Sub Rosa
by Charis
Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica and all associated characters belong to people who are not me. I'm just borrowing.
Notes: For the "under" challenge at bsg100. "Sub rosa" is Latin for "under the rose", and is used to designate something as confidential. A potentially trite topic.
It's getting worse. She can see that when she looks in the mirror; the shadows under her eyes are far darker than the stresses of the presidency and her incarceration could have caused. Sometimes, with her hand pressed against her heart, she thinks she can feel the sickness burning through her skin, and she wonders why others cannot see it.
And then one day, in Cottle's ridiculous excuse for an infirmary, when the chain-smoking doctor is attending to one of his other patients, she looks into the commander's eyes and realises that he has always seen something; he has just been too polite to ask. But it is affecting her abilities now - she has come to understand the depth of the foolish risks she took, the grave errors in judgement she might have made - and politeness is no longer something they can afford.
"I need to tell you something," she says, struck by the incongruity of the situation - him still confined to his hospital bed, herself the more hale of the two, but how long will it be before that changes? "In confidence. Can you promise me it will remain between the two of us?"
He nods.
- finis -
