silence.
She imagined the stars wheeling around them, glaring upon their feeble fleet as only heavenly creatures could, taunting and indifferent to human woes. She closed her eyes but saw them still in dazzling colors of white-blue, reds, and gold on the back of her eyelids, preventing her from any respite. There was no escape. Together they were tormented, haunted by stars that never set, running up and down the spectrum of grief.
Strangely, for herself she felt no fear, no real discomfort at being denied another night's peace. She sighed and turned on her side to face him, leaning her forehead against his shoulder.
Part of her envied the men and women of their fleet, who lived their lives free from the burdens of power and prophecy that both sat square upon her shoulders, breaking her body and soul alike. She could not carry her own dreams as well. Cabins and streams and life on solid ground were surrendered to the cold mud of New Caprica.
She hated the gods for that, and all the spaces between her lines of prayer were filled with reverent breaths of spite.
If the scriptures were to be believed, Laura Roslin was more than just another woman, she was salvation and hope, a gift of the ancients wrapped in shrouds of black and already half beyond this world. Perhaps she was doomed, like Kara, like his youngest son had been, but she did not revel in such a fate. Even in gain of the promised land, a life was a difficult thing to barter.
Beside her, Bill sighed into her hair, and she tightened her grip on him in response. For all the worlds she might yet die to save, Laura prayed to the Lords of Kobol it was within her power to help this one man.