25. fence
Billy remembers waking up with a shunt in his chest. It's not one of his more pleasant memories.
He'd opened his eyes, body hurting everywhere, and seen the President staring, worriedly down at him. Had watched as her whole body seemed to unclench, and she'd started to cry. The memory was shrouded with pain medication and delirium caused by a slight infection, but he remembers how her hand had shaken when she'd fixed a curl and then shouted for Doc Cottle.
He remembers drifting back to sleep with her hand on his arm.
He knows Dee didn't come to find him until three days later. He knows because when he'd woken up for good, he'd asked, and Cottle had been too distracted by a rather incompetent tech to give and even cursory thought to his bedside manner.
Oddly, by the time she'd actually shuffled up to his bed, he'd been okay with that. He'd had time to think about what he wanted to say. What he wanted from her.
He'd told her to go because she didn't really want to be here, with him. She wanted to be a few beds over with Lee, and he told her – he thinks fairly calmly – that he didn't want to hold her back. That if Lee Adama was really what she wanted, and as long as he treated her okay, that was where she should go.
He could afford to kill her with kindness. After all, the only thing she'd really done wrong was not tell him before she started dating someone else. His best friend in college had pointed out that the absolute best revenge on being dumped was act like it hadn't really mattered at all.
Besides, he hadn't had the energy to jump up out of bed and scream out his hurt feelings. He was busy recuperating from a gunshot wound to the chest. And President Roslin had more than taken over for him in the glare department.
It had been rather sweet, really. The first time it had happened had been a few days into his enforced bedrest in the Galactica medbay. The President had been on her way in, and Dee on her way out. Things had been a little fuzzy – he'd still rated some of the few remaining narcotics at that point – but when Roslin had glided past his former girlfriend, he could have sworn he'd see Dee cower. Visibly.
The President is still overly cool when she gets Dee on the wireless. And he's comfortable enough in his limited spite to admit it gives him something of a warm fuzzy.
But all of that really doesn't matter. Dee didn't want to stay with him, so she didn't. He'd had a lot of time to think during the endless days in the Galactica sickbay, and then later during the sadistic rounds of physical therapy with one of the med techs.
Simply put, Dee wasn't the love of his life. She'd been the woman who'd been there when the whole world had ended. Someone to cling to when everything else had been chaos. And he'd been that for her. Realistically, if they'd dated before the end of the world, he knows they'd have had a few good dates and amiably parted ways.
Dee wanted the broken hero. Billy was just a guy who got up and did what needed to be done. He didn't want to have a dramatic life... he just wanted a good one. And he wanted a partner who'd let him try and give her the world. Dee had never wanted that from him.
And that's okay.
Sighing a bit, Billy stretched in his chair. Arms over his head, he twisted and leaned, loosening up the kinks of too many hours spent hunched over paperwork.
"You're really too young to be spending so much time hunched over all those tiny details, Billy."
He started a little, then grinned. "Well, Madam President, if I could have a larger staff..."
Smiling herself, the President moved further into the cabin. She held two mugs of what he assumed was hot water with lemon, and set one down in front of him when she got close enough. She'd been doing things like that ever since Doc Cottle had cleared him to return to Colonial One on light duty. Making sure he ate, bringing him tea and water, and making sure to schedule most of her meetings in the main cabin where he could use one of the larger, lean-back seats and continue to take notes.
She also, schedule permitting, walked him through his continued physical therapy every day. He knows this is because she's terrified of losing him. He knows the feeling – remembers her paper-white face and weak croak of a voice all too well – and so he lets it pass. Accepts the mugs of whatever she brings him, and actually leans on her when everything hurts just a little too much.
"Oh, believe me, I've asked. Surprisingly, people are needed for other things than filing."
Billy snickered. "Really?"
The President grinned back and dropped into her chair. "Really. So. What did you think of that book I gave you? I saw you finished it earlier."
Relaxed, Billy leaned back and continued shifting to work out all the kinks. And he talked. This was another new thing between he and the President. She kept lending him books – he had rather specific ideas on where those came from as the only person in the fleet who had that complete a collection... well. They were a strange collection. Philosophy, art, fiction, and classic literature mixed with tactics treatises. Some of them, he'd read during school, others not.
And they talked about each and every one.
He finds it strange that his relationship with Dee crashed so soundly, his relationship with this woman grew ever stronger. Life was strange like that. Maybe the President had seen what was on the other side of her metaphorical fence and decided not to jump it.
Maybe the grass was greener for Dee. Billy likes this side just fine.
"I'm not sure about the voice in the opening chapter..."
