Well, I guess you weren't expecting to see this little gem being updated any time soon. Now, I can't promise how often this will be updated because I have even less time on my hands than what I did when I was originally working on this story, but I feel horrible for leaving this uncompleted [like a few of my other stories] but I've sent myself the challenge of having this story completely finished by the time I leave High School, which will be June of 2016, so with the whole of series four left to be written, and an epilogue it might be pushing it to get it done by then, but I would be content to have it finished before I start university. It's a little strange to be updating this almost a year to the day that I published the first chapter. I hope you enjoy this, and that some of the original crowd are still around to enjoy this update.

Chapter 18 || He That Believeth In Me

Bill froze on the spot; as if time itself had stopped.

Kara's voice was floating towards them from the intercom; a voice he doubted he would ever hear again until he would pass from this world to the next. Yet, there it was, as clear as day, just within arm's reach - but how?

Pandora's eyes dashed between Bill and Laura, both were battling with their emotions. In her mind, nothing made sense. Lee had told her that Kara was gone, that had she went to sleep and would never wake up. Now, the woman's voice was echoing around the CIC. Laura took a sharp inhaling of breath, her arm wrapping itself tighter around Pandora's shoulder, keeping the girl at her side.

"Identify that ship immediately" Bill ordered, his eyes trained on the monitoring screens that were stationed above his head. "Sir, checking for colonial recognition codes" Gaeta called over his shoulder, his fingers moving across the machines sitting in front of him, the lights flashing a blinding shade of red and blue. "Get Lee on line!" The Admiral barked, knowing that he couldn't let his mind - or his heart - believe it was really Kara at the end of the line. It could all be some elaborate trick to fool them into a false sense of security. "Trying, Sir" Dee replied, her headset clasped against her ears as she moved across her work station, trying to get a hold of their CAG.

"That's her voice alright" Helo began to reason, his words sitting uneasily in Laura's mind as she slipped her arm from Pandora's shoulder, taking the girl's hand as she leaned forward slightly. "Hold on" She warned the trio of men, knowing all to well that she had to be the voice of reason in this situation. "It is not real; it is a trap" Laura concluded, her eyes glancing up towards her husband. "Duplicate recognition codes!" Bill ordered, his patience running thinner with each passing moment. "Checking" Gaeta called, starting up his tests once again.

"Hostiles in bound!" Gaeta's voice filled the room as the overhead monitors began to beep frantically, alerting the officers below to the presence of their cylon enemies. Laura's head snapped up, her arms leaving the island to wrap around Pandora, holding the child close to her as Bill began rhyming off his orders. "Take them out!" He ordered, his voice getting drowned out by Helo's voice in the background as he spoke over the intercom to the pilots.

Laura knew her husband all to well, his heart would rule over his head, and he would most likely believe that the voice on the other end of the line really was Kara. "Admiral, it's a cylon trick" She pleaded with him, finally earning the man's attention as he looked away from the monitors long enough to make eye contact with his wife.

Pandora's fingers wrapped around her mother's jacket as Bill braced Tigh with orders to get anyone who had ever held a stick before up into the air. The girl's knuckles tightened around the material as she kept her eyes sealed shut. It couldn't be Kara; it wasn't Kara. She was meant to be cold and dead, locked away in an eternal sleep. Sensing the growing discomfort of her child, Laura silently wished that she had never brought the girl to the CIC, it was an area that Pandora rarely ventured too; only ever to see Bill as he finished his shift or to with Laura if they were passing through. The girl had never witnessed a cylon attack before; it was something Laura had hoped to shield her from for as long as possible.

"Sir, we've lost Pyxis" Gaeta cried as he spun around on his chair for a moment before returning to his work. Laura shook her head, bowing it as she spoke "Oh my god, Captain Tarney. 600 souls on that ship" She revealed, unable to comprehend such a sudden loss of an immense number of lives. As President, everything was a numbers game for her. They were all that was left of the human race, the last hope for humanity - every number counted. "How did they find us?" She asked, leaning slightly onto the island, trying to comfort Pandora while keeping her professional poker face on. "That's a question, isn't it?" Bill muttered in response, wishing he had the answer for her; it would have made all of their lives a whole lot easier.

