Well, look who has finally came back. Let's take a moment to process the fact that I've finally updated this again. How many times have I promised to keep this fanfiction active? Far too many. The reason this is different than any of my other fanfictions is the fact that it's extremely time consuming. Each chapter coordinates with the episode of the same name, which means I have to watch the episode several time, work out how the episode would change with this AU plot and then add in all the additional scenes while keeping it within the general storyline of that episode while baring in mind the plot development of this fanfiction. This chapter especially took some work because it's extremely heavy - emotionally - but it's a taste of what's to come. For everyone who had feared that I had abandoned this, I won't be going anywhere until I get this monster of a story finished.
President, Prophet, Parent | Chapter 19 | Six Of One
"Kara" Laura 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 herself and her child.
"Starbuck's got the President" Saul announced over the intercom, his words brought a flash of fear to Bill's eyes. There was no telling what the woman would do in her current mental state, and matters were only made worse by Laura's current disposition and the presence of Pandora as a hostage. He ordered Gaeta to take over his post before he left the room with a new found sense of urgency and a desperate need to reach his family.
There was no telling what Kara was capable of; especially with his wife and child completely unarmed.
Laura felt Pandora's fingers clutch the back of her shirt. Her daughter's tears turned into soft whimpers as she hid behind her mother, fearful of the woman whom she had once called her sister. Reaching her hand back, she held onto the child's hand. Pandora was traumatised enough without having to witness her 'sister' holding her mother hostage.
"Move" Kara ordered, the barrel of her gun still pointed towards Laura, her determination never faltering.
Silence filled the room as Laura contemplated her next move; she had to stay between Pandora and Kara, without scaring the child anymore than necessary. "Move!" Kara repeated, irritated by the woman's lack of ability to follow such a simple instruction. She knew she didn't have long with the President and she couldn't afford to waste time.
Laura stepped forward slowly, her hand still clutching Pandora's as she help the child down from the bed, keeping herself between Pandora and Kara as she followed Kara's lead. "Move, come on!" Kara insisted as Laura paused momentarily to bring Pandora in front of her, keeping as much distance between her daughter and the gun wilding pilot as possible.
"Mama, I'm scared" Pandora whispered as she noticed her mother's heavy breathing and the tears that had pierced the sides of the woman's eyes. "I know, my love" Laura replied in a gentle whisper, trying to keep her breathing under control as she walked slowly. Kara must have at least injured her guard to have gained access to their quarters, and if she was willing to do that, then Laura had no doubt in her mind that the pilot could easily pull the trigger if she didn't cooperate.
"Over by the couch, now!" Kara ordered, her gun levelled with the President's neck as she moved to shut the hatch door, locking it while she kept her eyes focused on the woman before her.
As she came to a stop in front of the couch, Laura tried to get Pandora to sit, but the child instead wrapped her arms protectively around her mother's legs, her head rested against Laura's thigh as tears began to roll down her eyes.
"I want to hate you so much" Kara revealed, contempt laced her voice as she walked towards the woman. Laura took a step back, her hand clutched Pandora to her side in a bid to keep her out of the line of fire. "So much" She repeated, as though needing to emphasis to the President that her threat was real.
"You had a vision, remember?" Kara taunted, her eyes narrowing. "The arrow, the temple - I went down to that planet with you and it was a fraking toaster party. A lot of good people died, remember?" She asked as she blinked her eyes to hide her tears. Too many good people were dead because of Laura's visions; they had sacrificed themselves in belief of the prophecy and the visions of their President. "Yes I do" Laura assure her with a nod of her head, uncomfortable at the closeness between Kara and her child; she was close enough to hear Kara's breathing, to see the determination in her eyes.
"I trusted you," Kara continued "on a vision, that's it. A vision. I saw Earth, I saw it with my own eye and its calling me back. We're going the wrong way!" She insisted, unable to understand how the entire fleet could be following a path seen in a vision, when she had seen Earth with her own eyes and even Adama didn't believe her. "Why can't you trust me?" She asked, her gun lowered to her side.
She had thought their relationship was stronger than this.
For a brief shining moment, she had thought that she had found herself a family - a dysfunctional family, but a family none the less.
Now, they all thought she was a cylon.
Kara loaded the gun before flipping it in her hands, the barrel pointed towards her chest as she offered it outstretched to Laura. "Shoot me" She proposed, a sense of defeat filled her soul as she dropped her shoulders.
