The eagle eyed amongst you might notice we've skipped an episode. None of our Adamas feature in X, so we're skipping through to Faith, which again is a very Laura heavy episode. Much like the episode, this chapter serves more as a filler chapter as opposed to anything actually happening, especially as we're so close to the *drama*. This has ended up being significantly longer than I thought it would be, but the next few chapters are all going to be on the longer end as well.
Faith
It was Pandora who had suggested that Laura stop wearing the wig. "You should be comfy, Mama," the girl had said one evening when they were curled up in their bunk. The wig, while it kept up public appearances, was a nuisance to wear. Tori had brought her a sage green scarf to wear around her head, and Pandora had taken to painting little flowers onto the material with the paint set Bill had gotten her.
Now, Cottle was ordering her to the hospital wing for two days of treatment. It meant she had to gather up whatever she would need from Colonial One, where she was only ever present for a few hours in the day for meetings, and to speak to Tori about overseeing anything that came across her desk in the meantime. Bill had offered to clear out one of the empty rooms to be set up as a makeshift office for her for the days when she couldn't bring herself to go back to Colonial One.
Sitting at her desk on Colonial One, Laura watched as Tori filled her bag with the papers and briefing notes that she would have to look over. "So I guess just pack up everything that's here. Pack up all of these drafts. I'm going to have plenty of time on my hands over the next couple of days, so pack it up," Laura instructed, knowing that she needed to be kept busy and her mind needed to be kept active during her longer treatments.
Laura had to feel as though she was in control of at least one area of her life.
Tori's arms dropped to her side as she looked at the woman with a glance of disapproval. It was only in front of Tori and her family that Laura went without either the wig or her headscarf, and it was an ever present reminder of the extent of the woman's illness. "Hey, at the least the worst is over, two more Doloxan treatments and you will be over the hump," She offered, knowing that her boss was in the final rounds of her treatment plan. Glancing out of the corner of her eye, she watched Pandora as the child walked around the cabin, collecting the few bits and pieces of hers that were dotted across the President's office.
Their time on Colonial One would be limited to Quorum meetings and the occasional press conference. Not that either the girl or her mother would complain about that. Galactica was their home.
"And I'm gonna need you to really keep an eye on things until then," Laura said, leaning forward on her desk. "Don't worry. I'll make sure our friend from Picon sees the error of his ways," Tori assured her, carrying over the two leather bags full of papers to the President's desk, sitting herself down in the chair across from Laura. "I'm not just talking about the Quorum, Tori," Laura explained, wondering in that moment how different things would be if it was Bill sitting across from her instead of her, "There was a time a few months ago when you seemed overwhelmed by the stresses and the pressures of this job, but lately you've really stepped up, and I'm going to be demanding even more of that from you in the days to come because," She paused, feeling her lips begin to tremble as she recalled just how bad it was last time in those final treatments.
This time, it was different.
This time, she had a family that she risked leaving behind.
This time, Laura Roslin-Adama had everything to lose.
"I'm not quite sure of what I'm doing right. I'm sort of…" Laura paused, glancing over to one of the flight seats where Pandora had sat herself, backpack in hand. The girl's feet hovered above the floor as she patiently waited on her mother to finish getting ready to leave. Pandora's presence served as a reminder to Laura that she had to keep it together; at least for the girl's sake. "I'm just gonna need you to keep a keen eye on every single thing that comes across this desk," She concluded, knowing if she let even a single thing slip through unchecked, then Tom would have no trouble bringing it to the Quorum.
"I appreciate your confidence, Madame President," Tori said, aware that she had witnessed a rare moment of vulnerability from her boss. "Thank you," Laura said, pushing her seat back from the desk as she stood. "Let's go, Pandy," She said, throwing on her blazer as she put her hand out for the girl to take.
Pandora jumped off the flight seat and made her way around to her mother's desk, her plush elephant in one hand, her other hand reaching out to take the woman's hand. "Do you think Uncle Cottle would let me colour on his paper?" The girl asked, looking up at Laura with her bambi eyes, having taken to calling everyone her 'Aunt' and 'Uncle'. Galactica had become her family, it had become their family. Laura felt a pang of fear run through her; as long as they could keep Pandora's situation hidden from the fleet, the girl would be safe and protected. "You'll have to ask him yourself, little one," Laura said, squeezing the girl's hand as she led the way down to the shuttle transport.