Laura felt torn between taking Pandora out of the CIC, and staying to offer Bill a shoulder to lean on. Bill ruled by his heart; if he believed even for a second that the voice on the other end really was Kara, then it was her job to make him understand that it could be a trick - a horrible, wicked trick.

The entire vessel shook as the missiles bounced off the hull, sending Galactica rocking from side to side, the overhead monitoring flashing wildly as they appeared to almost bounce from their cases. The shock caused her to lose her balance, sending both her and Pandora sideways into the station in front of them. Bill's hand rested against her shoulder as he helped her up, moving around the station to stand beside them.

Frak formalities.

"Are you okay?" He asked, looking from Laura to Pandora as the child hesitated before nodding her head, while Laura spoke softly. "We're fine" She assured him, turning her attention back to the monitors above their heads.

"Sir, the cylon strike force has just turned back to their ships" Gaeta announced, confusion filled his voice as he glanced behind at the Admiral, unable to understand the motive of their enemy. A deadly silence fell upon the trio, each looking more confused and uncertain than the next. "The baseships are spinning up" He added a moment later, turning to face the Admiral, XO and President.

"Helo, have our fighters cover our withdraw" Bill ordered, unable to relax until they had put as much distance between the cylons and the fleet as physically possible.

"Maybe something's changed" Tori suggested, her words making Laura's shoulders tense up, her protective hold on Pandora tightening. Could Pandora be the change? Were the cylons aware of her visions in the Opera House? Pandora and Hera seemed to have some kind of a connection, linked together by Pandora's past connection to one of the Sixes on New Caprica.

Laura kept her eyes trained on Tigh and Tori "Like what?" she asked, trying to reason with herself. There was no way that the cylons could know about the visions. "I have no idea, Madam President" Tigh responded, his voice shaking somewhat as he turned his head away to look up at the monitors.

As the jump was completed, Bill moved to scoop the traumatized child up into his arms, letting her bury her face against his neck, her hands wrapping themselves around his neck as she shut her eyes. The journey to their quarters was mainly silent, except for Pandora's occasional cry of "Kara" against her father's chest. Arriving at the hatch, Laura turned around to face her husband, holding her arms out for the girl. "You need to go" She reminded him, knowing that Kara's viper would be in the hanger deck at any moment. "I'll be back soon" Bill promised, opening the hatch for Laura as she carried Pandora inside.

Bill could only pray that this wasn't some wicked trick, that it was instead some sort of a...miracle.

Adama Family Quarters

Laura glanced up from her spot on the couch as the hatch door opened. Lee entered first, followed by his father and then with Kara trailing behind them, the guards stopped at the hatch to take their watch over the private quarters of the President and Admiral of the Colonial Fleet.

An awkward silence fell over the dysfunctional family. Bill sat himself down beside Pandora while Lee hovered in the corner as Kara dropped herself down on her usual seat across from the couch, Laura's eyes trained on every move she made.

It was the child who broke the uncomfortable silence. "You...you're here," Pandora stuttered, staring at the blonde pilot as though she had been resurrected from the dead "but...how?" She turned her head to address the question to her mother, her bottom lip trembling as she struggle to comprehend the situation. Kara was dead - she was meant to be dead - yet here she was, standing in front of them all.

Pandora's words hardly registered with the pilot, who simply leaned back on her seat, refusing to answer the child's innocent question. As Laura rested her hand on Pandora's shoulder, holding her daughter to her side, Kara's eyes caught sight of the gold band that glimmered on her left hand, before she spotted an identical one on Bill's hand. Chuckling to herself, Kara shook her head as she leaned forward in her chair, folding her hands together as she smirked. "I guess the rumors are true... Pandora really is an Adama" Kara remarked sarcastically as she glared from Laura to Bill.

If looks could kill, then the glare that Laura threw towards Kara would surely have left the woman six feet under ground, or alternatively out of the nearest airlock.

