Where does time go? To those who are still reading, I hope this isn't too off the wall. To those who are kind enough to read and review, I thank you! It makes posting so much sweeter.

Disclaimer: As always, I acknowledge that these characters are not mine - and also solemly swear that they don't mind being taken for a drive so long as I get them home before curfew.

Too High a Cost
By: Mariel

-xxxxxxxxxx-

Chapter 6

Rest...

After safely reaching the bottom of the gorge, Bill led them upriver for a kilometre or so before indicating where they would camp for the night.

"It'll be dark soon," he told them. "Set up camp; I'm going to take a look around. I'll bring back wood for the fire." Confident he wouldn't need it, he leaned his rifle against a tree and set his back pack down on the ground beside it. Looking around, he chose his direction and set out, glad for a few moments alone.

Kara looked up, glanced at his retreating back, and then looked over at Roslin. Lifting her chin in Adama's direction, she suggested, "Madame President, we're okay here - why don't you help the Admiral bring back firewood? The more we have, the better."

Laura hesitated, then nodded. In spite of her reservations about Bill wanting her anywhere near him, she wryly decided it wouldn't do to look cowardly in front of the voters. Setting her knapsack on the ground beside his, she followed Adama into the woods.

When she caught up with him, he glanced at her, but said nothing.

"Kara sent me to help gather firewood," she explained. She was damned if she'd allow him to intimidate her with silence.

Not looking at her, he said, "I'm heading for the river first." With that, he lapsed into silence and continued on his way as though she were not there.

Refusing to be deterred, she looked about, then followed him in the gathering gloom. Eventually, they broke through a short patch of underbrush and she found herself standing on the moss-covered bank of the river. Though still quite a few yards away, the roar of the waterfall was deafening, and she could feel the cool mist thrown up into the air as the cascading water hit the bottom of the gorge.

High above them, she could see a slender patch of the planet's steadily graying sky.

Her thoughts, however, were on Bill. He'd been cold, unapproachable and taciturn since his initial flash of anger upon her arrival. Still, even though aware of his reluctance to have her with him, she couldn't resist trying to force some kind of rapprochement. Moving closer to him so that she would not have to raise her voice to be heard over the sound of falling water, she observed, "It's steeper here than where we came down."

Adama nodded. "It's an easier descent down river. We'd have needed climbing gear to make it down safely at this point."

Encouraged by his response, she tried again: "Why did you bring us upriver so far?" she asked curiously. "We passed a number of places that looked as though they'd be comfortable for the night."

"It's safer here," he said. He hesitated, then couldn't resist explaining, "The gorge is narrower here, so the cylons will have a shorter visual opportunity if their reinforcements arrive and they start air reconnaissance. That's also why we're camping closer to the cliff, instead of here beside the river. We'll have the protection of trees and the plant growth on the cliffs. It'll be harder to spot us."

She nodded, oddly comforted by how matter-of-factly he explained the way he had ensured their safety. As his eyes restlessly surveyed the area, she regarded him silently, wondering how she had taken so for granted that she would always have his solid, reliable support. She opened her mouth to say thank you for bringing them here safely, but was forestalled by him stepping away from her. Looking around, he walked over to the edge of the river. Stepping out onto one of the large rocks that jutted out of the quickly-flowing water near the bank, he squatted down on his haunches and withdrew something from one of his pockets. She could not see what he was doing, but eventually she saw him shake what looked like a vial, then hold it up in the failing light. There was clear liquid sloshing around in it.

"What is that?" she asked, drawing nearer to the water's edge for a closer look.

"The water tests okay. We can drink it."

Laura nodded. With his usual quiet efficiency, he was taking care of everything.

He rose, wincing a bit as he straightened. Balancing carefully, he pivoted and stepped back onto the bank. "Time to go back," he said.

Laura nodded. She watched as he walked away from her, then sighed, and moved to follow.

-xxx-

Darkness had fallen by the time Adama and Roslin returned. The camp had been set up, and a small fire built with kindling burned merrily, awaiting the heavier wood they carried with them.

After they fed the fire and warmed their food, the group ate, then remained around the fire to talk.

Watching Lee, Kara, Helo and Sharon converse quietly, Adama felt a wave of melancholy wash over him. These young people deserved so much more than the endless struggle that life appeared to have scripted for them. His eyes strayed across the fire's low flames towards Roslin. She and her Kobol foolishness had made their survival even more precarious. He turned away abruptly as anger coiled tightly inside his chest.

Now it was his responsibility to get them all away safely. Lee and Kara because he loved them and placed his hope for the future in them; Helo and Sharon because they should never have been here either, and because over the past year he had come to care for them and knew they would be needed. His eyes slowly turned back towards Roslin. And Roslin...she also needed to be returned safely, because, whether he liked it or not, humanity needed her leadership. No matter how he looked at it, she was the human race's best bet for survival.

Any other feelings he had in regards to her he kept tightly reined.

After listening to the fireside conversation for a while more, his eyes grew heavy and a wave of exhaustion rolled through him. It had been a long couple of days, and the stress and physical exertion of them were beginning to make themselves felt. Rising, he glanced at the three tarps that had been spaced around the perimeter of their camp site.

"Where did you put me?" he asked.

Pointing towards the tarp set off to their right, Helo said, "You and the President are over there."

Roslin and Adama avoided looking at one another. It spite of their obvious rift, it would have been taken for granted that they would be together.

It was, after all, how it had been before...

They were also being sent a message, but neither were ready to hear it yet.

