See Disclaimer Pt. 1. Huge thanks to betas SVR and Ellisandra.
Battlestar Galactica
2 months, 2 weeks before the Occupation.
Sweat rolled down his shoulders and pooled in the small of his back. He held the weights steady at his side and then slowly brought them up to meet with a distinct clack above his head. The sound echoed loudly in the nearly empty gym. He repeated the exercise, feeling his muscles begin to shake with the effort to keep his movements slow. Keep breathing. He grimaced, puffing hard.
Clack.
Bill had found himself in the dank room more and more as his access to the planet below became increasingly restricted. Sweat clung to the walls of the gym like a texturing on the paint and the air was stale and warm. He hardly noticed the cloying smell.
Clack.
Cottle would probably have objected to the amount of weight he was lifting, as fragile as the doctor considered his heart, but he was seldom on Galactica long enough to complain. And I wouldn't have listened. The physical effort helped to sate a need that was becoming harder and harder to ignore.
Clack.
It was the most bitterly cold morning he could remember. Laura's hand was warm, its pull urgent, and she led him a long way in the dark. She spoke of addiction and of vision.
I see an endless desert. I am walking alone.
His body responded to her nearness, to her breath against the skin of his cheek. When her lips grazed his he was no longer able to hold back.
Clack.
He grunted and sensed that his arms had few reps left in them. He tried to concentrate on simply lifting the weights, on forcing his body to test its limits, on breathing.
Clack.
It was no good. The feel of Laura's mouth on his sank into his exhausted mind.
He was not gentle and she did not back away from him. He wanted to push that hellish vision as far from her mind as he could. He had been there. He knew what it would be like to lose her; her sudden cure did not erase the agony of the hours before it. If they could not escape the vision's portent, then he wanted her to know:
When the time comes, you won't walk alone.
He reclaimed her mouth, tasted her tears and followed them with his lips. She raised her arm above her head, her knuckles brushed the bark behind her, and he dug his hand up under her sweaters. Her skin trembled under his hand, likely the result of the cool air that followed his touch. He swallowed the breath she lost when he slipped her breast free of her bra.
Clack.
He hoped that she hadn't noticed his hesitation. He hadn't meant the memory of her cancer to stay his hand. But it did.
For a long time he had believed that he'd made the decision from his gut and had refused to look at it any more closely. Baltar had a cure for the President's cancer and she had mere hours to live. There wasn't time for details or questions and he simply gave the order to proceed.
She had stepped back into the Presidency with hardly a glance at what had gotten her there. They never spoke of it.
He dropped the weights to the surface of the bench in front of him, leaned over it and pressed his hands into the black vinyl.
He had used the blood of his enemy to save his friend without once thinking of what Laura herself might have wanted. He had kept her on this desperate journey because he could not stand to lose her. It didn't feel like love. It was selfishness disguised as a military decision and he'd done it before. He remembered the conversation as if it had happened yesterday.
Crap unacceptable. Whatever it is you feel about this, the recovery of one pilot is a military matter.
All right... it's military, fine. And you're both officers and you're both honorable men and you're both perfectly aware that you are putting the lives of over 45,000 people and the future of this civilization at risk, for your personal feelings.
Bill grabbed a towel and slid it around his neck, bringing up the ends to mop the sweat from his face. She knows the decision was yours. You're afraid, old man. He glanced at the clock. His distraction had left him a scant ten minutes before his duty shift. He stood slowly, his muscles already protesting the intensity of the workout.
He hesitated, looking at his reflection in the partly steamed mirrored wall. The lifting had left his muscles well sculpted. His stomach and chest were a bit soft and he was glad his scars were hidden beneath his sweat stained tanks. Not bad for an old man. For the first time in countless years he wished he were going somewhere other than CIC.
Market Row
Two months before the Occupation
"Laura?" A hand closed around her elbow and she turned as Wally Gray fell into step beside her. She shifted Isis to her other hip and the child continued to fuss and wriggle. "Ellen told me you were feeling better. It's … it's good to see you."
She paused, not sure quite what to say. The last time she'd talked to him she had collapsed over her desk. Sorry you had to see that, Wally.
He rushed on. "I see you've got your hands full there."
The market was busy, people shouted and coughed and she had to press close to Wally to hear what he was saying. They were constantly jostled and bumped as colonists struggled to get the provisions they needed.
"Maya's come down with that respiratory infection that's been going around. I'm just trying to give her a little relief but –" Isis had begun to wail; she twisted against Laura and what was visible of her face under the hat and blankets turned an angry shade of red. She had been difficult lately, even for Maya.
"Not as easy as it looks, I know." Wally gave her a nervous smile and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. "Peter was never happy unless he was moving. I don't know how many times we rode the subway in the middle of the night."