Standing up from her seat, Laura stood in front of her child, defiantly crossing her arms and she looked down her nose at the blonde woman. "I don't believe you fully comprehend the position you're in right now" She warned her, knowing that Bill was the one thing stopping her from throwing the possible cylon into the brig.

Kara simply shook her head, turning her attention to Bill as she spoke. "What's Cottle's verdict?" She asked the Admiral, who dropped the doctor's reports onto the coffee table that separated Kara from the Adama family. "Everything checks out" Bill confirmed, knowing that if Kara continued her standoff behavior then she would be digging herself a hole that even he couldn't help her out of. "So I'm me then - not a cylon" Kara directed her statement towards the President, who placed her hands on her hips before glaring down at the woman. They all knew full well that both Cottle and Baltar had been wrong before - Boomer was proof of that. "That is why you had me tested, right?" She asked, not believing her ears that the people she had once considered her family thought that she could be a cylon.

"Kara, no one said you were a cylon" Lee assured her, speaking from his end of the sofa, leaning forward as if reaching towards the woman to offer her some form of comfort. "But you were thinking it" Kara snapped back, clenching her jaw as she glared at the President. "We had to be sure Kara" Bill explained, knowing that he would have done the same regardless of who had been in that viper; even if it had of been Laura. "Fair enough" Kara shrugged her shoulders and leaned back in her seat, turning her head away like a child in a temper tantrum.

"Let's go through it again" Laura said, trying to give the woman the benefit of the doubt without dropping her defensive guard. "How many times do you want to hear it?" Kara baited the woman, her blood boiling as she fought the urge to scream at the top of her lungs. "As many times as it takes to make sense" Laura challenged her, wishing that the woman would simply cooperate with her.

"I followed a heavy raider in the storm, I took a few hits, when I came through it I was orbiting this planet. It's yellow moon and star matches the description in Pythia" Kara told the group, moving her hand towards the photographs that now decorate the coffee table "I took these photos in orbit. The star patters match what we saw in the tomb of Athena" She argued, failing to understand why she was being treated as though she was nothing more than a cylon prisoner.

"How did you get here?" Laura interrogated the pilot, feeling more irritated with each passing moment. "I told you, I don't know exactly." Kara urged, praying to the Lords of Kobol that Laura would back off her and simply accept her version of events as being the fact of the matter. "Well, that's just not good enough, Captain" Laura disagreed, shaking her head as she felt Pandora shuffle around on the chair behind her, the girls feet brushing against the back of her trousers. "Tell us everything you remember" She demanded, sitting herself back down onto the sofa, consoling the unusually silent Pandora by taking a hold of the girl's hand.

Kara sighed keeping her eyes trained on the floor. "I remember taking the photos, turning my ship...and then I'm not sure" She said, feeling as though she had been defeated by the woman across from her.

Bill bowed his head silently, letting Pandora curl into his side as he became to contemplate the idea that Laura could be right. It might not be Kara sitting in front of them, it could all be an elaborate cylon trick. Kara watched the man, as though seeing the doubt in his eyes before she spoke once again "I remember a gas planet with rings, I..remember a flashing triple star and a comet, then I was back with the fleet" She concluded, her missing memories left her more irritated than anything else, it even made her start to doubt herself.

Nothing added up; it made no sense.

"And for you, this all took six hours" Laura offered, disbelief sounding in her voice as she tried to verbally understand the pilot's story. "I do not understand the time discrepancy either okay, all I know is that I was there, I took the pictures, I didn't imagine it" She fought back, feeling as though she was being hounded by a pack of wolves.

When the guards escorted Kara away, Bill turned his head to watch Laura embrace Pandora, letting the girl rest her head against her chest as she curled up. Kara had hurt Pandora more than the child could have thought possible, her ignorant refusal to acknowledge the child had hurt the girl beyond belief. This was where he needed to be; but he was the Admiral of the Colonial Fleet, he had a duty and a job to carry out. Pandora - and even Laura - would need to wait.

