Bill stayed behind Laura to observe her; his wife stood at the side of a pyramid court concentrating on the scrimmage. Her body tensed like a lioness ready to pounce into the court. Pyramid could be a rough sport, and her son was one of the smallest children on the team and the others easily pushed him around. She held back. His two older brothers, Zak and Lee, had taught Liam to be tough. His adoptive big sister Kara had trained Liam's aim with a pyramid ball to be deadly. Bill knew that would earn Liam the respect of his team.

The proud father grinned when his son snatched up the ball and sunk it into a goal. An opponent slammed into Liam as he dashed to recover the ball, and Bill noticed Laura's wince. Liam laughed and jumped up, his parents' stubbornness and determination coursing through his veins. Relaxing, Laura cheered her son on from the sidelines.

Bill stood tall and took it all in with a grin; this was his life. He would protect it.

In the previous timeline, he'd been all soldier all the time. Then the Admiral wouldn't have known the name of his son's team. There were times Zak and Lee told him about games over the phone, but he'd never felt invested. Those moments still shamed him now. The tragedies he'd endured had changed him. His relationship with his wife and the profound effect she'd had on him, in addition to the hardships he'd faced, forced him to see the world differently and to embrace life more fully. Every day he acknowledged this precious second chance.

Bill Adama wasn't perfect, but he'd become a better man. He now knew Liam practiced pyramid every Thursday afternoon. The final score to Zak's championship game was stamped in his mind, and he'd been present when Lee stormed off the court once in a grand (and embarrassing) huff. The truth was that the everyday things mattered so, so, so much.

The tableau of a concerned yet loving mother keeping an eye on her son broke when Laura glanced behind her. His heart skipped a beat when their eyes met. Her effect on him would always be powerful. Having been caught watching, he strode over to join her. There was no time to open his mouth to speak before Laura threw her arms around him.

"Missed you!" she gasped against his neck, and he chuckled at her enthusiasm. He'd been away from her for only two weeks, but sometimes even a day felt like an eternity.

"Thought that was my line?" he teased, tightly hugging her against himself. Her giggles broke free and vibrated against his chest. He loved that sound. "How's he doing?" Bill asked when they turned to face the field.

"Well, he doesn't like being the smallest person on the team," Laura explained, tensing when a particularly tall child crashed into Liam. Their boy's face reddened in frustration, but he didn't stop moving.

"He inherited your stubborn pride," Bill muttered, and chuckled when Laura elbowed him in a retort. They both knew that the blame for Liam's stubborn pride rested on more than just her shoulders. Happy, he slipped an arm around his wife's waist, and she sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"How did you know where Liam was practicing?" she asked.

"After I got home, I asked the security guard there to radio over to the one with you... It's sometimes beneficial to have your security with you, Laura," Bill growled unable to resist the jab.

"Wow, Bill. Home for five minutes before being overbearing. Military efficiency," she goaded always irritated when she felt her independence was being overly threatened.

"I don't want to come home and hear that something's happened to my family. You're lucky Boomer didn't try anything!" Bill fumed quietly. Laura couldn't argue that; she had been very lucky. She gave a resigned sigh, and Bill knew he'd won the round. However, he knew better than to gloat; if he did this would be the last confrontation he'd ever walk away from as the victor.

"When will we go talk to her?" Laura enquired. Boomer was a topic that hadn't strayed from either of their minds over the past few days.

"Tomorrow I will," Bill replied. He wanted to get it over with; after all, there was no sense in leaving the guillotine blade hanging when it inevitably had to fall.

"I'm coming with you," Laura decided. She set her jaw and waited for the inevitable counter.

"Laura…" There it was. She could practically hear Bill grinding his teeth in frustration. A good chunk of their relationship was based on navigating around what happened when an immovable object met and unstoppable force.

"Not only is Boomer a Cylon, but that particular eight manipulated the people around her as if they'd been clay. She is also the woman that betrayed you and shot you. You are not facing it alone," Laura pushed. She wouldn't be talked down from this position. She felt him tense and she heard the growl of frustration, but the man couldn't spit his arguments out before Liam stumbled over. With little ceremony, he fell against his dad dramatically.

