"Well, suspected, certainly." Cottle's voice was heavy with chagrin. "Madame President, I must apologize. I feel as if I've betrayed medical confidence. The Old Man caught me completely off guard."
"Yes ... he seems to have a talent for that," she sighed. "Don't blame yourself. The Commander is a very astute man; he was bound to figure it out eventually." The massage wasn't helping; she stopped and folded her hands. "I'm afraid I have to sign off, Doctor. I'll no doubt be getting another call very shortly. Thank you again for the advance warning."
"Yes, ma'am. I'll see you at your next appointment."
She looked up to meet Billy Keikeya's worried gaze. "How do you think he'll react?" he asked.
"Grill me for the details and then lecture me, I expect." She forced a smile.
"But surely he must realize –"
A soft chime from the comm interrupted Billy, followed by the voice of the assistant that screened the President's calls.
"Ma'am? I have Ship Security on the line for you."
"Put them through."
"Madame President? Medral here. The Galactica just radioed that Commander Adama is shuttling over. He's apparently alone except for his pilot, but..." The man sounded distinctly nervous, though controlled. "I'm assembling an armed escort for his arrival, ma'am."
That irritated her. "Mr. Medral, the last time I checked, the Cylons were our enemies, not William Adama."
An audible swallow, then, "Yes, ma'am."
"If you people are so worried about one man, you may provide a single unarmed courtesy escort. I refuse to have fellow patriots aiming weapons at each other on this ship ever again. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes ma'am." He sounded positively abashed. Good.
"Very well. Bring him here as soon as he arrives."
Roslin sat back to wait and contemplate her tenuous working relationship with Commander William Adama. Their original agreement, his propping up her Presidency in exchange for her maintaining his pretense that he knew the location of Earth, had been nullified the moment she revealed the facts to Kara Thrace. She had both impugned his honor in the Lieutenant's eyes and infringed on the control over military issues she had ceded to him. These were actions he could neither forget nor easily forgive, she knew.
But after the assassination attempt, he had still used one of his few lucid periods after his first round of emergency surgeries to order Colonel Tigh to release her from Galactica's brig and see her reinstated as President. Tigh had looked like he would rather swallow live explosives, but he'd done it. Roslin often wondered what Adama had said to persuade him.
No doubt, angry as he was, Adama still considered her a better alternative than Tom Zarek. The convicted terrorist and Right Honorable Representative of Sagittaron had seized his opportunity to play the government supporters baying for Adama's resignation against the military supporters baying for hers. The appearance of unity was necessary to keep the entire fleet from sliding into Zarek's hands, and they were still fighting battles on that front.
And so a new compromise was reached, with the two of them effectively covering each other's back. But Adama made it quietly clear that he took that position only under duress.
"Commander Adama, ma'am."
"Send him in."
Adama swept into the room, shedding his Security escort. Roslin had no doubt that the escort had been dismissed as irrelevant and massively ignored the entire way.
I can sympathize with that feeling.
He stood before her desk, and Roslin reminded herself that she was not the one who had to come to attention. Not that Adama came to attention, as such; he just seemed to exist in that state much of the time.
"Madame President." He nodded to her, then turned to Billy. "Mr. Keikeya, I need to speak to President Roslin privately."
Her aide's face was a study in uncertainty, which Roslin decided to relieve. "Give us the room for a bit please, Billy."
He stood rather reluctantly. "I'll be right outside, ma'am."
As the door shut behind him, she smiled pleasantly. "Commander, I believe I know why you're here. Won't you sit down?"
In response, he silently laid a small book in front of her. She looked down at a leather-bound copy of The Pythian Prophecies; it looked like one of the antiques from his library.
Ah, yes, very astute and extremely well-read, let's not forget that...
Certain that his message had been received, he pulled a chair across from her and sat.
"How long have you known?" He was direct and straight to the point, as she'd expected.
"I found out just before the Cylon destruction of the Colonies."
"Besides Major Cottle and Starbuck, who else knows?"
"Billy, of course, and Elosha." She hesitated. "And ... Captain Adama."
He did not react to that revelation. "You should have told me."
She kept her face as impassive as his. "My medical information is privileged, Commander, but I fully intended to inform you before my ability to perform my duties looked in doubt. Fleet security has not been impacted by –"
"I'm not talking about fleet security."
The voice was still quiet, but the intensity in his words brought her up short. For the first time since he walked in, she looked directly into his eyes.
The anger behind his stone surface she had expected, but beyond that there was tension, a rawness whose source she did not understand. There is something else going on here, but what?
"You should have told me. You should have trusted me enough to tell me."
What, trust a man who arrested me? She tried to push those words out, but she couldn't pretend she didn't understand his real meaning. Before the coup, before she'd circumvented his authority with her revelations to Starbuck, that was when she should have trusted him.
