"You might as well get used to the idea, Bill. I'm going to want to see things for myself from now on. And stop scowling. You brought this on yourself."

Laura slipped her black and white cotton skirt over the thin underdrawers and heavy black stockings that were starting to feel more normal than foreign. After buttoning the two side buttons, she began pulling the long patterned top on over the now-familiar corset, loosened today in anticipation of their outing.

He would miss this different way of dressing, he thought. The slow assembling of her layers of clothes, the later, quicker uncovering he had looked forward to before bed. Even while she was practically shunning him last night, she still had to present her back wordlessly to him for help in getting out of the elegant red gown. He sighed. One more thing that would be lost. Not a big thing…but he treasured all the little moments, the insignificant details, storing them in his memories against the day when that was all he had.

"I've only driven a wagon once, Laura. It's not going to be a very comfortable ride."

"You can fly a Viper, a Raptor…I'm sure you can figure out a horse and wagon."

"The last Raptor flight I piloted didn't turn out so good."

She finished the long row of buttons up the front of the charcoal blouse. "I hope you'll check out the wagon better than you did the Raptor."

Bill poured the last cup of the morning's coffee into his mug. "That was a low blow, Laura, even for the mood you're in."

Her face finally softened in the early morning light. "I shouldn't have said that. I know this wasn't your fault, us being here. But your actions after you made contact with Galactica…." She shook her head as she moved in front of the mirror above the washstand.

"I know, I know. You disapprove, you're disappointed. I heard you loud and clear last night, Madam President."

I felt it, too, he added silently. She had stayed curled up tight on her side of the bed for most of the night, finally relaxing in her sleep to turn towards him and drape an arm over his chest. He had stayed in one position longer than was comfortable just to keep that warm, soft contact. They had wakened to find themselves comfortably tangled together, and he had caught her sleepy morning smile before the tension of the previous night resurfaced and wiped it away.

Laura pulled her hair up and begin the process of securing it at the back of her head. One good thing about being back would be seeing her hair down all the time, he thought. He tried to push the accompanying "as long as she's alive" out of his mind.

Pacing between their rooms as he sipped the strong black coffee, Bill mentally picked at the abrasions left by each reprimand she had thrown in his direction last night. She had plenty of valid points about his duties to the Fleet, he couldn't deny that. Just like he couldn't deny how meaningless it would all be if she wasn't there with him.

He froze as she came up behind him and touched his shoulder, relaxing as he felt the light squeeze of her fingers. He could feel her move closer. Her light caress from his shoulder to his neck and back again gave him a thread of hope.

"I want to get past this as much as you do, Bill. I think I've said all I need to about my thoughts on this."

He drained his cup, then turned towards her, squinting against the sunlight that was starting to fill the room. "Do you need to hear any more mea culpas from me?"

She studied him carefully, in that way she had of making him feel like a nugget facing his CAG after a less than perfect landing.

"Not if you've told me everything."

He reached out to her with a tentative hand, growing more sure as she stepped towards him. He held her lightly by her arms, his thumbs rubbing gently against the nubby fabric.

"Laura, everything I know, you know. You have my word."

Even with what he dreaded would come, the universe felt right again for the first time in weeks. And he could tell from the softening around her eyes that she felt it too. He pulled her to him and held her for a moment, listening to their hearts beat in a familiar counterpoint, then bent his head to kiss her brow.

"Let's get this welcoming committee on the road…Mrs. Adama."

If he only had a few hours left to pretend she was his wife, he'd make the most of it. The sound of "Mrs. Adama" in his mouth would be another memory to store away for when he needed comfort later. He locked those thoughts away as carefully as he locked their door with the big brass key as they headed out to the high meadows…and the latest Raptor crew.

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"Don't throw that on the ground, Doc."

Doc Cottle quirked his eyebrows in a question then looked at glowing tip of his cigarette that had caught Bill's eye. "Oh, right." He looked over the expanse of high grasses swaying in the breeze. It didn't take much imagination to see an ocean of fire set off by a careless spark. The tip hissed as he pinched the embers out with a spit-licked finger and thumb.

"So what do you think, Doctor?" Laura asked.

Cottle looked at the woman he'd given up for dead a couple of weeks ago, a healthy glow to her ivory skin and a face wrinkled only slightly by years instead of being rutted by pain and poisonous chemicals. Her cheeks were fuller, and she looked like she'd added some weight, softening the edges of her bones. She'd never looked healthier, not even after the Cylon blood cure. He realized now that the sparse nutrition of New Caprica had kept her from coming back to optimal health.

"I think you look great, Madam President." He shot a sympathetic look at Bill. He could tell the Admiral was relieved at his quick assessment of the President's glowing good health, but he read the fear there as well, that her state might change at any time. "I'd like to do better than make observations, though. It'd be nice to know for sure what's going on here."

Laura leaned against the side of the wooden buckboard and shaded her eyes with one hand. "So what's your best guess? You've had samples to examine for…well, I'm not exactly sure for how long." He didn't miss the dagger-sharp look she threw in Bill's direction. "I'd like to know where things stand."

The heat from the sun was wrapping itself around Cottle's aging bones, and he imagined he could feel the vitamin D soaking through his plain gray cotton shirt into his skin. New Caprica had never felt like this, he realized. There was a…a vibrancy here, in the motion of the grasses and the trees, the white clouds against the sky. He could almost taste it. He closed his eyes for a second to gather his thoughts, then addressed his President.

"The atmosphere is almost identical to Caprica and the other planets that had a similar ecosystem. There are two anomalies, trace elements we couldn't identify, although they don't seem like pathogens of any kind." He walked over beside her, leaning against the buckboard as he showed her pages in his folder that kept getting thicker with new data.