Wanting to see for herself where they'd be spending the night, Laura stood up and followed Bill over. When they reached their bedsite, she looked at him. Trying for a light tone, she said, "I guess we're roommates again."

Adama said nothing. Shrugging off his outer jacket, he sat down, took off his boots, and then slipped into his bedsack. Looking up at her with eyes that held no warmth, he said, "Don't stay up too late; we may have to move tomorrow, and the terrain is rough."

She looked down and watched as he settled with his back turned firmly towards her. Knowing herself to be unobserved, she sighed softly and closed her eyes as memories flooded her mind... His arms wrapped solidly around her during their first visit to this planet. Quietly making love with him in the darkness...his hands sliding along her body, the taste of him on her lips...She could remember how the warmth between them had built...how it had filled her until every cell of her body had been ready to explode...

He'd used his hands to increase her response to him, trailing them across her body, caressing and teasing her as she rode him until she'd wanted to scream from the pure joy of it. Of him. Of their joining. Of the night and what they were creating. When she was so taut the world could have ended and she wouldn't have cared ...when she was so taut she was breathless and focussed and lighter than air... he'd paused and whispered her name, and for one, eternal moment the sound had resonated in the air around her and through her and into her heart...

Then he'd resumed his movements and she hers and they had built their rhythm until it and his touch took her over the edge. As her body stretched and took flight, she'd exhaled his name softly, sending it to unite with her own in the darkness.

He had held her afterwards, his lips pressed against her hair...so solid, so very, very there... Turning slowly, she set aside the sense of loss that threatened to swamp her. Something had gone wrong; something had gone horribly wrong, and she might never know what or why...

Quietly, she moved to rejoin the others.

-xxx-

Helo noticed Roslin's eyes wander again and again towards where the Admiral lay sleeping. Except for the brief time they'd spent on Kobol with the arrow, he'd never seen the two leaders together much, but he'd still drawn the conclusion that they had an understanding that went beyond their positions. They'd been too comfortable, too content in one another's presence not to have been on a closer footing than simply two leaders struggling to ensure a people's survival. Now he looked at the President curiously. She'd been particularly pensive since returning to sit with them, and he figured that had something to do with the tension between her and Adama. Whatever walls the Admiral had erected around himself had been erected against her, too. Now, seeing the tightly restrained worry in her eyes, he sought to reassure her in the only way he knew how.

"It'll be okay. He's got a plan," he said gently.

Roslin turned to look at him. Conscious of the others listening, she said, "I know. It would be nice to know what it is, though."

Kara spoke into the silence that followed Roslin's words. Her tone cool, she said, "Now you know what it feels like."

Laura looked at her in surprise.

"What do you mean?"

"It's not as though you always share your plans with him, is it?"

Kara's blunt reply shot home, and Laura looked at the ground.

"My decisions have been made for good reason, but," she admitted, "I've also made mistakes."

Lee looked in his father's direction. "We all have. But then, he hasn't made it easy for us to do otherwise."

Kara looked at Lee in disbelief. "For frak sakes, will you stop that!" she said. Keeping her voice low for fear Adama would overhear, she continued, "Every time you or anyone else in this frakking fleet does something wrong or stupid, it somehow gets turned around so that it's your father's fault! Everything bad that happens doesn't necessarily have its roots in what he says or does, Lee! Grow up, why don't you? If he's made mistakes, at least they've been honest ones. And, if you remember, he's spent a lot of time solving problems created by other people's decisions - and taking blame for things that had nothing to do with him."

Lee winced at that final jab and opened his mouth to reply. Sharon forestalled him by saying softly, "It's too late to change what's been done. It's what we do from here on that counts." When she saw that she had everyone's attention, she continued, "He came here to rescue Kara and Lee, but now he's got Helo and me and the President to get off this planet as well, and he feels just as responsible for us."

She looked at the President with calm eyes. "Our decision to come here has made things more difficult for him and added to his responsibilities, but he hasn't complained, and I trust him to get us home safely." She tilted her head to one side slightly, her dark eyes probing deeply into the President's green ones. "Perhaps this all boils down to that. It may be simply a matter of trust, Madam President. Maybe you should stop questioning and let yourself trust him."

Laura looked over at the young cylon. She didn't like the woman's calm assurance that she knew the situation. And trust was no simple thing. Her eyes narrowed. Bill trusted this cylon for reasons she couldn't fathom, and now the cylon was urging them to trust Bill.

It was so surreal it almost made her dizzy.

Shaking her head, she said, "I'm trying. It's just hard to, when I don't know what to expect."

"Think how much harder it would be if you thought you knew and people drew the mat right out from under you," Kara pointed out. "That's what he's been living with."

Lee moved impatiently. "Give it up, Kara. It's not as though you haven't screwed up, so stop it."

Kara turned to Lee. Her shoulders uncharacteristically slumped, she said, "I know. And there's no excuse for what I've done. I was wrong on some level every time, and if I had to do it again, I'd do it differently. Do you think it makes me feel good that I didn't live up to his expectations until his expectations were only that I'd act against him?" She gestured and added honestly, "I might still have ended up coming here, but I should have trusted him enough to tell him what the President had in mind. This should never have happened the way it did."

Pondering her words, the small group lapsed into silence and stared thoughtfully into the fire.

Laura's eyes travelled towards Bill. Even asleep, his back turned against them, his presence loomed over them all. Shifting uncomfortably, she looked out into Kobol's darkness and said a prayer.

Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow, she and Bill would talk.

End Chapter 6