Dreaming of Clear Streams
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: Not my characters, and I am merely borrowing them for a small unprofitable spin.
Author's Note: Apologies for any mistakes - unbetaed, as I have no BSG beta yet. Vague references to 4X02 sets this sometimes before or after, but that's your own call. A ficlet.
II
Sometimes, when she sleeps, he watches her.
He sees her when she is awake too, but that is crisis and work and brave faces for friendship's sake, responsibilities and prophesies and choices. She is president, he is admiral, and there are so few humans in such a large universe depending on them.
Survivors, he thinks. After all they've survived, he won't see her die to rebelling cells. She isn't going anywhere. No one is. Not after all this. Not after...
No. Just no.
He can't order the future, he knows. He just refuses to let that stop him trying.
Sometimes, when she sleeps, he touches her.
Her skin feels cold to his touch - inside it, he imagines, cells are fighting cells and her body is fighting cancer and Laura is fighting fear and sometimes him, because the universe never takes its tags off for a fair go and he's easier to get to than the stars.
He can feel the years in her skin, as he imagines she can in his too. They don't mar her beauty. They are part of it. So far to come. So far and Laura.
Sometimes, when she sleeps, he talks to her.
He talks of Lee.; the son, the stranger, the shared blood. He talks of Kara; the friend, the almost-daughter; the shared understanding. He talks of Battlestar Galactica; the home of humanity, the potential savior of them all; the prison.
Now and then, he talks of her. Not in so many words, but in so many pauses. He can't throw her out of his head; she's already set up camp.
Sometimes, when she sleeps, he forgets.
She isn't dying. He isn't waiting. They're Laura and Bill. They've survived. They've shared life after. They've forged a friendship. They've danced. They've laughed. That is enough, but still isn't all.
He knows what could be. Hands linked, breath ragged, skin slick, bodies dominating and yielding at the same time. Frak, he knows it very well. When he lets himself forget, he thinks he might know it with her too.
Sometimes, when she sleeps, he sleeps.
For a long time after the attack, all his dreams were nightmares. The worst sort, because the worst had already happened. But they faded. Others came; those of fear of the future, but at least those had a future.
He dreams now of Laura being right and Kara wrong, and Kara right and Laura wrong, and never knows which is a nightmare. He dreams of dying and losing people and losing control and always wakes with a headache.
Sometimes, just sometimes, he dreams of Earth and clear streams and cabins and Laura, laughing in the sun. Always laughing, until he wakes and finds her looking at him from his bunk, a smile on her lips as if she knows.
Sometimes, when he sleeps, she watches him.
FIN