"That was rough," he whined. "I suck at pyramid!"

"You did good," Bill assured him, but Liam only huffed at his father unconvinced. Placing both hands on Liam's shoulders, he looked down at the boy's frowning face. "Did you know I used to be the smallest person on my pyramid team too?" That interested Liam whose gaze darted up in curiosity. "It was rough at first, but I loved playing. Our team got it together and ended up winning the championship. I was voted MVP by my teammates. Even went on to be team captain in high school for a year before…"

"The Cylon War. You joined up instead of finishing your senior year," Liam finished, having heard many of his father's war stories, at least, from the first Cylon war. He tilted his head to the side. "You were the smallest too dad?" he asked, and Bill nodded.

"Yea. And, like me, you're an Adama. We don't give up; we rise up against the odds." Words of wisdom the Adama family lived by. Spirits lifted, Liam didn't notice the way his parent's grips on the other tightened as they thought about the odds they'd beaten and the odds they hadn't. Instead, Liam simply grinned up at his father having been moderately soothed by a tale of commiseration and triumph. He dashed off to get his equipment.

"Alright. Together tomorrow. You win, Laura," Bill muttered in concession. The odds had always been better when they were together.

…

Meeting Boomer weighed heavily on their minds. Distractions helped pass the time. A son who wanted to hear stories from the first Cylon War, a spouse who wanted quality time, and a series of projects around the house all kept the Adama family occupied. The next day dawned. Adama and Roslin made their way over to Boomer's address.

The elevator lurched into movement with a vibrating groan that Roslin and Adama both felt seep into their bones. They were each hyper-aware of every sound, every move, and every sight. Anticipation pulsed around them as noticeably as the beating of their own hearts. Dread, too. It crept up their spines like a spider up a wall.

"Stop looking at me like that, Laura," Bill growled. A cold hard look had settled in his eyes, and Laura had been staring, transfixed. This was the soldier she'd first met: all uniform and discipline. Looking at him now, she didn't doubt he was the man who could assemble a rifle blindfolded in less than a minute or the pilot who could zip his viper through a storm of raiders. With a jolt, she remembered what kind of man Bill Adama was. Powerful. Strong. Dangerous.

"Like what?" she asked, swallowing hard.

"Like I'm a thermonuclear bomb that might go off at any moment."

"Sorry," she muttered, forcing herself to look away. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, the confined space too small to pace in. Bill sighed and reached over to take her hand, giving it a light squeeze in comfort and as a silent apology for his brusque tone. Laura understood.

The elevator moved at a snail's pace giving Laura far too much time to let her mind wander. She hadn't been in CIC when Boomer shot Adama. Minutes before, her darling husband had tossed her in the brig. It had been a shock when Lee arrived with his hands covered in dark crimson blood and telling her that his father had been shot; the sight had caused her to tremble more than the cold air of the brig cell ever could. With nothing but time on her hands behind the iron bars, her imagination had supplied the grisly details she hadn't witnessed. There had been so much blood.

A ding echoed in the elevator, and then the lift doors parted. Bill's face remained stone cold, but he held Laura's hand tighter, like how a drowning man clutched a lifeline. Toward Boomer's apartment they moved and stood in front of the door for a moment. Bill felt the weight of the coming reunion. It pressed down on his shoulders, daring him to buckle under the pressure. But he didn't. Instead he stood tall and raised his fist, giving a hard knock against the door.

Boomer opened it and gasped. She'd tried to mentally prepare herself but quickly realized nothing could have prepared her for seeing her old leaders again. Her mouth opened as if to speak, but her throat felt dry and constricted. When no words came, she simply opened the door wider and stood to the side.

The three of them moved into the apartment. It was jarring. Everywhere Roslin and Adama turned something in the room connected the Cylon girl to humanity. Books written by humans stood on shelves, and Adama knew the Sharon Valerii he'd known would actually enjoy reading these tomes. Warm colors of green, ivory, and brown decorated the space, which fit the friendly and kind-hearted rook who'd joined the Galactica crew. Elephant figurines displayed prominently on the coffee table reminded Bill of the little knick-knacks in his own home. So human.