The Hanger Deck

Laura had contemplated bringing Pandora with her, but the child was so emotionally exhausted that it was perhaps the worse thing that Laura could have done for the girl. Instead, she left the child off at the daycare, watching as she headed across the room to Hera. The bond that the pair had seemed to be more than just friendship; a sister like bond.

When she reached the hanger deck, Bill and the Chief were examining the viper that Kara had flown in on. From what little of it that she could hear, she knew that her initial gut instinct had been right. The Kara who had came back to them was not the one who had seemingly died a few months before hand.

"So it's not the same ship then?" Laura asked for confirmation, folding her arms as she stood at the tail of the viper. "Unless she found a hell of a body shop out there Ma'am, then no it's not" The man confirmed, watching as Lee headed up the steps to look into the pilot's seat. "Admiral, this is not the outside either. There's no record of where this ship has been" He explained, with both Laura and Bill stopping before the computer to look at the empty data that sat before them.

Laura knew had been right all along. "Okay, put her back in the brig" She ordered, knowing that Bill wouldn't be able to find the strength to put the young woman that he considered his daughter, behind the bars of the brig so soon after her apparent resurrection.

"What? So some things don't add up and we're back to thinking she's a cylon. What about Cottle's test?" Lee cried, moving down from the steps to stand between her father and stepmother. Kara was family, and if Zak had of been the one who walked off that viper, none of this would have been happening.

"She could have been one from the beginning" Laura suggested, knowing that Kara could simply have been under the same illusion as Boomer - a sleeper agent waiting to attack. "I know how you feel about her Bill, but that could be exactly what the cylons could be counting on" She reminded her husband, reaching out to rest her hand on his arm. "So we're right back to the beginning. There could be cylons right here and we wouldn't know it until they put a bullet in our heads" Bill concluded, finally coming to believe the idea that Laura was planting in his head. Kara could be a cylon; there was nothing playing in her favor. Could he risk having a possible cylon so close to Pandora in the wake of Laura's shared visions of the Opera House?

Laura pursed her lips as she thought out loud, pacing across the floor in front of the viper. "That cylon fleet had enough fire power to blow us out of the sky, but instead they ran and jumped. Then there's Kara Thrace suddenly back from the dead with a path to Earth, if Kara can lead us off our course to Earth..." Something in the back of her head warned her that the cylons had not just abandoned their attack by some stroke of luck. She could think of only two explanations - the 'Final Five' and Pandora

"Course? What course?" Lee asked, shaking his head as he screwed up his face in disapproval. "The nebula was meant to be another clue on the way to earth!" He protested, feeling as though he was the only one advocating for Kara's innocence. She couldn't be a cylon; he would have known...he would have felt it. "The nebula is only a roadsign on the way to earth" Laura reasoned with him, glancing over her shoulder at him. "What if Kara was the clue we were meant to find?" Lee proposed, knowing that Kara's supposed discover of Earth was the only card he had to play against his stepmother. She turned her head to address Bill, crossing her arms "And what if she's playing you and all of us?" She asked, silence falling upon them all before she dropped her arms.

"I need to get back to Pandora, but I have something to do first, I'll see you whenever you're done dealing...with this" Laura informed him, leaving the small group behind in the hanger deck as she made her way through the deserted hallways of Galactica, her heart ruling over her own head as her heart pounded in her head.

Caprica's Prison Cell

Caprica stared blankly at Laura as the guard shut the door behind the President. The older woman stopped in the center of the room, as though she had forgotten her purpose for coming to visit the prisoner in the first place.

"I don't know why I'm here" Laura confessed, knowing that some sixth sense had carried her through the hallways of Galactica and straight towards the cylon woman before her. "Yes I do" She corrected herself, moving forward slightly "I'm here because of the things that we've...shared and that we've seen" Laura explained, the memories of the vision played out across her mind, the terror that had ran through her veins as Pandora and Hera moved out of her reach, disappearing into the bask of white light that almost blinded her.