"You're right. I should have." She lowered her eyes to the book in front of her. "I'm sorry."
He nodded acknowledgement, and his eyes followed hers. "And the ... visions?"
She suspected he'd substituted visions for another word, possibly hallucinations. "I started taking Chamalla extract as a possible treatment for my breast cancer. It hasn't been effective as a cure, but there have been other effects. Information ... given to me."
"By the Gods?"
Here was a sticking point, she knew. "That is what I believe, and what Elosha believes."
He shook his head. "I thought you were using the prophecies, as I'd used the legend of Earth. I never dreamed—"
"—that I might be living them?" Her lips crimped. "So to speak."
"Rumors have gotten out, you know. You're gaining what can only be described as spiritual followers."
"I know." She would not back away from this. "But as you so eloquently explained to me, people need something to live for."
His brow furrowed. For such a hardened realist, moving in the realm of Gods and prophecy had to be acutely uncomfortable. She was seeking for a way to convey her new reality when something Billy had said came back to her.
"Tradition, duty, honor ... they're more than words to these people. They're a way of life. If you want them to accept your authority as President, you need to make them see the situation in those terms."
Maybe she could explain it to him. She suddenly very much wanted him to understand.
"Commander, our survival hangs by a thread, and we two know better than anyone how thin that thread is. When everyone around you was lost to despair, you stood on that deck among the living and the dead and offered hope. Hope based on a lie, yes, but you still gave our people something they desperately needed, and who could say you were wrong to do so?"
She leaned forward eagerly. "If I have been given a chance, however slim, however strange, to make that hope a reality, then isn't it my obligation to try, for whatever time I have left?"
His next question seemed pulled from him. "How ... long?"
She tried to read his eyes, but he was no longer looking directly at her. "Probably no more than five or six months."
His lips twisted, but not in anger, she sensed. The anger seemed to be leaking away from him, but the tension grew.
"Truly, it doesn't matter." She smiled sadly. "In the face of the billions who have already died, should I use the breath I have left to complain that I'm not going to be around as long as I expected? That would be the height of ingratitude." Her expression turned somber as her gaze dropped to his left side. "After all, there are no guarantees for any of us."
He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. The furrows on his face had deepened. He looked—bleak was the only word she could come up with.
She had a question of her own. "Was it Lt. Thrace who told you?"
"No. At least, not in words."
"I see. Well ... I'm not sorry you found out. However it happened."
He nodded and started to stand. Whatever was locked inside him by that tension seemed fated to remain hidden. Roslin bit her lip in disappointment —
-- And plunged without warning into vision. Intense sensory input that had nothing to do with the room she was in flooded through her.
First she felt strong arms, cradling her against a lean, hard chest. Then a warm mouth was savoring hers and being savored in achingly sweet response. A brief moment of separation showed her dark blue eyes heated with passion, then the mouth traced a scorching path along her jaw and down her throat. A low, husky voice breathed her name against her skin...
"Madame President?"
As abruptly as the vision had possessed her, it vanished. She was left trembling, nearly gasping, almost as badly shaken as she'd been after her fatal diagnosis.
Because her partner in that altered reality, the owner of the arms, chest, mouth, eyes and voice, was sitting directly across from her, concern deepening on his face.
"Is something wrong?" He rose from his chair. For one lunatic second, she was convinced he meant to come around the desk and take her in his arms. She squoze her eyes shut, trying desperately to throw off confusion and bring herself back to here-and-now.
"Nothing's wrong. I'm fine." Her reflexive denial felt tissue-thin. When she opened her eyes and saw the set of his jaw, she knew it certainly hadn't convinced him.
"I'm sorry, Commander." She swallowed hard and gathered every bit of self-control she could summon. "It was ... just a twinge."
He apparently didn't like that answer any better, but he let it go. "Should I have your aide call Dr. Cottle?"
"No ... no. I'll handle that. Thank you for your concern." Her nerve endings were jangling with awareness of him; she knew her eyes had to be enormous. She had to end this. "I shouldn't keep you from your duties any longer."
It was a clear dismissal, but he hesitated at the door. "You'll keep me informed." Spoken not as a question, but as statement carved in granite.
"Yes, of course."
He nodded and left. It seemed that air rushed into the room to fill the space he vacated. She breathed slowly, trying to recover.
Billy reentered the room. He started towards his desk, but stopped as he looked at her face. "Are you all right?" He came to her side. "What happened!"
"He didn't chew my head off, Billy. I'm fine." She was relieved to hear the tartness in her tone, and to find, when she stood, that her legs would hold her up. "Would you please call Elosha and tell her I'm on my way to see her?"
"Do you want me to come with you?"
Absolutely not! "That won't be necessary. You keep on with your work."
As Billy turned to the comm, she laid a hand on the book Adama had left behind. The leather was still warm from his touch. She shivered.
Dear Gods, what am I to make of this!