So back when I thought I would never seriously take up writing again, I went through and deleted a couple of work in progress fics, thinking I had backed them up somewhere. And yep, you guessed it, four/five years later and I can't find them anywhere. I think once I finally finish this, I might try and rewrite them from my very vague recollection of them. Anywho, let this be a lesson that you should always backup your writing dears! Anywho, this chapter is very Laura heavy and I've set it over the course of one day, even though it's fairly obvious in the original episode that it's over a few days.

Escape Velocity

Laura had now taken to wearing her wig, they both knew that the hair loss was inevitable. It was a much darker shade than Laura's usual auburn locks, and the straight styling of it seemed harsh against her hollowed cheeks. Today was one of the days when the illness took more out of her than usual. Nauseous, sleep deprived and emotional. Bill had tried to talk her into staying in their quarters but it was no use. She was still the President, and wife of the Admiral, she had to be there.

Sitting in the front row of the service, Laura could appreciate how understated it was. She had always preferred simple services, never one for fuss or grandeur. It was the kind of service she would want for herself. Laura knew that Bill wouldn't know where to start, and she would have to speak to Tory about her wishes. The very idea of it all made her sick to her stomach.

As Tyrol finished speaking and left the altar, Laura leaned into Bill, her hand clasping around his arm. "I like this service," Laura said, her head hovering just above Bill's shoulder, fighting the urge to rest her head there and let herself succumb to her tiredness. "It's not for me, I'll tell you that," Bill replied, hoping to end the conversation there. They had enough reminders of their morality surrounding them as it was, without needing to discuss funeral preferences. "I know, but I want you to know what I like," Laura insisted, her voice barely above a whisper.

Bill refused to even contemplate the idea of it. Laura would not be dying; not on his watch, the Gods be damned.

Standing from the bench, Bill placed his hand on Laura's back as he guided her towards where Tyrol stood next to the exit, waiting to greet the gathered mourners. "That was lovely," Bill said, Laura's earlier words still heavy in his mind as he shook Tyrol's hand. "Thank you," Tyrol replied, turning to look at Laura as the President stepped forward. "I'm sorry, let me know if you need anything. Your son is more than welcome to visit," Laura said, recalling how she had often picked Pandora up from daycare only to find her helping to look after the young Tyrol child. "Thank you, Madam President," Tyrol said, nodding politely at the woman before Bill led her out the door.

"Let's go see Pandy before your appointment with Cottle," Bill suggested, having dropped the girl off at daycare before they went to the service.

Funerals were no place for children.

Laura could feel a raging headache coming on, and it wasn't from her illness. Not only had she just picked up the latest round of Cottle's research on Pandora, but Gaius Baltar was kicking off trouble again. She would never be free of that man and his cult of followers. Laura was sorting her papers back into her bag when she heard the familiar footsteps of her husband.

"Am I that late?" Bill asked, surprised to see that Laura was already packing up to leave. "No this wasn't a treatment. It was just a blood test, and I was picking up some of Cottle's notes on Pandy," Laura explained with a sigh, holding up the folder in her hand before placing it into her handbag. "You bought a new book?" She asked, having caught sight of the unfamiliar leather-bound book under his arm. "Something different this time." Bill replied, looking down at the book he had found gathering dust in their quarters, "It's a classic, my favourite" He explained, having not had the chance to read it over the last four years.

"Searider Falcon, I haven't read it in years" Laura said, recalling a time in her life when she could devour a book in the course of a weekend. Now, she was lucky if she even got five minutes a day to read something for pleasure. "I don't remember how it ends," She added as an afterthought.

"I don't either. I never read the ending," Bill explained, watching as his wife raised a confused eyebrow. "Are you kidding? It's your favourite," Laura said, narrowing her eyes as she looked at her husband. "I like it so much, I don't want it to be over. So I'm saving it," He replied, smiling to himself as he thought of how, if they ever found Earth, he would perhaps finally finish Searider Falcon.

"Maybe I should do that," Laura said, before her face fell and she shook her head, looking away from her husband. Dying people couldn't put things off. "That's a bad idea, maybe not," She muttered, fidgeting with her handbag as she tried to zip it shut.