She couldn't fight with Laura anymore.
"If you think I'm a cylon, shoot me!" Kara's harsh words caused Laura to jump slightly and made Pandora clutch onto her mother's blouse for dear life. "If you think I'm a cylon, then I'm your enemy" Kara shook the gun in her hands, still offering it to Laura as she spoke, pushing Laura to the very end of her limit. "Shoot your enemy!" She insisted, knowing somewhere deep down, that only death could stop the Earth's call for her to return, yet only Laura could cement her death in this moment.
Laura's eyes remained focused on Kara, ignoring the existence of the gun. Bill would never forgive her if she shot Kara, but the woman had the nerve to point a gun at her in the presence of their daughter. Simply claiming that she wasn't a cylon did not make her a perfect human.
Cylons were psychopathic liars.
"Take it!" Kara cried as she slammed the gun down onto the coffee table that sat between their legs. She knew the other woman couldn't do it. She wouldn't have the nerve to pull the trigger in front of Pandora, nor would she want to face the consequences from her husband.
Laura didn't have the guts to shoot her.
"I'm no more a cylon that you are," Kara assured her "and you know it" She added, knowing that she was walking a thin line between making her point and giving Laura the ammunition she needed to pull the trigger.
"I wish I did" Laura confessed regretfully while one hand pushed Pandora down onto the sofa behind them as she watched Kara turn back to face her. "I've put my life on the line for this fraking ship. I have ate, slept and fought next to the people I love, I have pissed off my friends" Kara began, sure that in her heart there was no way that she could be a cylon; she was as much of a human as any of the Adama family. "I have broken more rules than I followed, I fraked up okay!" She cried, her emotions overriding everything else as she tried to persuade Roslin that she was truly a human.
"But that's all that I have. Those people are my family, and none of us belong here" Kara spat in disgust, her face curling up as she looked away from the President. None of them belonged on a ship, running for their lives from the colons with all their hope in an ancient prophecy of a dying leader who would guide the way to Earth.
"Shoot me, if I'm a cylon, shoot me!" Kara insisted once again, her voice raised as she pushed her hands outwards before hitting them against her chest.
In that moment, there was no doubt in Laura's mind that Kara was a cylon.
Kara would only have provoked her to pull the trigger if she was certain of being resurrected.
"They made you perfect, didn't they?" Laura mumbled as she bent down to scoop the gun up, her finger already on the trigger as she pointed it towards Kara, her vision blurred as the gun let out a shot before she could even realise what she had done.
"Mama!" Pandora cried, jumping off the sofa to wrap her arms around her mother's legs fearfully, her eyes widened in terror as they followed the bullet as it cut through the air.
The bullet had lodged itself in the photo over Kara's shoulder; in Laura and Bill's wedding photo.
When the hatch door was flung open, Laura was still holding the gun, still pointing it towards Kara.
It was as though a bomb had went off.
The room filled with guards, two standing watch at the two as the Captain moved further into the room, her gun held in the ready position as she advanced towards the woman who had narrowly missed the death reaper's call. "Down on the floor, down on the floor now!" The female guard shouted as two more stepped forward to tackle Kara to the ground, each taking hold of her arm.
"Let go of me! Get off me!" Kara protested as she tried to break free of the guards hold. "What are you doing? I'm not a cylon!" She shouted while she shook her shoulders in a bid to set herself free.
Overcome by the realisation of her actions, Laura dazed out until Saul appeared at her side, taking the gun from her hand as Pandora looked up fearfully at her mother, silent in her shock. "Madam President" His words brought her back to reality, and she wrapped her arm around Pandora as she caught sight of Bill appearing through the hatch.
"What the frak is going on here?" He barked, anger filled his voice as he glared down at Kara as the guards attempted to keep her on the ground. He addressed Saul before he moved towards Laura, his hand coming to rest on her arm. "Are you okay?" He asked, his free hand moved to touch Pandora's hair as the child sobbed quietly into her mother's legs.
Kara had terrified his daughter to death.
As the guards forced Kara to her feet, her heavy breathing echoed around the room as she continued to struggle against her cuffs while they were locked by the guards. Bill took a step closer to his wife, acting as a human shield to protect her against the disillusioned pilot.