Threat assessment came first. Adama's eyes swept over Boomer, ensuring the girl wasn't armed. Unwilling to take more risks than necessary, his own hand didn't stray far from his sidearm. Of course, he'd brought it. Showing up was enough of a gamble, even if his heart told him that this wasn't a trap. What if he was wrong?

They eyed each other in the living room, but Boomer couldn't maintain Adama's gaze. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the carpet and the Admiral. It reminded Bill of his sons' behavior when they knew they were in trouble. How many times had he sat behind his desk, folded his hands on the hard surface, and watched one of the boys shift uncomfortably on the other side? The comparison made his heart twist.

"Thank you," Adama offered when Boomer finally met his eyes for a long moment. Inclining his head in Laura's direction, he is indicating exactly what he was thankful for: Boomer's help with Laura's rescue.

"It was the right thing to do," Boomer confessed. She forced herself to stay still under Adama's inspection. It felt like she was on trial and awaiting her sentencing, but it was better than feeling like a machine undergoing inspection. Boomer supposed so anyway. For a long minute it felt like there was an electrical storm in her brain, painful and intense. There was no retreat, and she remained frozen and had to force herself to keep breathing.

"Why?" Adama asked. How many times had he wanted to ask Valerii that question.

"I've changed since I was originally activated," she admitted, not entirely sure what Adama wanted to know. Somehow that seemed like the right answer.

"An incident I remember rather well," Bill growled. He remembered when Sharon pulled out her gun in CIC; it hadn't even occurred to him that she'd shoot at him. He'd been certain that she must have seen a threat. The shot rang out. He'd felt something deep and warm inside him. Then the pain exploded in his guts, squeezing his organs. He'd heard the second shot, and felt more pain wreck his body. People had screamed. To him, only pain had existed until it dragged him into unconsciousness. During that time, he could still recall a flash of clarity and lucidity during which he realized he probably would die.

But he'd survived only to play the moment again and again like a bad nightmare over the years. Boomer's apartment faded away and for a moment he was back in CIC, falling back onto the tactical table. A subtle brush against his side brought him back to the present, and he noticed Laura had stepped close, nudging him back into reality. Jarred back into the present, he realized Boomer had been speaking.

"... was like watching something happen on a screen, like at the movies, and even though I was screaming and wanting to stop what was happening, I couldn't… " Boomer lamented until her voice cracked. Her shoulders slumped, and it seemed like a switch had flipped, turning an internal heater on inside her system. Her face burned and flushed, but the tears stayed away. Embarrassment was one of the more poignant of human emotions, and it blazed in her under Adama's stoic gaze. "I'm sorry," she whispered. He didn't reply right away. Instead, his blue eyes stared her down.

"No one can imagine what any of us went through, or what it was like," Adama finally offered, unwilling to offer any further reconciliation or condemnation for the moment.

"How can you be sure you have no secret orders again?" Roslin demanded.

"Only sleeper agents have imbedded programming like I once had. You can't program a self-aware Cylon who knows they're a Cylon. We have free will," Sharon explained.

"Helo explained what you did with Hera. Returning her."

"I know that doesn't make up for everything," Boomer sighed, glancing at Roslin and knowing the ex-president was the harsher and less forgiving of the two. She had to make her intentions plain. "I don't want it to happen again. The attacks. What happened on Galactica. The sabotage. Taking Hera. The occupation of New Caprica... " At the mention of New Caprica, Boomer trailed off.

New Caprica had broken Sharon Valerii in some ways more than it had broken the humans. After that disaster, she knew she'd never be able to go back to humanity. So, she'd decided to become the machine they believed her to be, and she became a follower. Cavil, she decided, could make the choices because her instincts were clearly all wrong.

"I remember you on New Caprica," Roslin said. Boomer and Caprica Six were always easy to spot on New Caprica; they were the only ones who ever looked even moderately troubled at the situation. And yet, even shame wasn't the right word to describe the look in their eyes. They were just uncomfortable.

