"Thank the lords that's over with."
Admiral Adama glanced sharply at the XO over the table, raising an eyebrow. Colonel Tigh made no move to elaborate on his gratitude, just looked back at the admiral, shrugging. "They need practice, is all." Bill remarked as he looked up at Gaeta, who had just relieved the other watch officer, now headed for the nearest exit. Then he turned to Dee. "All birds in?"
"Yes, sir." His daughter-in-law was busy at work, replying to whoever had been watching the action outside the ship. "One of them, I think Tiny Tot, it sounds like, she needs to head to sickbay. CAG said she burned her hands trying to make a hot landing."
"The last thing we need is another Starbuck or Hotdog out there." Tigh pointed out logically.
"I'll have Apollo keep an eye on her." Bill replied noncommittally. They had bigger problems than hotshot pilots at the moment. And he was about to walk into one of them right now. "Is the President still waiting?"
"For about an hour now." Saul replied, perking up a bit. He had been reminding the admiral every few minutes that the President had shuttled over from Colonial at the crack of dawn (or whatever the hell that meant anymore) to answer a summons the admiral had delivered personally. Saul knew that whatever greeted them when they finally met up with her wouldn't be good. At least not until it was explained that it couldn't be helped.
"I guess I should get down there." Bill rubbed his hand over his face ruefully. He honestly hadn't expected a simple pilot try-out to take this long. "Where is she?"
"She didn't leave the hangar deck." Dee replied. "The Chief called up a few minutes ago. Uh, he wanted to make it clear that the President didn't ask him to call. He just thought he'd make sure you knew where she was in case you needed to reschedule."
Bill frowned, and saw his confusion mirrored in the XO's face. Though there was a bit of something else there, as well.
"Doesn't sound like her." he remarked. "Colonel Tigh-"
"Actually, mind if I walk with you?" Saul interrupted. He'd been harboring a number of suspicions about the President and this seemed a perfect opportunity to confirm them. "I'm the one who sent those reports over, so I should be there if she has any questions." As if that was possible. He'd practically spelled everything out for her.
"Mr. Gaeta, you have the watch." Bill paused, moving out of the way so Saul could precede him from CIC.
Both men were silent for a moment as they maneuvered their way through the corridors. Neither were paying much attention, for it had become so routine they could do it in their sleep. Bill was silently preparing himself for another encounter with the President and wondering how her mood was. The previous evening had been a strange one, even for the two of them. True, he could count on one hand the number of times either of them had dropped in on the other completely unannounced, but she was usually pleased to see him. Glad for the opportunity to have a chat once business was dispensed with. Now she was acting like she couldn't get rid of him quickly enough.
He was so immersed in his own thoughts, cursing the inner machinations of women, that he almost missed it when Saul started talking.
"That new batch of nuggets, most of them look bright." the XO remarked, more of an excuse to start a conversation than anything else. "Apollo said he had to turn a few away because they were too young."
"We can get them later on down the road." Bill replied, though his mind was still on his upcoming conference with Laura.
"Hear about the party Starbuck's spearheading for your son's first anniversary?" Saul asked after another moment of silence. Chuckling ironically, he added, "We should've let them beat the crap out of each other a long time ago."
That earned a snort from Bill. "It does seem to have resolved whatever issues the two of them had with each other." And thank the gods for that. It was almost like old times between Starbuck and Apollo. "Kara mentioned the idea a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't know it was still happening."
"Oh, it's happening." Saul replied. "I think Gaeta was at a planning session before his shift started. Said Kara was making some noise about getting the President involved, too."
Bill considered the possibility. "I think she'd be happy to help in whatever way she can, if she has the time."
"Yeah, it's nice you and she aren't getting the kids involved in this little tiff of yours." Saul's voice was heavily sarcastic.
It took a full ten seconds for his friend's words to sink in and he turned to glare at Saul. Tigh merely looked back at him, impervious to the Glare of Death the admiral had going at the moment. He for one was sick of whatever was going on between the admiral and the president. If Bill hadn't been so bullheaded weeks ago, he would have been in a better position to notice whatever the hell was going on with that equally bullheaded woman and nip it in the bud.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Bill asked, once it became apparent that Saul wasn't going to elaborate.
"Look, Admiral, I know she hasn't been logging much time around here lately and that might be partly my fault, but-"
"Your fault?" Bill asked, confused. If Laura had some sort of problem with Saul, this was the first he was hearing of it. And she was usually vocal on matters pertaining to relations among the leaders of the fleet. She had considered Saul one of those leaders for quite some time now.
Not that she had been all that vocal to him about much of anything lately.
Saul had the decency to look ashamed. "Right after we got back from New Caprica," he started, suddenly dropping his eyes from Bill's, "she tried to tell me how sorry she was. You know, about Ellen."
"Didn't go over too well?" Bill guessed.
Saul shook his head. "You should have seen the look on her face. I don't even remember what I said to her, but it must have been pretty bad. 'Course, I was probably drunk at the time."
"Probably a fair bet." Bill conceded. He was just glad Saul had gotten his act back together.
"Looked like I backhanded her, then shot her dog." Saul said. "I finally got around to apologizing a couple of weeks later. She said she understood, that it was far too soon when she approached me, but the thing that struck me were her eyes. I've never spent much time looking at her, but I've always that her eyes were pretty warm, inviting, you know, the kind of eyes you'd expect a kindergarten teacher to have."