"Whatever works, huh?" She sighed inwardly. She could talk down an entire room of arguing Quorum delegates, but she couldn't settle one fussing child.
"Yeah. May I?" He held out his arms and without really thinking about it, Laura handed him the squealing baby. Isis started at the shift and her eyes came to rest on Wally's face. Her crying diminished to a few questioning hiccups. "Do what you have to do."
Relieved and grateful for Wally's help she accomplished what little bartering she had to do. The official line was that her teacher's salary had yet to be negotiated, that she would have to have patience while the government decided on an appropriate compensation system. Personally, she felt that Baltar's government had relied far too long on the good will of the people. How was it that after almost a year they were still working with a ration system?
The parents of her students had been generous. She often found tea bags or other supplies left on her desk, or something repaired in the classroom or a pile of books at the entrance to her tent. Despite the government's lackluster efforts, what had been a frightened people running for survival was now a slowly building community.
"Thanks so much." she pushed her bag of supplies up her arm and took Isis back from him.
"You're ok?" he said.
Can't say I feel good, just normal. I haven't felt normal in a very long time.
"Yes." They were nearing the end of the market row and the crowds began to thin. Isis had wound her fingers in Laura's hair and had started brushing the glossy ends over her tiny face. Wally continued to walk beside them.
"Would you have some time in the next few days to meet me on the Astral Queen?" he asked.
"The Astral Queen?" she repeated.
"I know. I've kind of been avoiding her. Prison ships give me the creeps." He shrugged his shoulders and offered an embarrassed smile. "Anyway, I've come across some log books … paper is paper right? … and other supplies and I was wondering if you would like to see if there's anything the school could use."
"Of course," she said immediately. "We'll take anything we can get."
He smiled. "I figured –"
Isis' renewed screaming drowned out whatever else Wally said.
"Hi Miss Roslin!" A young girl ran by, waving her hand wildly at Laura.
"Hi Lucia." She watched as the girl careened into the bright red coat of the man in front of her. He turned and Laura saw smiles on both his and Lucia's faces as he righted her and sent her on her way.
"1600 hours tomorrow all right?"
She turned her attention back to Wally, "Sorry." She bounced Isis against her hip and gave Wally an apologetic look. "1600 hours tomorrow is just fine."
"I'll see you then." He smiled and patted Isis gently on the back. She watched as he turned and began to thread his way through the crowd.
Six hours later.
Isis was curled tightly against Laura's chest. The tent billowed around them and the slowly dying fire cast flickering light against the shifting fabric. The crisp air and the scent of dried leaves and burning wood were comfortable and familiar.
Laura had been about to give up on settling the child, when she had remembered that the baby had grown accustomed to falling asleep in the classroom during lessons. When Laura had realized that her voice was soothing to the child, she had walked the colony for hours while she recited prayers, half remembered poems and commented on everything and everyone they passed. When Isis had fallen asleep against her shoulder Laura had shifted the baby, her arms aching, and had headed for home.
Her glasses sliding down her nose, Laura looked up from the tattered paperback in her hands. She was surprised at how fitfully the baby slept; if she wasn't wriggling she was softly grunting, her breathing changing cadence enough that it was difficult to ignore. This is sleeping like a baby? She rubbed her fingers gently along the child's back and went back to softly reading the intriguing mystery aloud, genuinely surprised at how much she was enjoying it. At the sound of her voice, Isis' head shifted against Laura's left breast and her breathing became rhythmic. Laura flinched slightly expecting a shooting pain despite months of living without cancer. Instead the child's weight was warm and comfortable and Laura found herself blinking back tears.
I think it's time I thanked you.
She felt an odd mixture of love and fear of the child. As endearing and innocent as the baby seemed, Laura was one of few who knew what she was. What they both were now. She had spent months hiding from the truth of her cure, had buried herself thoroughly in the work and forced herself never to look back. It was so much harder to ignore now, lying in her tent with the baby so close that she might have been part of Laura.
All life is cyclical. We are not unique. People like us have existed before and will exist again. Laura found herself curious. What had happened in the past? What did it mean for the future? Were they humanity's curse, the harbingers of humanity's end? Was humanity destined to exist only as a part of a whole?
Isis turned her head and Laura could feel her warm breath against the skin of her upper chest. The baby's arm slid under her breast and her tiny hand clutched at Laura's side. There were voices outside the tent; someone had a hacking cough.
She had not chosen this cure, had woken resentful in that pale and sterile smelling sickbay. Couldn't they see that she was spent? That she had given everything she had to leave humanity a fighting chance against the Cylons. Death had been earned and once she had accepted it, it was hard not to feel cheated. Deprived of the rest that she had deserved.
