[Resurrection Hub]

Cavil didn't stop the Twos and Threes from installing their own Roslin copy in a segment of the Hub, nor did he call that particular specimen back to his lab for further experiments.

That strand of Roslins, strand 36, was flawed. It had seemed a good idea at the time to add some of his own programming to make her more machine, less human, but she'd inherited his ruthless determination too and his mistake had cost him two-hundred and seventy-four mature bodies.

He would go back to strand 32, of which one specimen had even made it to the Fleet. D'Anna Biers reported that it was kept alive in iGalactica's/i brig. A most promising result.

For now, having their own toy-Roslin would distract the Twos and Threes from his modifications of her other strands. He would, of course, destroy the 36 later. He'd ordered a centurion to follow her, pending his orders.
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[Galactica's Brig]

When Bill entered the brig, the woman looked up at him. Her eyes were impassive, her face the unresponsive mask of presidential detachment that he knew so well from her first months in office.

Her posture bespoke casual familiarity with executive power and a ripeness that comes with age and suffering from a devastating illness. It was a striking dissonance on a woman this young and healthy.

Interested in her story but unwilling to force it out of her no matter what Saul insisted upon, he smiled at her, a pacifying opening move.

She turned her head to the wall.

He kept his position in the doorway and waited; his eyes roaming her body with a freedom he would have kept in check if she'd seen it. The real feast to his eyes was the suppleness of her movements, a clear indication that she was, finally, free of the pain that had debilitated her.

It was evident she was not his Laura, and yet, even as she turned her head away, she iwas/i her in all the details of her wordless dissatisfaction.

"Laura?" He would not call her by any other name.

Her shoulders dropped. "Please leave, Commander."

Though she did not even turn her head to deliver the dismissal, her voice nourished his soul like a downpour revitalizing parched dirt. He could listen to her reject him for a very long time, if those were the only words she spoke.

"No good can come of this," she said.

"I thought you might be bored," he ventured.

She snorted softly.

"I've been in the brig once or twice myself," he elaborated, "so I know."

She almost turned her head at that admission. He saw her catch herself and he smiled. Maybe he could bring her out of this shell after all.

"Please don't do this," she said. "It'll hurt all the more, later."

"I'm not going to let you kill yourself, Laura," he told her. "I can't."

She turned her head and looked at him like she had when she first ordered him to shoot her, six months ago: all her presidential power behind it; the unspoken certainty of his devotion and loyalty apparent in her eyes; her appeal an undisguised demand.

"You promised," she said.

Her sudden acknowledgement of his existence, and the transformation into her old self, unhinged him with its hint of the possibility of having her back, really having her back. She was there. His Laura was there, hiding behind the mask.

He stepped forward, from the shadows into the light, towards her. "I didn't," he said. "You asked. I didn't promise. I couldn't. Not then, not now."

She studied him, her eyes flicking over his face as if looking for a fissure in his defenses, an opening for negotiation. When she found only his dogged resolve, she sighed and turned her head away. "Please go."

"In case you get bored in brigs too," he took up his original subject, "I brought you something."

He held the book out to her and waited, but she didn't turn again. He entered the cell properly and walked to the cot.

"Don't," she started, rising and hurrying away from him, her back consistently between them, as a barricade she had withdrawn behind.

He placed the book on the cot, turned and left.

Out of view, in the Observation Room, he watched the monitors as she tentatively returned to the bed and looked down at the book.

"Oh, Bill." Her sigh quivered over the speakers.

Spoken with affection, his name carved through him like a blunt and rusty blade.

She picked up the book, stared at it a long while, caressed the cover, exhaled audibly and pressed it against herself, softly swaying to and fro.

He sat, paralyzed by the distress he'd inadvertently wrought. He couldn't go back without making things worse.