Bill grunted. This was not a conversation he wanted to have with his XO. If Saul got him started on Laura's eyes, they'd be standing around the corridor keeping her waiting for another hour. Every flicker of her eyes was indicative of where she was, what kind of day she was having, and if he was lucky enough to catch her offguard when walking into a room, there was always a split second in which they practically glowed with a welcoming smile in them, right before she caught herself.
He hadn't seen much of that glow lately. He missed it.
Saul, however, had either completely missed his friend's complete loss of focus or was choosing to reserve comment. "They're pretty much dead, Bill." he said quietly. "She usually says something with her eyes. Now they're silent. Pretty remote, too."
"She's going through a bad patch." Bill remarked. "I think that whole… ugliness weeks back rattled her."
"Rattled most of us." Saul remarked. "The Vice-President was pretty shaken up when he called over here looking for you. What the hell did he keep you talking for an hour about, anyway?"
Bill shot him another glare and Saul knew the subject was not open for discussion.
"I don't think it's anything to alert the press about, Saul." he remarked. "We've kept her waiting far too long as it is." With that, he started off for the hangar deck.
"I never said anything about getting press involved." Saul shot back, following Bill's lead. "I don't think this is just a bad patch, Bill. Every time I've seen her since we got that damned Cylon baby onboard, she's been just a little colder, a little more distant, than the previous time. I can't believe you, of all people, haven't noticed!"
"Of course I've noticed, Saul!" Bill exploded, every single one of his frustrations from the past month rushing to the surface, overwhelming him with their intensity. "In case you haven't noticed, she hasn't exactly been making herself readily available to me ever since Zarek and I went over her head with that press conference to stop her from resigning!"
Saul waved it off, however. "She was about to do something asinine, just like you after we found Bulldog. She needed a boot up the ass. But that's not what did it, Bill. She's been like this since we almost nuked Apollo and Starbuck at the algae planet."
At around the same time in sickbay, Doc Cottle was starting to get antsy. He hadn't had a cigarette in twelve hours and he was about two more from going into some serious nicotine withdrawal. Even more infuriating to him, he had more frakking patients than he should. And there was another one on the way in. Mother frakkers.
He truly hated them all right now.
Abandoning the cigarette he had been contemplating for ten minutes, he stepped out of his office. He was surprised to see Sharon Agathon settling her daughter onto one of the beds.
Sighing in annoyance, he headed over to them.
"What can I do for you, Athena?" he asked.
"I had an appointment for Hera's check-up." she replied, stepping back. Cottle stepped in closer to regard the child carefully. Athena was right, dammit. She did have an appointment and he had completely forgotten about it.
"Let's see what we have here, then." He took out his stethoscope. If he recalled his time on that frakking cesspool known as New Caprica as well as he thought he did, this child who had been known as Isis for one year of her life had been fascinated by his stethoscope.
His memory was once again proven flawless as the child laughed and made a grab for it.
"Just a second there, little lady." He swatted gently at her hands, ignoring her giggles of protest. "Let me take care of business and then you can play with it for a minute, all right?" He paused as Hera stilled, almost as if she'd understood every word he'd said, and watched him silently as he went about his quick examination.
"I'd like to take some blood, just to make sure her immunizations are sticking." he said to Sharon. "Talk it over with Helo and get back to me."
"No, you may as well go ahead and do it." Athena replied, nodding and clearing her throat. "And I think I owe you a long overdue apology."
Cottle snorted before he could stop himself. An apology? Was she frakking with him? Everything the Cylons had done, were continuing to do, and she wanted to apologize to him for that? Then again, this was personal, between her and him. "How about we call it even and leave it at that?" he asked dryly.
Athena raised an eyebrow, surprise written all over her face. "I almost killed you."
"And I participated in a conspiracy to make you think your daughter was dead." Cottle replied, regarding her contemplatively. This wasn't exactly the way he pictured his day going. Frakking patients. "I probably got the better end of the deal," he remarked, "and if it's worth anything, I very nearly refused the President's request."
Athena's eyes darkened almost dangerously at the mention of Roslin and Cottle sighed again, suddenly very tired. He damn well knew he was still on shaky ground, having abused Athena's trust in him, so he refrained from commenting. Just barely.
"Why didn't you?" Sharon finally asked, playing with one of Hera's hands.
"I was going to." Cottle admitted, thinking longingly of the cigarette lying on his desk. Damn patients. "Then I got wind of some of the calls going into the wireless across the fleet." The memory of the venomous anger and hatred contained in some of those calls were enough to make his blood run cold, even to this day.
"What calls?" Sharon asked.
"Believe me, Athena, you're better off not knowing. The most benign of them called Roslin's judgment into question for not going through with the abortion like she had planned. People were questioning whether the Cylon blood that saved her was affecting the decisions she was making when all they had to do was take a look at the President's personal history to know she'd do whatever it took to keep a child, any child, from harm."
"Why would she do that for my baby?"
"She was a frakking kindergarten teacher before she became a politician!" Cottle snapped. "She loves children, Athena. Hera saved her life. There's nothing she wouldn't have done for her after that."
"Hey, Doc!" Apollo's voice suddenly interrupted the conversation. "One of the nuggets got burnt pretty badly out there!"
"Damn patients." Cottle grumbled, reaching to squeeze Athena's forearm. "Take up all my frakking time. Can't even slap your head on straight without one of them barging in on me. Excuse me. I'll let you know when Hera's blood tests come back."
"Thanks, Doc." Athena replied, stroking Hera's hair and contemplating what the doctor had just told her.