The book was surprisingly warm in his hands. If he closed his eyes, maybe he could match the shape of his palm to the place where hers had been. Trace the lingering path of her fingers across the cover. Once upon a time, they might have read it together… waited for the warm season and made an occasion of it. He would have taken a blanket for the simple pleasure of watching Laura stretched out on the sand with her back bare to the sun. Dozing happily in the warmth of his voice in the place she had wanted to make her home.

"Do you ever think about the times much on New Caprica?"

"You just can't help yourself, can you?"

But he ignored her. And, for the first time that day, it was easy.

He catches her surprise, but she covers it well, hiding behind the safety of a politicians answer and the protection of that temperate smile.

"I try to think about the good times… Yes, I do."

She had acquiesced so graciously to his clumsy severance of their… more personal relationship. Retreated back to an acceptable distance where it was easier to simply pretend that it had never happened. And now he couldn't even hold up his end of the deal.

"One in particular stands out in my mind… you were wearing a really bright, red dress… Said you wanted to build a cabin."

Perhaps it was just a trick of his memory that lifted the corner of her mouth into a coy and playful smirk.

"It was Baltar's groundbreaking ceremony…"

But when he looks again, the glow that brightens her eyes has nothing to do with Galactica's yellow lights.

"I got a little silly that night."

And the flash of her teeth teases that she remembers more than she'd ever admitted to, even to him. But the deflection sinks something cold in his chest and it shrivels in his belly.

"Ever think about what might have happened? If the Cylons didn't come back?"

He doesn't know what it is he needs to hear it from her. Or why it was so important, today of all days, to know that whatever it was between them on that bleak, little rock had meant something. Why it was more vital now than it ever had been then.

But she parries his romantic reminiscence with political pragmatism.

"Well, I think given Baltar and the terrain, we couldn't have made a go of it."

When, with the slightest shift of her weight from one leg to the other, the romantic in her peeks through.

"What about you? Do you think you would have stayed on Galactica? Or would you have settled?"

He had always been enamored with the dark allure of space, the magic of the stars, the possibility of the infinite. It had tempted him from his wife, stolen him from his sons, sworn his devotion to its service.

"You would have left it all for her. She wouldn't have even had to beg." The echo is scornful, jealous, as it reverberates through his head.

And the declaration feels incriminating, somehow… it is just so much easier to pretend he doesn't know the answer.

"That's pretty hypothetical isn't it?"

But Laura has always been braver than him.

"It is." she agreed, "Until it isn't." and she has set her shoulders just so, her mouth pulling to one side as she tightens her jaw.

He hears the question that lives in the space around her, the promise in the scent of her skin, the crackle in the electricity of her hair.

Then she laughs that sweet, little laugh. Suddenly weightless, as if she's forgotten all her burdens.

"Oh my Gods… did I just say that?"

And he can't help but smile. He always does.

"It's worth just seeing you laugh like that… we've been at war so long we forget what we're fighting for… to raise our kids in peace… enjoy one another's company. Live our life as people again."

"Like that night on New Caprica? That's what we are talking about here now, isn't it?"

There is some kind of magic in her, the same ethereal, unreachable, irresistible pull.

"That, and other times."

It lived deep in her bones; that same stardust that birthed the instant of creation.

"So, if the cylons hadn't come back?"

And dear Gods, she is dazzling.

"But they did…" he hears himself say, and can only watch as she fades from him, "We have certain responsibilities."

Because it is the same lie, the lingering glow, that lights the path of a long dead star.

"Yes, we do, sir. And, uh… I'll be back in a few days, and if you'd like, we could talk more about that night."

A quiet phantom to drift alongside in the night.

"Bill?.." But there, in the darkened hatchway of his broken Battlestar, Astraea was made flesh once more, "The answer is yes. I absolutely would have built the cabin." Flushed bright with the promise of tomorrow."

And that light was more real to him than anything.