They had debated how often Pandora should be allowed in the hospital wing. It was different during these longer sessions when Laura would be hooked up to the machine for hours on end, especially when Bill would only be able to sit with her occasionally when the fleet was quiet. It wasn't like the shorter sessions where Bill could come to read to them and Pandora could take a nap. Eventually they agreed that she would go to the daycare for a few hours during the day so Laura could rest, and then she would spend the rest of the day at the hospital wing.
Laura was asleep in her hospital cubicle when she awoke to the unpleasant, yet familiar, sound of Baltar's voice on the wireless. Even in her sleep, she couldn't get away from him. Getting out of bed, she checked her IV drip before she put on her shoes, dragging her infusion pump along behind her as she followed the noise. Laura could hear one of the nurses speaking to the patient behind the dull navy curtain. It was fairly clear that the patient was less than pleased with her treatment.
As the nurse came out from behind the curtain, Laura nodded her head at the younger woman before she slipped inside the curtain. "Hello," Laura said, taking in the sight of the woman strapped up to several machines, laying flat on the bed, clutching a white cloth in her hands. "Oh, great. Now the President," The woman said, her head firmly on the pillow against her back, making it clear she wasn't in the mood for visitors. "She struck me three times today," Laura offered, hoping to make the woman come around. "Be thankful she hasn't put a catheter in you," The woman responded, causing them both to chuckle as Laura ventured further into the cubicle.
Baltar's voice continued over the wireless. "All this just to...keep me alive for a few more days. It's so pointless," The woman spoke, her voice dropping as she shook her head. Laura could tell the woman had already lost her fight, had lost the will to keep going. "No, it's not pointless," Laura responded, knowing that she would go through a thousand Doloxan treatments just to a single day more with Bill and Pandora. Just one single day. "And I'm sure it isn't helping listening to Gaius Baltar-" She said, her hands reaching down for the wireless on the table when the patient began to protest.
"No, no, no. Don't touch that!" The woman shouted, raising from her place against the pillows as she glared at Laura. "Who the frak do you think you are?" She demanded, working herself into hysterics as Baltar's voice continued to flow through the cubicle. "Leave me alone!" She screamed, her trembling now turning into solid sobs as her shoulders shook.
Pulling her insulin pump along with her, Laura returned back to her cubicle, trying to think of any way to get Baltar's frakkin' voice out of her head.
It wasn't long until Tori appeared with Pandora, and the child contented herself in the simple knowledge of being near her mother. Ever since Baltar's trial, the girl showed less and less interest in going to the daycare. She was almost petrified of being separated from either Bill or Laura, so her trips to daycare were kept to a few hours at a time, usually just to when Hera would be there with her. Laura and Pandora enjoyed their lunch together, or what little Laura could force herself to stomach, sitting cross-legged next to each other on her hospital bed. She listened as Pandora rattled off stories about her morning, about how she had played hide-and-seek with Hera and how Bill had come to visit her during his morning break.
Taking a glance at the time, Laura knew it wouldn't be long until the nurse came back to check up on her again. "Tori is going to take you back to daycare," She explained, watching as Pandora's bottom lip dropped before the child sighed. "It's only for a little while, your Papa will pick you up in a few hours," Laura said, lifting the little girl down from the bed, shocked at how even the light-weight of the young child was becoming too much for her. "Will he finish the book?" Pandora asked, taking Laura's hand as they walked through the hospital wing while one of the nurses appeared to help pull Laura's infusion pump along beside them. "You'll have to ask your Papa that," Laura chuckled, waving at Tori as they reached the door of the hospital wing, where her Chief of Staff was waiting to take Pandora back to daycare.
Laura kissed Pandora's forehead before she watched the girl walked-off hand in hand with Tori, and she felt her heart a break a little as Pandora turned around to look back at her before they disappeared around the corner. "I've got it from here," Laura whispered, moving to take her infusion pump herself as she headed back inside.
"Madame President," The voice floated from inside the cubicle that Laura had been thrown out of several hours earlier. Laura stopped, taking a few steps back before she stepped inside the cubicle. "I wanted to apologise for before. I-I have good moments and bad," The black haired woman explained, and Laura noted how the woman appeared to have slightly more colour to her cheeks than before. "And that was which?" Laura joked with a raised eyebrow, happy to earn a laugh from the patient.
The woman waved her forward into the cubicle, "Come in here. I have something for you," She explained, pushing herself up against her pillows. "For me?" Laura asked, shocked that the woman who had only hours ago was screaming at her, now had a gift to give her. "Yes, come in," The patient insisted, and Laura stepped further inside the cubicle.