"I want you to know I had nothing to do with what happened to you or anyone else in the detention or medical centers," Boomer promised, looking at Laura. The older woman realized that now there was shame in her eyes.

"With what happened on New Caprica?" Bill demanded, looking between Laura and Boomer, although both women were suddenly refusing to meet his eyes. Intuition told him he was missing a large piece of the puzzle.

"Bill," Laura muttered in a warning, noting how his hands on his hips and his feet were planted in a wide stance. She could almost feel how tightly his lips were pressed together. The Adama stance; she knew it well. He was determined to get what he wanted and was willing to wait to get it, even though he'd already known there were things that happened on New Caprica she hadn't told him. He also knew pushing her for answers she didn't want to give would be an exercise in futility, so she watched him switch his gaze to Boomer.

"And did you watch them hurt your old comrades. Saul? Cally? Galen?" Adama growled in a low and dangerous voice. Boomer trembled.

"I only heard about what happened. I was never there. I never had anything to do with interrogations, tortures, or experiments," Boomer protested in a shaky voice. Bill started to realize how much he'd underestimated what took place.

"Experiments?" Adama asked and his blood ran cold when Laura shifted uncomfortably. Her lips pursed and her hands fidgeted. She opened her mouth as if to speak but found herself speechless like Boomer had earlier. Adama glared at Boomer, as if a look alone could suck the answers out of the Cylon. Boomer flinched and took a step back, but it didn't lessen the fire being directed at her. She had to answer.

"Baltar… Baltar told the Cylons about how he'd used Hera's blood to cure the President of her cancer. On New Caprica, with Hera supposedly dead, that cure was the only link to the child," Boomer explained hesitantly, and glanced at Roslin in sympathy. "You were the only way to learn about Hera."

"Frak," Bill muttered as his mind imagined the worst. He'd read Kara's report of what Cylons were doing to the people left behind on the Colonies. There was no Hippocratic oath the Cylon doctors took; captured humans were at the mercy of Simon models.

"Bill, I survived. A lot of people didn't," Roslin murmured, downplaying what happened to her. Besides, she supposed in the end it was her own fault the Cylons were so interested in her. She'd kidnapped Hera to protect her and then suffered for it. Then again, kidnapping Hera may have kept her safe on New Caprica, and Laura would willingly endure Cylon hospitality again to keep Hera safe. The urge to laugh suddenly erupted in Laura's chest, but she managed to keep the giggles at bay for once; her whole presidency had to be the ultimate textbook example of the phrase 'damned if we do, damned if we don't.'

"And the Cylons didn't experiment and learn enough on New Caprica, so you just had to kidnap Hera and finish the job?" Adama demanded, trying not to let his anger erupt. 'Respond, don't react,' his first CO, Commander Nash had once told him. He'd perfected being the calm at the center of the storm over the years, and it gave him power. So, he took a deep breath and cooled some of his rage while listening to Boomer.

"We only learned about how Hera's blood affected humans. About how its heightened resistance to disease, and how to counter the effects. We couldn't get enough information from… New Caprica to help create another hybrid," Boomer explained. It was almost painful to be honest, not to give them half-answers or evasions. She wondered if telling the truth was sentencing her to prison or setting her free. It was clear the truth hurt, as realization dawned on Adama and Roslin.

"Counter the effect Hera had?"

"Yea…"

"They didn't… oh my Gods!" Laura gasped. She stumbled back and sat on the couch as the room spun. Her stomach tightened and her throat clenched. A warm feeling rose in her chest and she could taste the bile at the back of her throat. It made sense. Oh Gods, it made perfect sense.

"Simon was ordered by Cavil to use what he learned to counter the effect Hera's blood was having on you. He was always mad about being thrown out an airlock and knew you would always be a threat to the Cylons," Boomer admitted, in a small voice. She reminded herself to keep breathing as a deep oppressive silence filled the room. The atmosphere was so tense it should have snapped.

