Off-Log Comms.
It's the end of another watch, and once again Commander Adama, Col. Tigh, and Petty Officer Second Class Dualla are walking down Causeway A, leading from the CIC to the officers' cabins and the petty officers' racks. As usual, the XO is wrapping up business with the Commander, who at the same time is signing off forms and communications reports that Petty Officer Dualla hands to him.
This time he notices one sheet of paper a little thicker than the others, a slightly different shade, its corners cut a little higher. Fact is, he's been looking for this a long time, ever since he got shot, and now it's on the clipboard in front of him.
The corners of his mouth turn up, a little, and he signs it with a flourish before handing the clipboard back.
"Here you go, Petty Officer Dualla."
"Thank you, sir," says Dee, and falls out. Time to go shower.
The XO has no idea about this message, which is just as well as he'd pitch a drunken fit and so would his wife. Neither does anybody else onboard ship, or on Colonial One. It's another of the secret off-log comms between Bill Adama and Anastasia Dualla, but this time it's not going to reunite Ellen and Saul Tigh, it's going to bring the two of them together.
The way it works is that long before the Cylons attacked, Bill Adama had left Anastasia Dualla her a rota of possible times he'd be available for their assignations.
It doesn't matter how many times Dualla has stared at the list of times and dates, translating them from ship time into Caprica time or standard Colonial time, she can't make out any pattern. They could have been chosen at random. It's nowhere near every four times the two of them are off duty together: it's far, far less than that.
Then, as the time for each of their dates draws near, Dee gets to decides whether it suits her, or not. She appreciates the control. Reminds her there is life outside the military.
If it does suit her, Dee slips him her invite in amongst all the comms offprints, and he signs to confirm it. Matter of fact, he's never turned her down.
At H-hour precisely, Petty Officer Dualla reconnoitres the causeway outside the Commander's cabin, and when there are no marines around, which happens surprisingly often given how recently he was shot, pushes gently at the open door.
It's been a long while since Dee was in a room, a big room, with art, and soft furniture, and fewer than twenty people, and a proper bed, instead of a rack.
Ever since Sagittaron, in fact.
But she's not going there. Not physically, nobody ever will again, and not metaphorically.
Some people might think what brought her to Adama's bed was advantage, or comfort, or protection, but it isn't. It's loneliness.
His, not hers.
Anastasia Dualla is hurting, not lonely. She's a Petty Officer, second class, one among a hundred. Her family are always with her: she prays for them, when nobody can see her, and she talks to them all, no matter if the Lords of Kobol are keeping them safe, until she joins them again.
Whereas Bill Adama is the military head of the last remnants of humanity, and his surviving family are still alive, still with the fleet, often not talking to him, and still able to rip his heart into tiny octagonal pieces the next time their crazy-ass ideas frak things up royally.
In comparison, Dee feels lucky, and at peace, so why not share? she thinks, as she takes Bill Adama into her arms one more time.