"Would you get it? It's in the first drawer," The woman instructed, pointing to the small dresser beside her bed. "Right here. That's it, yes," She said, watching as Laura retrieved the white silk scarf with little rosebuds. "This is for me?" Laura asked, savouring the feel of the luxurious material against her fingertips. "I hope it's not too gaudy" The woman said, looking up at the President with a look of genuine affection.
Laura sat herself down on the plastic seat next to the woman's bed, holding the scarf in her hands. "Your little girls painted yours, didn't she?" The woman asked, having heard the soft voice of the child ring throughout the hospital wing. Laura chuckled as she nodded her head, "She did, but she'll love this one as well. Thank you," She said, knowing that although Pandora had never seen roses before, that the girl was fascinated by pictures of them, which was why she had painted the flowers on the end of her mother's headscarf.
"What colour are you hoping for?" The woman asked, and Laura raised a confused eyebrow. "When it grows back in?" She added, and Laura nodded her head in understanding, missing her own luscious auburn locks. "Uhm, well," Laura said, reaching up to touch the top of her head, her fingertips met by the cotton material of her scarf and not the thick locks of hair that had once resided there. "I was thinking maybe blue. Nice royal blue. Change of pace," She joked, laughing along with her fellow patient until the woman began to cough and the laughing dyed down.
The woman reached out to take her hand, and Laura smiled softly as she looked into her eyes. "It's going to get a lot worse. Be prepared for that," She said, as Baltar's voice continued to stream from the wireless. Laura nodded her head in understanding, knowing that the woman in front of her was not long for this life.
Laura had no sooner returned to her own cubicle than Doc Cottle walked in, checking the information on her infusion pump. "We're on the home stretch now," He said, knowing that it was long treatments like this, when she was away from her family, that hit Laura the hardest.
She nodded her head, fidgeting with the silk scarf that she had been gifted earlier. "If the treatment doesn't work?" Laura asked, her mind racing back to the last time the treatment hadn't worked, until the time when the only way to save her was with Hera's blood cells. She couldn't imagine Bill seeing her like that again, especially now. And Pandora...she couldn't bear thinking about it.
"We will need to go back to the drawing board," Cottle said, in silent contemplation as he looked over Laura's folder full of hospital notes. "Hera's blood is unlikely to work this time, we would need a different metabolic makeup to have the same effect as hers did," He explained, before pausing for a moment as he flicked through the pages inside the thin blue file hidden within Laura's medical records. "I'll let you rest," Cottle offered, his eyes focused on the folder as he walked out of Laura's hospital cubicle and back towards his office, an idea forming in his head.
After the nurse had checked on her for the fourth time that day, Laura found herself back in her neighbour's cubicle. "For what it's worth, I voted for you in the last election. And I don't like how Baltar keeps ragging on you, but that is not why I listen to him" The woman revealed, looking at Laura as the woman sat in the plastic visitor's chair. "Why do you listen to him?" Laura asked, suspecting that the woman wanted her to dwell deeper.
"I had an experience that made me rethink all my preconceptions," The woman said, and Laura tilted her head as she watched her. "What kind of experience?" She asked, wondering if these were the words of a dying woman trying to make sense of the world around her.
"It happened the night after Cottle told me that my cancer had spread to my liver and I'd never be leaving this place. I was on a ferry crossing a river, and as we were approaching the other side. I saw all these people standing on the bank. And we got closer, and I recognised them. My parents. My sister Kathy, who died when I was 12," The woman said, telling her story as Laura moved to the edge of her seat to listen, "my husband, my girls. I-I was scared for a moment. You know, how is this happening? But then I-I felt it. This...presence...hovering all around me. Warm, loving and it said "Don't be scared, Emily, I am with you. Hold my hand and we'll cross over together," She paused, and Laura contemplated her words for a moment as she folded her arms.
"But a lot of people in our predicament have dreams like that, Emily," Laura reminded her, knowing that her own dreams were filled with her sisters and parents, of introducing them to her husband and daughter, of being back with them again, of bringing them to the cabin that Bill had promised to build for her on Earth. "No," Emily insisted, shaking her head as she closed her eyes, going back to the land of her dreams. "I was there. I felt...the cool breeze coming from the water. The spray from the bow," She said, opening her eyes again to look at Laura.
"Maybe he's stumbled onto something. You know, he talks about the river that separates our world from the next. That-that there's more to this existence than we can see with our naked eye. There's a power that we can't begin to understand," Emily concluded, and Laura sat silently as she thought of what the woman had said. They were almost certainly just the words of a dying woman, that much she could relate to.