She had spent the first twenty-four hours of her recovery in a depression so deep that she had refused to eat, or move or open her eyes. She had wanted only one thing, chamalla and had craved it every day since. Baltar had leaned smugly over her, admiring his work. Cottle had shuffled nervously in the background, checking and rechecking blood tests and readouts and scans. And Bill was simply missing, his focus on the fleet and the people that she had let go.
During those early hours, she could almost feel her blood. Invading, healing, mutating, like she had an enemy now on the inside as well. Yet each hour had brought her strength. The vise grip of pain that had circled her chest eased more and more allowing her the forgotten luxury of deep, unhurried breaths. She had hated herself for the relief it gave her, for the hope that was trying to gain purchase in her mind.
It was then that he had come to her; sickbay had been quiet and near empty. He hadn't said anything. Hadn't asked how she was or what he could do. Unafraid of her still pale and thin body, Bill had gathered her in his arms and had taken her weight against his chest.
The Cylon lay asleep a few feet away and Laura had been unable to keep her gaze from drifting to the swell of her abdomen. Gods, if you had listened to me, Bill …
He had held her the entire night.
Now that this impossible second chance had been granted her, Laura knew that she would no longer be content to live without his touch.
She could still feel his lips on her skin, the slight tickle of his moustache, and the warmth of his hand on her breast.
Laura had stopped reading for several minutes, but there was no break in Isis' soft snoring.
I ordered them take your life, little one, yet you saved mine.
I would have let them hurt you yet because of you, I am no longer in pain.
The fire was reduced to glowing embers and she reached to draw a thick wool blanket over them. Setting the book aside, Laura pulled off her glasses and found her face wet.
"Thank you," she whispered gently. Her breath stirred the baby's hair. "Thank you for saving my life."
Battlestar Galactica
2 months before the Occupation
"Remember nuggets, BFM is flown in the future, not the present. Observe, predict, maneuver and then be prepared to react to changes. Everything goes down as fragged. Dradis is frakked out here boys and girls. You're gonna have to talk to eachother.
Alpha squadron, form up with your wing mates and prepare to engage. Beta squadron, pick up your visual scanning. We're coming in –"
Kat's voice was tinny over the aging speakers in CIC. Somehow, it seemed to echo more loudly in the space and Adama was reminded of the number of crewmen and women he had lost to the planet below.
He stood under the flickering Dradis screens; bright greenish light reflected off his glasses. The training group winked in and out as the gases and radiation in the nebula wreaked havoc on the tracking system.
Adama watched an icon marked Viper 252 blink and then disappear. He couldn't help but remember the times that he had stood in this exact spot and had tried to physically will those icons to remain lit. He didn't miss the soul crushing fear he had lived with every day of the recent war, when two people he loved dearly had been reduced to moving clusters of blue and red pixels. . It's not a matter of if; it's a matter of when. Blink and they're gone.
The random chatter of the training pilots was a welcome relief from his thoughts.
"Kat, Pusher, Committing."
"Roger, Pusher, hard right. Now!"
"Here they come!"
"Frak! Hotdog, Mariner. I've lost you!"
"Mariner, extend left and regroup."
"—ak. I'm hit."
"Ha ha! Just lit you up, frakboy!"
"Spitter high!"
"Where you going, Mariner, you chicken shit?"
Lieutenant Gaeta's replacement, a young woman whose nervousness rivaled that of her predecessor, approached him with a report laden clipboard. Lieutenant … Lieutenant … rhymes with knees – Keyes! He could hear Kat's voice take a turn for the seriously pissed as he skimmed the reports and signed where necessary.
"Frak it, Pusher, stay with your wing. You're gonna get someone killed and you know what, it'll probably be you."
"Sir?" It had been months and still he was not used to a male voice reporting from communications. "NC Ground station one reports a successful launch."
"Understood." It would only be a matter of time before:
"Contact!" Came from Keyes who had maneuvered to her station behind him. "Right on time."
Adama turned to her. "Don't assume friendly just because you have a schedule. Confirm, lieutenant." Why do I feel like I'm running an academy training scow?
Keyes glanced at him, an embarrassed flush rising on her cheeks. He blonde ponytail whipped back and forth as she checked and re-checked her readouts. "Yes, sir. Contact bearing 101 carom oh oh five. Colonial transponder matches that of the civilian shuttle, Twin Suns." She scrolled down on the screen in front of her. "Flight plan indicates they will dock with the supply ship, Lumos."
"Hail them, Mister Dutton. Update them on the situation." Adama ordered. The voices of the training pilots had become more frantic. They were a long distance from the fleet and the planet and could be ignored for now.
"Twin Suns, Galactica. Please be advised that there is a military training exercise in progress. Do not deviate from your assigned course. I repeat, hold your course."
"Acknowleged, Galactica. Holding course along vector 271. Two minutes to dock."