"If I can direct your attention here to these images of blood work after your treatment with the half-Cylon baby's blood…."

He walked her through his findings, turning the pages of computer printouts and diagrams he'd created as he had worked in Galactica's lab. Every time he flicked his gaze up from the page, he saw the Admiral, focused and stone-faced as he devoured every word. None of this was news to Adama, Cottle thought, then realized Adama was focused not on his medical report, but on the President's reaction to what she was hearing. He hoped the way she was leaning in, touching the pages as she asked questions, was a good sign.

"So I developed some kind of antibodies from the Cylon baby's blood."

"Half-Cylon," he grunted.

"And then they started breaking down…their protection, or whatever it was that they did to cure the cancer started breaking down." Her hand rose to her left breast where the knot had been before.

"And something in this atmosphere is stopping that process." Bill's voice had an edge to it, like this was a debate point he'd been rehearsing.

"More than that." Cottle looked from one to the other as he flipped another page. "Something you're being exposed to is allowing the antibodies to build back up." He gave Bill an annoyed look. "It's hard to say much more, based on a field test kit that was never designed for this kind of precision. I'd like to run more tests in a real lab, but…." He shrugged as he nodded in Bill's direction. They had this discussion before, over a static-y comm. Cottle's insistence on accurate lab testing was no match for Bill's fear that once back on board Galactica, Laura would refuse to return to the surface, no matter what it would cost her.

"Now, having said that, look here"—he pointed at the picture of a petri dish—"and here," he said, as he walked her over to the second Raptor's interior and held up another dish with a sample from this morning. "They look identical, right?"

At Laura's nod, he continued. He could feel Bill's solid presence behind him as he tried to keep his tone neutral and free of bias. "That picture and this sample show strong antibodies and no cancer cells, whereas this"—he pulled out an enlarged picture of a similar dish, the center discolored—"is from the sample I took from you before you left Galactica. That picture was taken a few days after you went missing."

He heard a heavy sigh on his left like all the breath had just been knocked out of the President. As Cottle rummaged through a small medical pack in front of him, he saw Bill slip an arm around her, and was relieved to see she was finally accepting some support.

"So, this is what would be going on in my body right now, if I was still on board?" Her speech had that clipped, precise quality she used when she was scared.

"No, Madam President. I brought the actual sample we used for that picture." The picture had shown a petri dish with a grey-green discoloration in the center, starting to spread outwards. Cottle now held out the real thing, wordlessly, in the palm of his hand.

"Oh, my Gods," Laura whispered.

The dish was full of a greenish-black irregular mass, blistered along the surface. It would look horrifying to a layman as it was, but just to drive the point home, Cottle brought the dish closer, determined to imprint this image into her mind. "This sample went past the point of being compatible with life functionstwo weeks ago. If you weren't on this planet, this is what would have been going on inside you as you died."

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Laura stared at the blackened sample in front of her, the rational part of her brain trying to process what she'd just heard while the most primal part of herself was screaming "get it away!" Her stomach roiled as she imagined her cells, her organs, her breasts slowly turning into a black gelatinous mass. She tried to focus on what she knew to be factual—she'd seen people die of cancer and she'd never seen outward signs of this horror—but every instinct she had was clanging an alarm that set her nerves on edge.

Moving away from Bill's arm that had tightened around her waist, she brought her hands up to her temples as if she were deep in thought, blocking out the sight of the dish. She could feel the urge to sob welling up and choked it back, knowing if she started, she wouldn't stop until the decision was taken out of her hands. The Scrolls of Pythia book rested by her seat on the buckboard, she noticed numbly, cover shining like faded gold in the sun.

As her eyes began to water, the image of the prophesies swam in her vision, becoming insubstantial through her tears. She removed her hands from her temples and risked another glance at the dish that held its own prophesy for her, concrete and without poetic metaphor.

Poor Bill, she thought, looking at him with his back against the Raptor. Soon, she'd have to tell him that if their situations were reversed, she would have done the same thing, would have lied, would have gone against every ethical principle she had, to keep him safe from…that. He deserved no less than her total absolution.

Both men were silent by the Raptor. Bill had had his say that morning, before they left the hotel. Cottle had given her the facts as best he knew them. She inhaled deeply to settle her nerves, breathing in the warm animal smell from Blackbird's flank. She turned and ran her hand up the horse's neck, feeling the pulse of his blood under her fingers as she stroked the slightly sweaty coat, buying a few seconds before she had to start talking, had to start making decisions.

Her hands clasped in front of her, she faced the two men as calmly as if she was at a Quorum meeting. Bill was in full military posture, hands folded at his waist, an officer waiting for another round of bad news. Cottle's eyebrows were raised, looking hopeful that he'd made a good enough case.

"Gentlemen, there are a lot of factors here to examine." She felt Blackbird snort behind her like she'd just made the understatement of the year. "I'd like to go back and talk this out, make sure we're considering everything carefully."

She could see Bill stiffen, like he was getting ready to block her from entering the Raptor. Cottle drew his bushy eyebrows together and opened his mouth, probably to start a lecture. Laura grabbed the side of the buckboard with steady hands and swung herself up into the seat. Settling herself, she slipped the Scrolls of Pythia into her satchel and ran a critical eye over Cottle's plain shirt and brown pants still stained from New Caprican mud.

"Bill, help the doctor up here, and let's go find a place to talk."

Her heart ached as she watched a slow, hopeful grin spread across his craggy face, lightening his dark blue gaze. She wanted to live, to keep seeing that look on his face.

She wanted to do the right thing by her people.

Gods help me to make the right decision, she breathed out in a silent prayer.