"But this God that Baltar refers to, it is the Cylon god, you know that, don't you?" Laura asked, unsure how to proceed with the conversation in the most sensitive way towards Emily's clearly firmly held beliefs. "If he's the one and true God, he belongs to all of us. Otherwise he isn't much of a god, is he?" She asked, and Laura sighed to herself, knowing she couldn't entertain the idea of what the woman beside her was saying. "It's just that, he's a fantasy," Laura stated, standing firm in her belief as Emily shook her head, "Oh, Laura. And the Lords of Kobol are real?" She said, and Laura chuckled to herself, knowing exactly what her new friend was going to say.
"Reigning from a metaphysical mountaintop, in those silly outfits. Zeus handing out fates out of an urn, like-like they were lottery tickets. 'You're gonna work on a Tylium ship. You're gonna be an Admiral. Your family's gonna be evaporated in an attack on the colonies, but you'll survive for three more years in a mouldy compartment on a freighter till your body starts to eat itself up alive'" Emily paused for a moment, wallowing in her own pity, watching as Laura seemed to stare off into the distance before her face. "Those are the Gods that you worship? Capricious. Vindictive." Emily asked, and Laura found herself thinking about just how cruel the gods could be.
After all, she had endured losing her family, then becoming a politician, and then by some trick of fate she survived the genocide of her race and became President of what little remained of the human race. She survived cancer once by sheer luck, and no sooner had she found a family of her own, no sooner had she fulfilled her dream of being a mother, then the cancer had come back.
Emily was right, the gods could be vindictive.
"But they're not meant to be taken literally. They're metaphors, Emily" Laura insisted, trying to get herself out of her own thoughts. "I don't need metaphors. I need answers" Emily said, knowing that metaphors and stories of gods would do nothing to soothe her soul in these final hours and days.
"You're like my mother. She wasn't satisfied with metaphors either. She was convinced that Aphrodite herself was gonna swoop her away when she died. And she believed it," Laura spoke, but her mind was a million miles away, to a lifetime ago, on Caprica with her mother, in a hospital cubicle not all too dissimilar to this one. "Even after the Doloxan and the radiation failed to stop her cancer. She was a teacher, she was a….Oh, she was something to behold at the head of a classroom, and her students…" Her voice began to crack as she thought of how different her mother was in the end, no longer the strong, charismatic woman who could command the attention of her classroom with a simple word.
Laura felt a sob raising in her throat as she spoke, the tears pooling around the corners of her eyes, "Her students loved her. They-they'd walk through fire for her. And then you see this woman who...seemed so," Laura paused, her breath shaking as the tears began to roll down her cheeks. "Eternal, she...withered away, and I find myself having to change her diaper because she couldn't even-" She stopped again, her emotions getting the better of her as her chapped lips shivered against the force of her crying. The idea of Bill and Pandora seeing her like that killed her.
"And at the moment she died, there were no gleaming fields of Elysium, stretched out before her. There was this...dark...black abyss," Laura sobbed, stiflingly as she wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. "And she was just terrified, she was so scared, I'm sorry" She breathed, the image of her mother's face in her last few moments was marked in her memory forever.
Emily held her hand outstretched for Laura to take. "Laura," She said, watching as the woman tried to get her emotions under control. As Laura reached out to take the woman's hand, Emily spoke again. "You were terrified. You saw only darkness. You can't possibly know what your mother experienced. You're-You're still searching. You're," Emily began to correct her until her words were drowned out by a violent fit of coughing as the monitors around her began to beep suddenly.
"Doc Cottle!" Laura cried as she jumped to her feet, helping Emily to sit up in the bed as the woman continued to struggle to breathe. "Doc! Do something!" She said, as the white haired man stepped into the cubicle and placed his hands on Emily's shoulders. "Nurse, get me some morphine quickly," Cottle said to the woman behind as Laura felt Emily grip her hand with a vice like hold.
"Shh, it's okay," Laura said, trying to comfort Emily as she rubbed the woman's back, ignoring the throbbing pain in her hand from where Emily was digging in her nails. "It's all right," She added, watching as Cottle put the injection into the IV. Laura moved her head behind, resting her cheek against the back of Emily's head, not wanting the woman to see how upset she was.