As she went to put her handbag on her shoulder, Bill reached out to take it from her. These days Laura could just about handle picking Pandora up, and he knew all too well how much practically every bone in her body ached by the end of the day. "Let me take that for you," Bill insisted, putting the tote bag onto his shoulder as he led the way out of the hospital wing.

"What did Cottle say about Pandy?" Bill asked, using the few short moments they had before Laura's security detail would join them. "He's compared the makeup of their metabolic DNA, and there's more human DNA in Pandora than Hera, which raises more questions than answers" Laura said with a heavy sigh, knowing that the only likely way they would get information would be from the cylons themselves, and Laura wasn't about to consider that option anytime soon. "Cottle is going to keep working on it," She concluded, crossing her arms as they reached the door when her detail was waiting.

For now, that was a problem for another day. Nothing was going to change her feelings towards Pandora.

The girl was her daughter, no matter what any of Cottle's tests said.

Bill chose then to change the subject. "Baltar is back home in the Brig again," He said, knowing that the man's latest publicity stunt was no doubt adding to his wife's already high stress levels. "Desecration of a Temple," Laura muttered, shaking her head as she recalled the briefing she had received earlier, "it's his revenge for what happened to him this morning" She concluded, praying to the Lords of Kobol that fighting between Baltar's cult and the more mainstream religions on board wasn't about to become a recurring theme.

"It was brutal. I have my personnel trying to track down anything on the Sons of Ares, but nobody's talking," Bill explained, doubting that his men would ever be able to track down those responsible for the attack. After all, Baltar had plenty of enemies. "The thing is that Baltar knows that there are religious hardliners in Dogsville, but he continues to provoke" Laura added as they headed down the hallways in the direction of their quarters, her security detail following behind them.

"We don't need religious war on the ship," Bill insisted, knowing that it was the very last thing they needed to add to their plate. "Oh gods no. It would become our frakkin' responsibility, yours and mine. Seriously, Bill, we have 30,000 people left and they're not happy unless they're kicking each other's teeth in. This is what we've become?" Laura asked, wrapping her hand around Bill's arm as he helped her up the steps. This was becoming yet another issue that she was having to depend on her husband to find a solution for. She already had enough issues with the Quorum without adding a religious war to the mix. "No, it's him. Baltar has an uncanny way of stirring up all the crap" Bill insisted, wanting to keep what little faith he had left in humanity.

"I wonder if he would be willing to stay in lockdown indefinitely, for his own safety," Bill suggested, thinking out loud as the guard outside their quarters opened the door for them, and he felt Laura slip her hand out of his arm. "And make a martyr out of him? No way," Laura insisted, not wanting them to repeat the mistakes of the past. "Those girly, groupie sex whatever-they-are, they already think he's a god," She reminded her husband as they stepped inside the comfort of their private quarters.

"So we kick him off of the Galactica," Bill suggested, placing his wife's bag down on the dining table. He suspected there were few things that his wife wanted to do more than throw Gaius Baltar out the nearest airlock, but alas that was not an option on the table. "No, I want him close," Laura decided, her eyes flashing with an idea as she turned on her heel and headed back out the door. "I'm going to the Brig, can you get Pandora and meet me back at my treatment this evening?" Laura asked, having deliberately left the girl at the daycare so that she could have an honest discussion with Cottle. "You want to see him?" Bill asked, the sound of his voice causing Laura to turn back to face him.

"I want him to see me" Laura concluded, before leaving their quarters in the direction of the Brig.

Laura hated the Brig. She hated it with a passion.

She let the door of Baltar's cell slam shut behind her, and she watched as the disgraced man was jolted awake by the noise. "Were you asleep?" Laura asked, her hands on her hips as she looked down at him. "What is it this time?" Baltar inquired with an audible sigh, clearly not in the mood to make small talk. "Here to strip-search me? Or could it possibly be that your presence here means that the President has been made aware of my situation?" He asked, sitting up straighter as he looked at the woman that he knew despised his very being.

"It's being looked into," Laura replied sharply. "Is it really?" Batlar asked, his voice laced with a healthy dose of skepticism. "Aggressively," She bit back, her heels clicking around the room as she sat herself down beside him. "Now here's the thing, I want you to look at me, Gaius. Just look at me," Laura said, trying to get the man to make eye contact with her, daring him to look a dying woman in the eyes.