"The visions in the Opera House" Caprica spoke up, her heart heavy with remorse as she thought of the children whom the visions focused around. "You went further than me, you saw more than I did" The older woman reminded her, pausing for a moment as she breathed deeply, "I thought that maybe you could help me..." She began, trying to press the information out of the cylon as painlessly as possible. "Help you how?" Caprica raised her eyebrow, moving forward on the bed, her eyes trained on the woman before you. "I need to know about the other fives, the types we've never seen, the ones that..Baltar...calls the Final Five" Laura explained, disdain filling her voice as she spoke the man's name, her mind still not able to comprehend the fact that he was now a free man, enjoying his liberty of their ship.

"And you want to know if Kara Thrace is one of them?" Caprica suggested, moving her head higher as she inspected Laura, the pilot's sudden reappearance had been hot news around the fleet, even making its way to her prison cell. "Yes" Laura confirmed, sighing heavily as she waited for the cylon's response.

The chains around her ankles clanked as she placed her feet on the ground, the metal bar keeping them apart. "I've been programmed never to think about them" Caprica revealed, knowing that defying her programming could have serious consequences. "Well, your program isn't working because you're thinking about them now" Laura argued, knowing that discovering the identities of the final five, could help her protect Pandora from whatever was at the other end of the doors of the Opera House.

"I try not to" The cylon admitted, knowing that she had feared that she could suffer the same fate as D'Anna. "Trying not to is still thinking about them - how to you rationalise that?" Laura asked, suspecting that Caprica was her only hope of discovering anything about the infamous 'final five'.

A pregnant pause came over them, Caprica's metal chains clicking against each other as she stood up from the bed, cautiously stepping towards the President as the door of her prison was forced open by a guard, who trained his riffle on her while he stepped in front of Laura. "Alright...back off, don't leave, back off" She warned him, putting her hand out towards him to act as the peacekeeper between the Galactica guard and the cylon prisoner.

Caprica leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper as though she was about to impose on Laura the greatest secret of her race. "The five are near" She revealed, causing Laura to squint her eyes as her shoulders tensed upwards. "What?" Laura's voice was laced in shock; if they were close, then there was no doubt that they were in the fleet, perhaps even in Galactica itself.

"I can feel them" The blonde cylon affirmed, backing up her claim as she raised her hands forward, as though trying to reach towards her heart.

Shaking her head, Laura moved towards the grey metal walls that acted as a solitary prison for the cylon, leaning her back against it as she turned her attention to the cylon. "Why is Pandora in the visions?" She asked, her heart bounding in her chest as she impatiently waited the cylon's answer.

Caprica shook her head, sitting herself down onto the bed, dropping her handcuffed wrists onto her lap as she shut her eyes for a moment. "I feel like I know her - that another me knew her - but I can't access the memories, not from here anyway" Caprica began, pursing her lips as she tried to understand the situation. "I don't understand why she's in them. Hera is half cylon, but Pandora...?" She raised her eyes towards the President, seeing the fear written across the mother's face. Laura shook her head, stopping the cylon from continuing on her path. Laura couldn't afford to even fantom the idea that Pandora was in any way connected to the cylons; yet she knew one of the six models.

"All I know is that I had to protect her" Caprica concluded, earning a brief nod from Laura as the woman left the room, letting the door slam shut behind her. She could have swore that she had seen the tears glaze over Laura's eyes as she left, refusing to entertain the reality in front of her.

Later that evening

For once, Laura was following Cottle's advice.

When she returned to their quarters, she had been quick to discard her heels and blazer, lying herself down on the rack next to Pandora for a well earned nap, letting the child sleep to recover from her emotional roller coaster than had courtesy of one Kara Thrace.

Hearing the hatch creak open, Laura awoke from her peaceful slumber, listening to the footsteps that patted across the room. Bill wasn't meant to be home for a few more hours at least, perhaps Saul had compiled him to leave work behind for a night. Lifting the cold wet cloth off her forehead, she slipped her shoulder out from under Pandora's head and

Instead of being greeted by the welcoming face of her husband; she was met by the barrel of a gun.

"Kara" She breathed, terror flashing before her eyes as Pandora awoke from her sleep, mumbling to herself. Kara's finger hovered over the trigger and Laura silently wondered if the woman would have it in her to shot both her and Pandora.