"Listen to me please" Kara pleaded, her voice as low as a child's as she focused her eyes on Laura, who simply gathered Pandora up into her arms as she ignored the desperate pleas of the pilot in front of her. "I'm losing it" She revealed, as though the loss of feeling was like a knife embedded in her heart, being twisted deeper with every jump they made away from Earth. "The ringing, the way to Earth" She continued speaking, well aware that the Admiral's glare was enough to bring a weaker man to his knees with fear, while Laura buried her head in her daughter's shoulder, refusing to acknowledge the woman who had held them hostage. "It's getting weaker, don't you understand?" She asked, losing hope that they would ever find their way to Earth.
Roslin was her best shot; now she had no hope.
"Don't any of you understand?" Kara asked, turning to look at the others in the room. Both Saul and Helo looked at her as though she belonged in an asylum. "It was so clear, like it was coming from the next room" As she spoke, she could feel their looks of pity. They thought she was crazy. Kara shook her head as the tears began to overflow, "Stop looking at me like that!" She begged, leaning forward as she glanced down at the ground. She wasn't crazy - and she most certainly was not a cylon. "I can feel it slipping away. Even without jumping, even as with move. It's half of what it was when I got here" She explained, a sense of urgency in her voice as she could feel the pull of the Earth slipping away from her; the further they travelled, the harder it would be for her to guide them back. "if we keep jumping, it'll be gone, and we'll never find it again" Kara breathed, her body going limp as she began to give up hope of ever returning to the planet she was sure had been Earth.
"I thought that's what we wanted, a way to Earth" Kara said quietly, her words directed at Bill as the man shook his head; he had promised to take the survivors of the human race to the safe haven of Earth - yet here he was ignoring the truth.
Kara had threatened the lives of both his wife and daughter; he couldn't trust her anymore. He kept his arm around Laura's waist while he rested his hand on Pandora's back, the child's whimpers and sobs felt like a knife through his heart. A father was meant to protect his child, but he hadn't been able to protect Pandora against the chaos of Kara's return. "Do you hear me?" Kara pleaded for some sort of a response from the man, bidding for his attention.
"Get her out of here" Saul ordered, aware that tensions were too high in the room for any negotiation between the two parties. "Yes Sir" The guards replied as the two at Kara's side began to lead her from the room, pulling her away as Kara fought against them, shouting back at Laura. "You better work on your aim, because I'm not going to stop. You're gonna have to kill me! One more jump and it'll be gone, Admiral!" Kara cried as the guards dragged her out of the room, eventually lifting her from her feet to carry her down the hallway.
Laura wrapped her arms around her daughters waist as she rested her head down on Bill's shoulder, letting her husband hold them against his chest. She knew he had to be sure they were okay. "Papa!" Pandora cried, unable to understand what she had just witnessed. Why had Kara, the bubbly bright Kara, pointed a gun at them? Kara was meant to be her family - and family certainly didn't threaten each other. "I know, Pandy" He acknowledged, taking his daughter out of his wife's arms, holding her for a moment before he carried her towards the rack. Bill prayed to the Lord of Kobol that his daughter's dreams wouldn't be haunted by visions of the new Kara, who was only a flicker of the woman she had once been.
"Don't worry about it, nothing is going to happen, I promise" He assured her, listening as the hatch door was locked behind the guards, two of whom no doubt stayed behind to keep vigil over the trio.
Bill couldn't bring himself to contemplate what might have happened if the bullet had hit Kara - or worse yet, if Kara had of been the one to pull the trigger.
It took every ounce of Bill's self control to stop him from bashing the living day lights out of Kara - or from taking a leaf out of his wife's book and throwing her out the nearest airlock. She had put a gun in front of his wife and child. She had threatened his sick wife and scared the life out of his daughter. Kara had played with fire and most certainly gotten burned.
He had loved Kara like a daughter, and she had betrayed that trust.
He shut the door behind him as he entered the cell, his footsteps echoing around the metal bars as he walked toward Kara. "What were you doing? What were you thinking?" He asked, invading Kara's personal space as he brought his face close enough to hers that he could see the leftover tears that had glazed over her eyes. What was she thinking when she took Laura and Pandora hostage?
"What happened to you?" He asked, feeling his anger boiling in his veins as he resisted the urge to reach out and straggle her. The distraught woman before him was not the same Kara Thrace that had once stood before him - brave and valiant in her search for their new home, loyal and true to her Admiral and President. This woman was not his Kara.