Adama was shaking with rage, his fists opening and closing. Fury pulsed through him. He marched over to Sharon and stood above her, so she had to look up in order to meet his eyes. His control was slipping.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't drag your Cylon ass to the authorities. Give me on frakkin' reason," he seethed.

"I'm trying to help," Sharon muttered. "But if that's what you need to do…" She shrugged and resigned herself to her fate. Adama pushed himself away from her and crossed back over to his wife. She sat wide-eyed and shocked. He touched her shoulder gently, bringing her back to the present. She reached up and covered his hand with her own, and he felt how it shook.

"I'm not going to turn you over," Adama allowed, and he noted the grateful look Boomer gave him. "But, if you have anything to tell us, now is the time," he growled.

Over the next hour Boomer explained everything. She told them about being manipulated by John Cavil. She told them about how the old Cylon had made sense to her for a time. She dispassionately revealed her jealousy of Athena who'd come in and stolen her life. She told them about reawakening in this time and deciding to help Adama find Laura by sending the message. She revealed her old life and laid it before them like an offering.

"I don't know what the Cylons are planning, but I can promise to tell you when I know anything," Boomer assured them when she finished. She felt raw and exposed.

"Tell me more about the orb," Laura requested. Boomer nodded.

"He said it was called the Orb of Chronos, although he never liked the pagan god's name in its title. Cavil found it in the other timeline, and he kept it from the others. Always had to have the upper hand. He was on a heavy raider when it stumbled across the Guardian's ship. He never said much about the encounter, but I think it shook him. I know the Hybrid was holding the orb and Cavil took it from him. Cavil escaped with it but never fully learned how it worked. I think that was one of the projects he pursued on the Colony ship. At some point he triggered the orb, but he didn't tell me much about that. He knew it would send him back in time somehow, but there wasn't much he could do to control it," she gave her report with the discipline of a Colonial soldier. The facts were presented with little emotion.

"He doesn't have the orb now?" Laura clarified.

"No. He didn't know where it was. Somewhere with the Guardian probably. Future Cavil is boxed now, but before he was taken it sounded like this had happened before. Like he'd used the orb in the previous timeline, or someone had, anyway. I think future Cavil used that knowledge to help place the Final Five in the fleet and to know where to place sleeper agents."

"I'm getting a headache," Roslin muttered, crossing her arms. The implications of Boomer's information were staggering. Her mind was on overdrive trying to process it all.

"We can't let Cavil get ahold of the orb again. We have to find it first," Roslin realized, and sighed. Why couldn't life be simple?

"I'll do what I can to help," Boomer promised.

Adama and Roslin met the other's gaze and come to a wordless understanding.

"We need time to take this all in," Adama groused.

"I'll be here," Boomer promised. Adama gave a crisp nod. He barely had any civil words to say. He clenched his jaw and helped Laura to her feet, and with a soothing hand on the small of her back guided her toward the door first.

Adama gave one final glance behind them as they left and saw what may as well have been a scared little girl, or a mistress of manipulation. He wasn't sure which. He needed to think. He needed space. He felt Laura's gentle grip tugging him through the door after her.

…..

The atmosphere was tense at home. Bill and Laura barely spoke to each other, but only because they just didn't know what to say. What could they say after Bill learned what he had?

Laura seemed hit particularly hard, but she'd just learned how her life had been stolen by the Cylons. She'd only poked at dinner and would stare vacantly at nothing for long stretches of time. When their son started picking up on how disturbed his mother was, Laura retreated to the bedroom. There she sat in the reading nook, looking out the window. Her favorite blue scarf wrapped around her trapped in warmth, but she still shivered and pulled the fabric tighter. "Searider Falcon" lay open on her lap, the familiar pages offering comfort.

"Found you," Bill said, slipping into the bedroom and closing the door behind him. He looked at his wife where she was curled up in the reading nook. They were getting old again, he realized. She looked more like the woman he'd first met. There were wrinkles around her eyes; lines that he'd once known so well, a map of their incredible journey.

"Wasn't hard, was it?" came her smooth reply.

"I want to know," Adama pushed refusing to beat around the bush. They were direct people.