When Baltar finally raised his eyes to meet hers, Laura reached up to touch the shiny ends of her hair. "This is a wig." She revealed, watching as the man slowly leaned closer. "I'm dying," Laura stated bluntly, wanting him to know that she had not a woman with time to waste.

"Now, if you look in my eyes...go ahead, look," Laura insisted, taking her glasses off her nose as she leaned closer to the man, her eyes ever fixed on his. "You can probably see it." She said, knowing that with each passing day, the life behind her eyes was slowly draining away. "I'm sorry," Batlar said, his voice smaller than Laura could ever remember it being. "No, no, no, no. I don't want your pity. I'm still doing my job. I'm still living my life with my husband and daughter. In fact, we're going to aggressively pursue the men that attacked you," Laura replied, her voice faltering for just a moment as she mentioned her family.

"And I'm going to limit the size of public assemblies to protect your people, but I'm going to be slipping away from this life soon and I've gotten kind of curious as to what that's going to be like, and so I did some research" She explained, watching as the confusion became more evident in Baltar's eyes. "And there are some people who say that when people are getting closer to their death, they just don't care as much about rules and laws and conventional morality," Laura added, her voice getting lower as she spoke.

"Are you threatening me?" Baltar asked, his eyebrow raised as he leaned back from the woman as though she might reach out and throttle him. "No, no, I'm just saying have a quiet life. And I'll die a quiet little death, and everyone will be happy. It's just that I'm not in the mood any longer to indulge you. And that's all " Laura said as she looked the man dead in the eyes, before standing from her seat and heading towards the door.

"And you are being released, so stay safe," Laura announced, putting her glasses back on as she stopped next to the door of Baltar's cell, more than ready to leave the man's company.

"I'm sorry," Baltar said, his words stopping Laura in her tracks. "I'm sorry for your little girl, Pandora, isn't it?" He asked, watching as the woman's back stiffened at the mention of her daughter. In that moment, the visions of the opera house came running back to her. "Don't ever mention my child," Laura spat, her breathing quickening as she glared at the man. "Before I leave this world, I'll make damn sure to make it a better one for her," She said, slamming the cell door behind her as she left.

In Laura's mind, that better world didn't have Gaius Baltar in it.

As if the day wasn't long enough already, Laura had a meeting with the Quorum to endure before she could take her treatment and retire for the day. As per usual, her step-son was proving to be as challenging as possible.

"Of course you have authority over emergency measures, but you bulldozed this through after the session was closed," Lee announced, standing from his seat with her notepad in hand, clearly looking to engage his step-mother in a row. As his colleagues muttered beside him in agreement, Laura could feel her headache worsening. "It's a crowd control measure," She reminded them, "I also authorised the repair of a cargo elevator. Do you want to talk about that too?" Laura asked, leaning back in her seat as she glared down the table at Lee.

Bill would have to speak to him, but she reckon their relationship was on equally as rocky terms as hers was with Lee.

"Crowd control? Looks to me like it was pretty well designed purely to stop Gaius Baltar's organisation," Lee said, clearly still in his old habit of defending the disgraced former President. "You mean his cult," Laura corrected him, folding her hands on the table as she shook her head. Patience was a virtue she was quickly losing where Lee was concerned. "Well his "cult" was attacked, and from what I'm hearing around the fleet, it was pretty brutal," Lee responded, showing no signs of backing down. "It was brutal, and this measure is designed explicitly to protect those people. If they aren't gathering in mass, they aren't provoking resentment " Laura insisted, wishing she could make the younger man see sense.

"But limits his group, while permitting more mainstream worship," Lee said, addressing his colleagues on the Quorum and not his step-mother. "Wherever Gaius Baltar is, violence happens. And if he doesn't cause it, he draws it. My job, Mr. Adama, is and always will be, to keep the people safe," Laura snapped back, glaring the man down as she felt her blood pressure rising.

Letting Lee take the Caprica seat on the Quorum was currently racking very high on her list of mistakes in life.

Laura gave the delegates a moment of time to bicker amongst themselves before she stopped their useless arguments. "Clear your heads. We are talking about Gaius Baltar. Everyone in this room experienced tragedy in New Caprica. Have we forgotten?" Laura asked, bewildered as to how the people in front of her could have changed their tune so quickly as to defend the man who had caused them so much pain.