"I saw Earth" She reminded him, her lips trembling as she spoke, her heart breaking over the fact that she had already lost the man she considered to be her father figure. "The shape of it, the smell of it, the feel of it on my skin and in my pores and I swear to you it was like I'd been there before," She promised him, shaking her head as fresh tears began to flood her eyes. "Like I never left" Kara added as an afterthought.
Bill looked the young woman straight in the eyes, Laura's earlier warning ringing in his ears. If Kara was a cylon, then she was the perfect weapon against him. She had used her desire to find Earth as a justification for putting both Laura and Pandora in front of the barrel of a gun.
"You're too stupid to figure out that you've just screwed over the one ally you had" He said defiantly, doubting he could ever forgive her for what she had put his family through. For a moment, when he heard the boom of the bullet and his daughter's cry; he had thought Laura had been shot and for a moment, his world had went completely black. He never wanted to be in that position again.
"You didn't have the guts to hold on" He uttered in a threatening tone. Taking a step forward, his voice lowered "Tell me, who's going to help you now?" Bill asked, wondering how his relationship with the woman had managed to turn on its head within such a short space of time. They had thought she was dead. His family had mourned her supposed death - now, she was back and Bill momentarily wondered if she would have been better off dead.
Silence fell between them as Kara took a step back, her breathing laboured as she shook her head. "Yeah, frak me, it sure as hell isn't going to be you. You've got to remind yourself that you're somebody else," She started, her blood boiled at Bill's betrayal.
Did she mean that little to him that he could just lock her away in a cell as though she was a cylon? Had she went from being his substitute daughter to his enemy?
"You're the President's wet nurse" She retaliated, her voice laced with hatred and mixed with contempt for the man before her. He had hurt her with his betrayal, and she was fighting back the only way she knew how.
Laura didn't have the guts to face the truth, to face the reality that it had been Kara who had found Earth, and not herself. Bill didn't have the guts to go against his wife. What authority did they have to tell her that she didn't have 'the guts to hold one'? An uncomfortable pause fell between them once more before Kara curled her lip, "You're the one who doesn't have the guts" She returned his insult, her eyes filled with unsheathed tears.
Their family had fallen apart.
In one swift movement, Bill's hand wrapped around Kara's neck and sent her to the floor, her back crashed against the floor of the cell as he leaned down over her, his hand still clasped at her neck. Kara had crossed the line; Laura was his wife and Pandora's mother, now Kara was nothing more than his pilot.
"Nice to know you still care, Admiral" Kara choked, her hand clasped over his wrist as she tried to lift his hand off her neck. "You act like I'm supposed to care about you. You put my wife and child in front of the barrel of your gun, and you still expect me to care about you!" Bill growled before he abruptly let go of her neck, letting her head bounce back on the floor as he stood up, ignoring her cries of angst as he headed out of the cell, slamming the door behind him.
Bill wondered if the Lords of Kobol had taken him as their play thing.
His wife's cancer had returned.
His daughter was the focus of a vision, and possibly a cylon.
The woman he once loved like a daughter had held his wife and child hostage.
His son was retiring from being a pilot.
Bill drowned the remainder of his whiskey before he slammed the glass down on the bar. "You're enjoying that more than usual" Laura remarked, her paperwork no longer relevant as she turned to look back at her husband with a look of disapproval. "Hair of the dog, Lee's party" He explained as he placed the lid back onto the glass container while he brought the freshly poured liquid to his lips. Laura snorted at his reply, his fingertips pressed against her temples as she tried to glance over her paperwork. "What do we do? Put her on trial? Find Romo Lampkin? Take a show of hands?" Laura questioned, aware that they would have to make a decision about Kara as soon as possible. The pilot had taken the President and her child hostage, it wasn't a crime that could go unpunished. Bill sighed heavily as he shook his head, "I don't know" He admitted, knowing that if it had of been anyone else other than Kara, they would have already been locked up in the brig for life or thrown out the airlock.
"Follow her into an ambush?" Laura offered, confident that they couldn't take any of Kara's story as being the truth. The young woman had lost her mind; driven crazy by her belief that she had found Earth. Laura refused to let anyone, not even Kara, take them off their course to Earth. "She is driven" Bill reminded his wife, earning a "Yeah" in agreement. As her husband made his way towards his desk at the other side of the room, unsteady on his feet from the amount of alchol he had consumed, Laura rolled her eyes to the highest heavens as she threw her pen down onto her bundle of papers.
They couldn't carry on like this.