Laura shuddered, those painful memories of New Caprica during the occupation were like books with chapters, deep and horrible. She'd made the choice to put them on a shelf to gather dust. They were only picked up on the rarest of occasions. She'd rather focus on the blank pages of her life.

"It's not easy to talk about," she muttered finally. "And I'm not sure I want you to know," she admitted. This didn't surprise Bill. He was a soldier in the Colonial Fleet - he specialized in black ops for years. His training had included interrogation techniques - a polite way of saying torture. He'd tortured people and knew what reaction to expect, and it pained him to see that haunted look on the face of the woman he loved.

"I know you still have nightmares from it. It's the one thing you won't share with me." Bill's face revealed nothing, but Laura heard the hurt in his voice. She still didn't want to reveal how violated she'd been. How weak she'd felt. But Bill was her partner. It was safe to be open with him.

She hugged the book to her as emotions tumbled within her, and when she opened her eyes, she saw Bill kneeling beside her. There was no judgement in his eyes, only love, tenderness, and so much concern. The Cylons stripped away every feeling of safety she'd ever had. How could she put everything she'd experienced into words? Laura didn't realize she'd begun crying until Bill's thumb was wiping away the tears.

"They would take me. Usually from my tent. Usually at night when no one would notice," she began. It was a fight to force the words out, but Bill was desperate to know what had happened. "It didn't matter if I fought. I think they enjoyed when I resisted because they could be rough. They dragged me by the hair once," she pressed herself back into the corner of the reading nook as the memories came back to her. Her heart pounded in her chest as she remembered the fear and anxiety that had been her everyday reality. "They'd toss me into a cell. It was bright. So frakkin' bright." She paused taking a few shuddering breaths and pulled the scarf even tighter around her.

Bill's own heart ached as he listened to Laura. Serving in the military had prepared him to fight, suffer, and die in the line of duty. Laura, brave and fierce as she was, didn't have that same benefit. And she'd managed to keep all this from him for years.

He slowly moved to sit next to her on the small window bench, their sides pressed together. He felt her shivering, despite her wool shawl tucked around her. There was nothing he could say that would help, and he knew that. Being there for her with no judgment was what she needed. It only took a second for Laura to respond to his presence, shifting so she leaned against him and burrowing into the wool of his sweater.

Letting his presence comfort her, she was able to continue.

"I'd be forced to strip and given a prison jumpsuit to wear. It always smelled," she remembered, and could almost feel the four concrete walls of her old cell pushing in on her again.

'We're just not getting through to you anymore, are we?' Cavil sneers, shoving her hard against the wall. Her bruises and cuts scream in agony. Someone hits her from behind, and her body crumples to the floor, all her energy drained. 'Chain her back up; I want to try something different.' She isn't sure who grabs her, but she's wrenched off the ground.

Gasping, Laura reached out and felt Bill's warm hand close around hers, anchoring her to the present. His warm, gravelly voice whispered soothing words into her ear, promising she was safe now. It took several moments before she was able to continue, but her voice was hoarse from tears.

"They always had questions. I never answered. So, they'd try and beat the answers out. Unlike with Saul, on me they never left a mark where someone could see it. The bruises and cuts would be there for days, though," she remembered how her arms ached after being restrained. She remembered feeling exhausted.

"Gods, Laura. What would they ask? You were a civilian for frak's sake," Bill raged, but Laura couldn't seem to form an answer. How could she tell him that the Cylons took her because of him, because of their friendship, and not just because she was the ex-president. This was exactly why she hadn't told him everything the second she stepped foot on the Galactica again after New Caprica. She knew he'd feel guilty, even though none of this was his fault. Besides, she didn't need him rejecting her because they each revealed the weakness of the other.

"They wanted to know who the insurgents were. They wanted…" she looked at their clasped hands and took a deep breath. "They wanted to know where you'd gone," she whispered. "They thought you'd have told me where you'd jump to and what your plan was if you came back, and they tried to drag the information out of me. I don't even remember everything they did, to be honest. They never held me for long; I think they worried about turning me into a martyr. Suppressing Hera's blood was brilliant. Just let the cancer come back and kill me," she sniffed.