"Will you open this order to a full Quorum vote?" One of the delegates asked, and Laura resisted the urge to roll her eyes to the back of her head. "No," Laura snapped, her patience wearing thin. "We can override, Madam President. I cannot let this stand." Lee said, clearly chuffed with himself for having brought his colleagues around to his way of thinking.

"You can override," Laura started, standing from her seat at the head of the table, "and you cannot let this stand, Mr. Adama? Then you open it up to a vote. And if you strike this down, you can all go back to your constituents and you can tell them what you've done, and "we, the people" will have triumphed, but think about what it's gonna cost you. Because every single one of you remembers what it was like when Gaius Baltar had political power, and you should be terrified with what this man could do with blind religious devotion," Laura concluded, picking up her folder as she shook her head.

She glared down the table at her step-son, "So go ahead, and vote" Laura said, her ease lacing her voice was something not too far from disgust for her colleagues.

By the time Laura reached the hospital wing for her treatment, Pandora and Bill were waiting on her. Slipping out of her heels and jacket, she discarded them at the bottom of the bed before she leaned back against the pillows. "Hello, baby" Laura said, smiling to herself as Pandora shifted over on the bed to rest against her chest. "Hi, Mama," The girl said, her elephant plush under her arms as she closed her eyes.

As Laura's illness worsened, Pandora spent more time with the woman and less time at the daycare. Today had been an exception, with all its ups and downs, and the child had no qualms about clinging to her mother now, especially when she could sense how upset the woman was.

The trio sat in silence as Cottle appeared and hooked Laura up to her usual IV. Once the Doctor left, Laura finally said what was on her mind.

"Lee has no idea. He really has no idea," Laura whispered, pulling her knees up to her chest as Pandora shifted herself to rest her head on the woman's shoulder. "There are pragmatic realities he refuses to face," She insisted, knowing that something had to be done about Lee.

Bill sighed to himself as he took off his glasses, folding them on top of the book on his lap. "Well, that's a problem, of course. He's doing what he thinks is right." He said, knowing that there was not going to be an easy solution to their problem. "Well, yeah, he's Lee," Laura replied, her arm curled around Pandora as she held her against her side. Sometimes she wished her step-son could see what he was doing to them, what they were all collectively going through. "Thing is, it probably is the right thing, but sometimes the right thing is a luxury, and it can have profoundly dangerous consequences. It's almost as if he doesn't want that to be true" She reminded him, her eyes zoning out as she thought of all the decisions she had made over her time as President. It was easy to talk about doing the right thing when you weren't the one making the decisions.

"Okay I've gotta stop this, I'm not supposed to get upset during treatment," She said, pushing herself down in the bed as she closed her eyes. Today had been a rollercoaster, both emotionally and physically. For now, Laura had to block out all the chaos of the world around them and focus on what was happening inside their hospital cubicle. Focus on the two people who mattered most to her.

It was then that Pandora reached out for her place at Laura's side and tapped her father's arm, "Papa, read the next chapter," The girl insisted, before snuggling back against Laura's chest. "I must warn you that I'm getting to the part that I haven't read yet," Bill confessed as he opened the book. "Oh dear. Are you going to be able to continue?" Laura asked, her fingers running through Pandora's ringlets as she looked at her husband, curling her lips up in a reassuring smile.

Bill put his glasses back on as Laura lifted herself on the bed so that she was laying on her side so she could watch the man as he read to them.

"Chapter seven," He began, his eyes focused on the words on the aging parchment in his hands. "The raft was not as seaworthy as I had hoped. The waves repeatedly threatened to swap it. I wasn't afraid to die. I was afraid of the emptiness I felt inside. I couldn't feel anything. That's what scared me. It came into my thoughts. It filled them. It felt good," Bill read, all the while his mind was fixed on the reality of their situation, on the reality of his wife's illness and the reality of the fact he and Pandora could lose her.

When he looked at his wife and daughter, he chuckled to himself when he was met with two sleeping figures, curled up together in the hospital bed. Standing from his seat, he gathered up the grey cotton blanket he knew Laura kept in her bag and draped it over their sleeping bodies.

For tonight, Bill wouldn't think of the world outside their little bubble.