"You gonna keep waltzing, or are you gonna sit down and talk?" She snapped, her words stopped Bill in his tracks. "What's going on? Sit" Laura commanded, closing over her files as she slipped her glasses off her nose, her fingertips briefly touched her temples as Bill sat himself down on the chair at the side of her desk, his whiskey glass still in hand. "What if she's telling the truth?" Bill asked, finally attempting out loud what had been on his mind from the mind the pilot had returned to the ship with her story of finding Earth. Kara had never been wrong before. He took a long sip of his drink, gathering up some Dutch courage, before he continued.
"She was supposed to die out there" He reminded them both, the recording of her ship shattering into a million pieces still played over in his mind time and time again like a broken record. "She didn't, I can't explain it. What if she was meant to help us? And this was a..." Bill stopped in his tracks, unable to bring himself to consider the idea of Kara's return from the dead as being a miracle. Laura raised her eyebrow as she leaned forward, "A what? A miracle?" She finished, her eyes watching her husband as he raised his head to look at her. "Is that what you want to call this? Go ahead, say it" Laura coaxed, refusing to believe that the man before her would consider Kara's apparent resurrection and discovery of Earth as being a miracle, a sign from the Lords of Kobol themselves. "Grab your piece of the golden arrow. I want to hear Admiral atheist say that a miracle happened" she taunted, remembering how he refused to believe in her visions at the start, now here he was claiming that Kara's return was some sort of a miracle.
"You shot at her and missed at close range" Bill reminded her, his elbow pressed against the desk as his fingers clasped around his whiskey glass. He doubted that Laura had intended to kill the woman why she let the bullet out of its barrel. "Doloxan fraks with your aim" Laura explained, her arms folded defensively against her chest. "So does doubt" Bill disagreed, confident that if Laura had of wanted to kill Kara, then she would have done it. She would have done it to protect Pandora; and everyone else on the ship.
As Bill drowned what was left of his whiskey, Laura narrowed her eyes in disapproval at her husband. "I pulled the trigger and I'd do it again" She assured him "She put her life in front of a bullet as if it had no meaning" It was perhaps that which had shocked Laura the most. Her life meant everything to her. If her cancer stole that from her, then she would miss any chance of seeing Pandora grow up, her search for Earth would bear no fruit and her time with Bill would be cut inhumanely short. "You drop an egg, you reach for another" She concluded, keeping her voice low for fear of waking the sleeping child in the next room.
"Maybe convincing you meant more to her than her own life" Bill offered, his mind filled with possibilities as he took the side of his pilot, of the woman he had once considered to be like a daughter to him. "Is that your miracle? You want to talk about miracles?" Laura asked in disbelief, unable to grasp the fact that they were having this discussion.
"On the very same day that a very pale doctor informed me that I had terminal cancer, most of humanity was annihilated, and I survived. And by some mathematical absurdity, I became President. And then my cancer disappeared long enough for us to find a way to Earth". Her thoughts floated back to the girl who had unexpectedly entered their lives and changed them for the better. "And by some twist of fate, we have a daughter who needs us. We have a precious little girl who has no one in this universe except for me and you. You can call it whatever you want. And now, I'm dying" She finished, hoping that Bill would come to accept the fact that her cancer had returned and that there was a possibility that she wouldn't make it to Earth, and that Bill would be alone with Pandora.
"Don't talk that way" Bill insisted, refusing to believe that the illness would claim Laura's life. They had beaten it once before, they could do it again. "Bill, you gotta face this" Laura said quietly, her voice dropping to a whisper as a tears formed in the corner of her eyes. "My life is coming to an end soon enough, and I am not going to apologise to you for not trusting her" As a mother, Laura felt a duty to ensure that no matter what, Pandora got to Earth. That she got the normal childhood that Laura had always hoped that any child of hers would have. "And I am not, I am not going to trust her with the fate of this fleet" Over the last few weeks, the crew of Galactica had became her family, and she owed it to them to ensure they stayed on course.
Shaking her head, Laura continued speaking, "You are so buckled up inside" She sighed, "You can't take any more loss. Your son's leaving, this," Laura nodded down to the bandages wrapped around her wrist from her latest doloxan treatment, "me. Pandora. I know it". Laura admitted, finally voicing her fears.
Out of all of them, Bill had the heaviest of crosses to carry.