Bill couldn't just hold her hand hearing this. He slipped his arms around her and held her tight while letting his own tears come. To hear how she'd suffered was its own hell. No wonder she'd hated Baltar as deeply as she had. He remembered how she couldn't even stand to be in the same room in him during the algae planet incident. To his horror, he realized she wasn't done, and he listened as more of the story came out, the dam now broken.

"That's when they wanted to interrogate me. Other times, I'd be taken to their medical facility. Always under the cover of night. They didn't give me a jumpsuit there after forcing me to take my clothes off. The humiliation was almost as bad as the pain," Laura's voice had dropped, and Bill strained to hear her. He stroked her hair as she leaned against him.

"There were medical tests. Needles. They drew blood sometimes and injected me with who knows what other times. It was always so cold," she shuddered. "There was pain and sometimes it felt like it would never end. They never kept me for long though. They always returned me before sunrise. I never knew when they'd come for me again." Her voice cracked and she pressed further into Bill's embrace.

"I should have been there to protect you. Should have…"

"No Bill!" Laura exclaimed cutting him off. "You did the right thing; the smart thing and you know it. Even if it hurts, you know there was no other option. And you came back." There was warmth in her teary voice. But her eyes were frozen like the ice of a pond - the memories of New Caprica robbing them of her usual warmth. Her blank face made it seem like she'd taken a huge step back from life as she reached back and remembered the trauma she'd endured on New Caprica.

"I'll always come back for you," Bill swore, and she shivered at how fiercely they were spoken. She knew he would fight to the death to get back to her if they were separated again.

"Now you know everything. It… it feels like a relief actually, to tell you everything," she whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. Sometimes, she knew, the bravest thing a person could do is show their tears.

"You are the strongest woman I know, Laura Roslin," Bill murmured, kissing her forehead. After all she'd endured, he made a silent promise to not let anything like New Caprica ever happen to her again.

"You're the best man I know, William Adama," she replied, and they sat together. He couldn't believe how much faith she still had in him after everything.

"I'm the most foolish," he huffed. "If I hadn't talked you out of stealing the election… you'd have been spared New Capric. You'd have lived out your life on Earth," he grumbled. "I made so many stupid mistakes. I was the one who lied about Earth first. I didn't send a recon raptor before jumping us to a nuclear wasteland and declaring to the entire fleet we'd been saved. You suffered as a result of all of that. And instead of helping, I just kept trying to drink myself into oblivion."

"Bill please! Don't do this to yourself. We both made mistakes that caused us to suffer," she countered.

"You deserved better."

"I lived long enough find love and know you loved me back. We saved our people. We found Earth. You've always been the one who encouraged me to accept everything that happened." She watched him and saw the guilt in his eyes: another reason she'd kept New Caprica a secret, but it was time to heal and move on.

"I have this life. This dream. What happened on New Caprica wasn't my fault or your fault, neither were the fifty thousand other things we had to overcome. We made the best out of a bad situation," Laura argued. She knew her husband was stubborn in his opinions. When he looked at her, she saw the grim look on his face. She sighed. "Bill, stop it. The past is the past."

"I'm glad you finally told me everything," he said sincerely. She smiled sadly, before handing him "Searider Falcon".

"You haven't read to me from our book in a while," she murmured. Bill sighed, knowing what she was trying to do, but it has been a long time since he has been able to deny her anything. He flicked open the book.

"I was on chapter fifteen," she murmured, closing her eyes and settling back. He began to read.

"'The volcano had lain dormant on the island for as long as I'd lived there. But legends tell of angry gods who threw ash and fire down from the mountain's peak. Every day it threatened to starve the island of light and clean air. Every day I laughed it off; what else could I do? I couldn't stop such a force of nature. Fate bound him to her, and there was no escape. She guided him through the good and bad; all that was meant to be.'"

…..

Author's note: It bothered me how the cancer just came back, even though Cottle was like... 'it's gone.' It also seemed like Roslin would have been a much higher target on New Caprica than the show showed. My thoughts anyway. Reviews are always loved and appreciated!