Pain

by Mulderzkid

You lived and my boy died. She is breathing hard and there is the flush of blood rushing to her cheeks and nose she will not cry.

Title : Pain
By: Mulderzkid
Spoilers for Sacrifice (2.16)

She pauses on the way from the mor... from Billy and looks in at the infirmary. He is the only one in the room. And her eyes glare at him. He lived. She is there beside him before she can stop herself, and she sees her fingers reach out to him. But not to soothe, no, not for him.

She presses hard against his shoulder and under her fingers she sees the brush strokes of red painted deeper and deeper crimson like too much oil paint on a white canvas. Mouth curled in sour distaste, she pushes her fingers deeper, feeling the seam on his skin pop under her fingers. His eyes are blue and blank, there is no pain, no guilt, nothing and if she didn't know his father she'd think he was a cylon.

Betrayer! She screams in bitterness. You should be dead. He grabs her fist and places it against his chin, curls her fingers for her, his hand warm and callous. "You'll hurt me the most here." As he taps his chin with her fist, she sees the nebula of blue and purple swirl on his chin.

With her left hand she feels his muscles contracting around her index finger.

He expected you to protect him, us, and you didn't. You lived and my boy died. She is breathing hard and there is the flush of blood rushing to her cheeks and nose; she will not cry.

"Use your nails, Madam President, rake them down my arm." He is holding out his left forearm and as she stares a tattoo of red swollen lines cross it. Razor slices on strong muscles.

It isn't enough. It'll never be enough. You have to hurt. You need this pain, this indescribable sucking feeling around your heart, where your heart should be.

She feels his fingers curl over hers on his chest. "Feel my heart. You can stop it. Dig in. Take it out."

But she can't. She lowers her head, chin to clavicle, and her hair falls forward and he is warm and strong and granite. Rock, stone, unfeeling. Sun-warmed-granite of a man with no feelings and how could she have ever thought he was worth anything.

My son was better than you. Your father is better than you. You're just….hard. You're just a…

"Disappointment, Ma'am." He looks at her, calmly. "I always disappoint everyone eventually." He smiles wryly and before she might have tried to change his mind. Before she might have argued. But he has been a disappointment for a while now, since he refused her; since he refused to put her before his father, when he became "Son," not "Advisor." Then he had tried to die instead of backing up Lt. Thrace as she went to kill Cain. And the ultimate sign of his change, he had let the black-market go with just a single death. He had let it flourish instead of ridding the fleet of all of them dealing there.

He had betrayed her son. He had gotten him killed. Her baby was gone because of him.

She finds herself outside the infirmary looking at he-who-she-used-to-trust, who had done so much for her and she finds hate. She can almost taste his pain on her lips, as if she had pressed her fingers into his wounds, as if she had bruised and battered him as he deserves. She imagines his blood on her fingers, and just as easily as hate is found, she purposely misplaces it.

An emotion creeps into her heart, pity, for she realizes that the dead have more visitors than he. Cold- wintry shell of a man, even his father forsakes him for a dead corpse in the morgue. Someone not of his own blood.

She refuses to see the grimace of pain or the spark of a tear trail, or get close enough to feel the warmth of the visitor's chair. She is too busy imagining nebulas of bruises on granite skin, tattoos of red stripes on rock, and the pulsing beat of muscle and heart of the betrayer.