"No one's going anywhere" Bill proclaimed, as though his words could stop fate and destiny from ever happening. His son wouldn't leave the ship, Pandora wouldn't fall victim to Laura's vision, and his wife wouldn't die at the hands of her cancer.
Laura glanced away as the tears grew over her eyes. Bill had to accept reality. "Okay" She laughed nervously, her lips shaking as she turned back to her husband as the tears began to roll down her cheeks. "Here's the truth. This is what's going on. You want to believe Kara" She began, suspecting that Bill's loyalty to the young woman had returned once more. "You would rather be wrong about her and face your own demise than risk losing her again" She prompted, being able to read her husband like an open book. Kara would always be like a daughter to him, no matter what happened.
Bill had lost enough people in his life, not least of all one of his children. He wouldn't allow himself to lose anyone else from his family.
Not Lee.
Not Pandora.
Not Kara.
Certainly not Laura.
"You can stay in the room, but get out of my head" Bill sneered as he stood from his seat, clasping the whiskey bottle by the neck as he filled his glass up once again. "You're so afraid to live alone" Laura said sadly, aware that she herself could be leaving him soon - he didn't deserve to lose anyone else.
"And you're afraid to die that way. You're afraid that you might not be the dying leader that you thought you were, or that your death may be as meaningless as everyone else's." At his words Laura could feel the tears piercing against her eyes, though she refused to let them fall. Placing her glasses back on her nose, she opened her folder as she tried to focus on her paperwork.
Looking down, Laura's lips trembled in fear as she felt the strands of hair fall out of her hair like brittle straw. The more she ran her fingers through her once luxurious curls, the more strands of hair came out, until her fists were filled with thick strands of auburn curls. She hadn't lost her hair last time; it was one of the reasons why she was able to keep her sickness hidden for so long - there hadn't been many physical signs. Now, what was she supposed to do? Pandora knew she was sick, but the child didn't know the true extent of her illness. How was she supposed to explain to the girl that she might not be around to watch her grow up?
How could she prepare her husband and daughter for the fact that she could die before they found Earth?
Tears glazed over her eyes and blinded her vision. Taking off her glasses, she abandoned them on the table. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed, her head buried in her arms as she rested them on the table.
Appearing around the corner, Pandora waited until she heard the door slap shut behind her father before she moved away from the shadows. She had been sleeping in the bunk when her father's return woke her up. She would have greeted him right away, until the pair of them started to argue and she knew better than to interrupt them.
"Mama?" Pandora asked, having heard the woman's tears from her hiding place in the kitchen. Her plush elephant was pressed tightly against her chest as she walked towards Laura, wrapping her free hand around the woman's arm. Laura sniffled as she lifted her head to face the girl, trying to blink away her tears before Pandora reached out to place her small hands against her cheeks, using her thumbs to wipe away the tears that had scared her cheek.
"Papa didn't mean what he said Mama, I know he didn't. He's just sad about Kara, that's all" Pandora promised with such innocence that it broke Laura's heart in two. She had no idea what must have been going through her daughter's head. First Kara supposedly dead, then she had gotten sick and within a day Kara was back and holding them both at gun point. She shouldn't have been so hard on Bill. It couldn't be easy for him, "I know, little one" Laura sighed as she dropped a kiss on the girl's forehead, helping her to get up onto her knee.
Pandora wrapped her arms around Laura's neck and smiled at the woman sadly. "Let's get you ready to go and see Cottle" Laura suggested, the earlier drama of the day had almost made her forget about their appointment with Cottle - almost. They had submitted DNA samples for Cottle to test and compare with both Hera and Sharon's.
Today was a day that the history books had taught Lauren were better spent in bed, but this had to be done.
Deep down, Laura feared that her worst nightmare was about to come true.
"Can I wear the red dress?" Pandora called as she moved off her mother's lap and headed towards the small drawer that housed her collection of clothing. Fixing her hair, Laura stood from her seat and followed Pandora. "You can wear whatever you want" She told the girl, glad that her young age made her blissfully ignorant of the events to come.
No matter what happened today, everything would stay the same between them.
No matter what.
Laura wasn't overly confident that Bill would show up at all. Not after he stormed out of their quarters with yet another drink in his hand.
