He did not think he was late but the empty chair at the center of the table could have forgiven him the thought. He had hardly lifted his foot to take a step back out towards the open hatchway when he spotted her bag. Leaned neatly against the leg of the table, a few lingering papers stacked on the seat of the neighboring chair.

Holding in a sigh that was halfway to a grumble, Bill shut the hatch behind him and leant against the bulkhead to rub wearily at the bridge of his nose. He allowed one, long, heavy exhale before he replaced his glasses, checked that the time was indeed 1830 hours, filed the last of the papers back into her bag, and retrieved her pen from where it had rolled away onto the floor. The Admiral chanced one more scope around the deserted wardroom before he admitted to himself that he had, indeed, lost the President, again.

He retraced his steps back towards his quarters, depositing her bag in a safer corner than the one she had left it in and double checked that her favourite spot on the couch was still vacant before the LSO confirmed that she had not departed the ship.

Laura had increasingly taken to wandering. And his marines, already stretched thin before the additional strain of Baltar's impending trial, were increasingly prone to let her.

He had passed the empty galley and the deserted gym on his way back to the CIC. But, scanning his ship's central nervous system from the upper gallery, only Galactica's men and women milled around the Command Center in their uniforms of blue and green. Perfect moving gears under the watchful eye of his XO, stationed and ready by the center console.

Habit turned his head to look to the empty space on his right side. Half expecting her to be standing there beside him, rocking good-naturedly on the balls of her feet, a half-smile hitched to her pretty face, hands clasped loosely behind her back… just happy to be off her ship… to spend her day with him.

He left quickly and quietly, before anyone could detain him for work that could wait until tomorrow, and set a meandering course for the infirmary that would let him pass by the observation deck. Bill did not have much occasion to frequent the deck and look out at the stars that had so enchanted him as a boy, ensnared him as a man. Stars that had now drawn him so completely into space, seemingly never to touch down again. Stars that had spun dizzily overhead, distant and blurred when a woman in red had leaned over him and lowered her mouth to his, the ground solid under his back. And for once… he had been tempted to stay. Those same stars that called him now, bathing the empty room with a pale, iridescent glow to spill gently over that same woman, illuminated softly in her dark corner.

She was barely a shadow against the sky. A pale ghost flirting through the dark. Nestled deep amongst them, as if she, too, held the secrets of the stars.

Laura sat still and silent in the vast expanse of his ship's only eye. Her head tipped lazily against the glass, eyes softly closed, and Bill briefly wondered if she was trying to recall a memory of sunshine.

If she heard his approach, she gave no sign other than to unlock her knees from her chest and stretch out her stockinged feet to cross neatly at the ankle.

"You missed our meeting." He spoke into the quiet.

She opened her eyes with a slow, languid blink.

"I'll make it up to you." She murmured, her gaze intent on the endless frontier before her.

"And Cottle, this morning?"

He watched through the dark as her tongue darted out to wet her lower lip before they pressed tight together again. The subtle shift of her hair as she pulled away from the window and set her shoulders straight again, bracing herself.

Guilt burned hotter than his frustration and his fear to watch this woman steel herself for conflict with the one person he had promised himself she'd never need fear. To ready herself to fight for the sovereignty of her own body.

It was not his decision, he knew. It was not even his place to offer his opinion…

But she had made a fool of death once. He only dared hope that she could do it again.

He stepped closer until the peak of her shoulder nudged into his belly, and hazarded one conciliatory hand on her shoulder, his thumb stroking gently along the line of her neck, hoping that she knew he had not come to fight.

Laura reached up to cover his hand with her own, wrapping her fingers loosely under his palm. She shifted slightly in her seat to lean against him more securely and heaved a resolute sigh.

"This is going to take me, Bill." She murmured, before finally turning up her face to meet his, "Again… Piece by piece. Until there is nothing left."

The unhealthy pale of her skin glowed celestial in the dim, radiant despite the dark, and, not for the first time, Bill thought that maybe she had been born of the stars. Her skin alive with the memory of some distant moon, her hair; the last dying embers of a long-forgotten sun.

But when she turned her eyes to his he was reminded, once more, that she was born of earth too. That melancholy green of the mossy, Virgon woods, lightened at the edges with the cold, pale seafoam of the Aerilon shores. Livened in laughter and in lust with cheap, New Caprican ambrosia.

And, turning up her open palm, as if to accept the expanse of the very heavens and hold their secrets in her hands, he pressed his lips to the delicate inside of her wrist. Every precious beat of her heart thrumming against his skin.

"Then give up your body to me."