Once Cottle was finished, Laura helped him lower Emily back down in the bed. Her coughing and cries of pains had died down to a gentle whimper. "All we can do for her now is to try and make her comfortable," Cottle said, shaking his head as he looked at the woman's vital signs. "That's all?" Laura asked, breathless from the ordeal they had just endured. "I'm sorry, that's it" Cottle said, watching as Laura blinked back tears before nodding. "All right," She said, looking at Emily as the woman's eyes fell shut as sleep took her.
Sitting at the side of Emily's bed, Laura folded her hands in prayer.
Then she wept.
She wept for the pain Emily was enduring.
She wept at the idea of her daughter seeing her like this.
She wept at the idea of Bill being the one holding her hand as Cottle tried to "make her comfortable".
Standing in front of the familiar hospital cubicle, Laura crossed her arms as she listened to the sound of Baltar's voice floating from the wireless.
Emily was gone; and the only sign that she had ever been there was the wireless.
"Mama"
Pandora's small voice pulled Laura out of her wallowing, forcing her back into the land of the living. Turning away from the empty hospital bed, Laura's lips quivered as she forced a smile, as the tears threatened to pool at the corners of her eyes.
Laura Roslin-Adama had every reason to live.
Bill held onto Pandora's hand as they walked towards Laura, "Cottle says you can come home," He revealed, knowing how much Laura hated her time in the hospital wing. It was like being a monkey in a circus ring, constantly watched by passersby, the subject of quiet whispered and sideway glances. "That would be nice," Laura said with a smile, conscious of her need to get away from the constant reminders of her own mortal being.
She stood to the side as Bill collected her things, and Laura found her eyes hovering over the empty bed where Emily had once lay. "I need to talk to you, when the little one is asleep," Laura said softly as she slipped her hand into Bill's arm. He nodded silently and led the way out of the hospital wing, raising his hand in a silent greeting to Cottle as they walked past.
The journey to their quarters was uneventful. Pandora walked alongside them, telling Laura about her time at daycare with Hera and how they had started a new book of drawings together.
Later that evening, Laura found herself wrapped in her thick white dressing robe, watching Pandora sleep from where she sat on the leather sofa. Bill sat down beside her, a glass of water in one hand and whisky in the other. He had changed out of his uniform and into his night clothes, wrapped in a brown bathroom to keep out the chill that seemed to make its way through Galactica.
"You really believe that there's something in this horse manure that Baltar's peddling?" Bill asked, having listened intently to Laura's story about her encounter with Emily. "I don't know," Laura replied truthfully, "Something is happening here and I don't really understand it, Bill," She confessed, pulling her eyes away from the sleeping child and to her husband.
Bill shook his head as he took a strong sip of his whisky. "Talk to me. What's going on?" Laura asked, reaching out to take Bill's hand in her own. A silence fell between them before Bill finally spoke again.
"Kara comes back from the dead. I let her go off chasing her vision of Earth. Well, she's overdue," Bill explained and Laura found herself torn between how to feel. Part of her would never very truly trust Kara Thrace, not after she pulled a gun on her in front of her daughter. Yet, Kara held a piece of Bill's heart, she was part of their family - the dysfunctional part of it - whether Laura liked it or not.
"Lee turns in his wings. And Helo, Athena, Gaeta. Will I ever see those kids again?" Bill asked, clutching his whisky glass in his right hand as he looked across the room to where Pandora was asleep in her small bunk. "Then all this stuff with Pandy," He muttered, shaking his head as he downed the rest of his whisky, feeling Laura's hand on his back. "Bill," Laura breathed, taking the man out of his thoughts. "Look at me," She said, waiting till her husband turned to face her. "I'm right here. Right here. We're going to find it," Laura said, with a newfound sense of confidence in her words.
"Earth?" Bill whispered, his eyes locked on Laura's. "Together - the three of us," She said, watching as the corners of Bill's lips turned up in a smile. "I used to think it was such a pipe dream," Bill confessed, and Laura giggled as she thought of their earliest conversations about finding Earth. "I used to use it as a carrot for the fleet." He explained, remembering the days when he'd give rally cries of finding earth while only half believing in it himself. "What made you change?" Laura asked, though she already knew the answer.
Bill chucked, flashing the kind of smile that reached his eyes, "You. Both of you. You made me believe," He said, before leaning forward to capture his wife's lips in a kiss. "Now you need to sleep, Mrs. Adama," He stated, glancing at the clock on the wall as he held his hand out to help Laura up. She took his hand and let him lead the way to their bunk, stopping to fix the blankets on top of Pandora's sleeping form.
Yes, Laura Roslin-Adama had everything to live for.