"Where's your father at today?" Cottle asked as he helped Pandora up onto the bed while shooting a look over his shoulder at Laura. Bill never missed any of Laura's hospital appointments, and he doubted the man would have missed something as important as the results of Pandora's tests. Laura shook her head defensively and Cottle was about to probe the subject a little more before the curtain around the bed was opened and Bill appeared, clearly out of breath as he placed his hand on his chest. "Did you run the whole way here?" Cottle asked, shaking his head as he put out his cigarette. Laura looked up from her spot on the bed to flash her husband a weak smile; a silent reassurance that she hadn't taken his words to heart. This wasn't easy on any of them - not least of all Bill.
It had been the liquor talking. He hadn't meant any of what he said.
He came to a stop at Laura's side and slowly placed his hand on her shoulder, thankful that she didn't flinch away from his touch.
"I've got the results" Cottle began as there was no point beating around the bush, especially when his patient was the child of the President of the Twelve Colonies and the Admiral of the Colonial Fleet. His hands clenched onto the test results, unsure how the relatively new parents would take the news about their daughter. "It's positive" He confirmed, watching as Laura's eyes widened while Bill's grip of the child tightened. No one could know, only the Lords of Kobol knew what could happen if this information got out.
Laura had never previously given much thought to the probabilities of Pandora being a cylon. The thought had never once crossed her mind until the visions began; until the dreaded visions of the Opera House haunted her.
She swallowed and forced herself to turn away.
"Pandora's a cylon" She repeated, as though searching for some clarity in the darkness of the truth. Pandora, their little girl, was a cylon.
"What does that mean, Mama?" Pandora asked bewildered as her eyes darted between Laura and Bill. All she knew was that being a cylon wasn't a good thing, after all, they had thought Kara was one.
"Part cylon" Cottle corrected, the new information caused both of the diplomats before him to widen their eyes in shock. "What?" Bill questioned as he stepped forward to take the results out of Cottle's hand, attempting to make some sense of the numbers before him, "Pandora is only part cylon; she's a human cylon hybrid, just like Hera" Cottle explained, baffled as to how Pandora had inherited the same genetic makeup as Hera - part cylon and part human, yet there was something different about her. Something unnatural.
Bill doubted that he had anymore of a heart to be broken.
His family had been through the wars.
Baltar's trial, Laura's cancer, Kara's disappearance and now this.
"How is that possible? We thought Hera was the only one like that" Laura thought aloud once she had regained the ability to speak. Cottle shook his head in defeat. "I can run more tests, see what I can find, there is differences though between her blood and that of Hera's - it's unnatural somehow." Cottle said, his voice powered as he stepped towards the family, aware that almost anyone could enter the medical area, which left them open to someone stumbling across their sensitive conversation. Bill nodded his head in agreement as he lifted Pandora out of Laura's arms, it was hours after the girl's bedtime. "We'll bring her down tomorrow" He decided, respectfully nodding his head at the other man who was already lighting up another cigarette. Cottle was the keeper of the greatest secret in the fleet.
The short journey back to their quarters was a silent one.
Laura's head was filled with a million questions; not least of all about the Six who had supposedly left Pandora in Colonial One during the exodus from New Caprica. Had Pandora been left with them for protection - to save her from the cylons?
As they entered the quarters, Bill placed Pandora down into her cot before going back to lock the door. Laura sat herself down on the ground beside Pandora's cot that sat around the corner from their rack at the back of the room, furthest from the door.
"Am I bad?" Pandora asked worriedly as her mother tucked her into bed in her cot. "Of course not, little one" Laura assured her, wishing that she had decided against bringing the girl with her to get the results. "You're not going to her rid of me are you? I've never had a mommy or daddy before" Pandora choked, her lips trembling as her eyes filled with puddles of tears. All she knew was that the cylons were their enemy, that her father was fighting against them. Now she was one.
Laura felt her heart break as she shook her head, reaching out to gather the girl into her arms. She rocked the girl in her arms, from side to side, as she hummed softly to her, waiting until the girl's sobs died down to a whimper before sleep claimed her as a willing victim.
"It explains the visions" Bill announced as he helped Laura up once she had tucked the child into bed.
Did the cylons want Pandora the same way they wanted Hera?
Were they searching for her?
Did they know she was here?
"She's innocent, Bill. We both agreed that no matter what, she's our daughter" Laura reminded him, shaking her head as she wrapped her arms around her waist, still refusing to believe the results of Pandora's tests.
"No matter what" He agreed as his eyes fell on the sleeping child, watching as her chest rises and fell. Even if Pandora was part cylon, she was a human girl - just like Hera.