Gradually the buzz of activity in CIC settled. The training exercise ended without incident and the civilian shuttle completed a successful approach and landing on the Lumos.
He spent the rest of his shift drifting from station to station and he kept a careful eye on the less experienced officers even though there was little to do.
Circle the planet. Repeat.
Four hours earlier.
Laura stood at the entrance to the Astral Queen not really sure whether to knock or call out. She had expected Wally to be waiting. The metal surrounding the entrance to the ship was painfully cold against her bare hands and the open hatch struck the side of the ship repeatedly with the gusts of wind.
She took a tentative step forward and called Wally's name. Her voice echoed along the bulkheads, but there was no response. He could be on the other side of the ship for all you know. Her breath still visible amidst the cold air inside the ship, she began the long walk down the central corridor.
The aging prison ship was dank and musty and she thought she heard the patter of rodents behind the walls. The cells were long abandoned, mattresses removed, heavy metal doors standing open.
"Wally?" If he had gotten distracted, he was probably wherever the supplies were kept on the ship taking careful note of everything. A thin metal ladder was visible through the open hatches she approached at the end of the corridor. The ladder dropped through a hole in the deck and when she looked down into it she could see that it led down several decks, probably all double lined with cells. She figured that the cellblock would have to have been isolated from the rest of the ship so she backtracked and walked through the ship's meager command and control area. The consoles were quiet; a few slow blinking white lights indicated that the ship's electrical system was functioning at low power, enough to keep the ships emergency lighting on and keep air circulating. The vessel had become little more than a storage facility. Though it was fairly light outside, the prison ship was suspended in an unending twilight.
Where are you?
She thought about leaving. Searching the entire ship would take hours. It had been a mere eight months since she had settled and yet standing now in the space saving confines of the prison vessel she wondered how she had spent so many months on Colonial One. The walls seemed too close now, the emergency lighting feeble at best and the darkness that obscured the ends of the corridors gnawed at her nerves. She found herself aware of the slightest noise. The hiss of the air from the overhead vents, the yawning crackle of the hull as it contracted because of the cold, and the echo of her feet as she walked the sand lined deck. She didn't know what she expected: An insane prisoner, too deranged to adjust to life on the colony, to spring at her from around a corner? A flood of rodents to swarm at her feet?
How do you do it? Spending hours inside these abandoned hulks? But she knew. Wally had no fear of hard work.
It was so unlike him not to keep an appointment that she began to think that she had not heard correctly, distracted as she had been by the wriggling baby in her arms and the crowds around them.
A corridor branched off at the back of the command and control room and a mix of curiosity and loyalty to Wally won out over her fear.
The emergency lighting flickered and hummed as she worked her way down the corridor. It was lined with plain black doors, most of which hung open to what looked like larger and more comfortable sleeping quarters. Guard deck. She neared the last door on the right and something in her stomach fell. The air tasted stale, almost sickly.
When she reached the open door her heart stopped and she slumped against the heavy metal doorframe. Her knees gave and she slid to the floor. She wanted to back away but nothing seemed to work.
Wally. He was lying against the bulkhead at the back of the room; one arm was pinned under his body the other extended towards her along the deck plating. His head was twisted unnaturally to the side; his eyes were open and empty.
"No, no, no …" she repeated quietly. Swallowing her revulsion she forced herself to hands and knees and slowly covered the distance between them. She reached out and let her fingers hover in the air just over his face, his neck, his chest. He was cold.
You can't touch him. Someone did this. Someone. Did. This.
Tears threatened and she looked hastily upwards, trying automatically to control emotions that no one was there to see. Her own guilt at what she had done to him on the days leading up to Colonial Day sat heavily in her heart. You always did what I asked.
Her cheeks burned and the tears fell anyway. They blurred her vision yet she still felt his empty gaze upon her. Though she knew it was a mistake to touch him, she reached out her hand and gently closed his eyes.
This can't be real She clung to the thought even though she knew that there would be no waking up, no sweat-laden sheets twisted around her. Not this time. A memory surfaced instead and she smiled slightly through her tears.
"And this is Wallace Gray. You'll find that no one works harder." Richard Adar's smooth voice echoed in her mind and with the voice came the image of a younger Wally. He was rounded at the edges, his smile shy but at the same time disarming as he reached to shake her hand.
"He exaggerates – has since high school." His grip was warm and slightly sweaty. "And it's Wally. It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Roslin. Rich speaks very highly --
Her shaking hand slipped over the moisture on her face and she mentally kicked herself. What if whoever did this was still here? She needed to get help. She stood up on unsteady feet and backed slowly out of the room. She paused when she reached the door and brought a clammy hand to her mouth before she forced herself to move.
She was halfway to the outer hatch when a single name pierced the fog that had settled over her mind.
Peter.
Oh my gods, Peter...