1. Chapter 1

When Colonial One touched down on Galactica's hanger deck, the festivities quieted down immediately and a hush fell over the crowd that had been rowdily celebrating their liberation from Cylon occupation just moments before. Relief had been etched plainly on battle worn faces as each successive transport had touched down and more people streamed into the hangar bay. Adama had personally greeted as many people as possible, had let them hoist him on their shoulders in victory. Lee and Dee were safe and sound. His people were back, Starbuck, Tigh, Gaeta, Tyrol and Cally and their little son, all the other men and women of the fleet he'd abandoned on that rock. Their whoops and cheers had rung loudly in the empty spaces of his heart. He'd felt hollowed out; barely able to breathe for all those months he'd been gone. He'd sworn to protect these people and he'd failed. The sight of Tigh's scarred face, the look in his one remaining eye, had brought the message home. He may have rescued them, but he'd failed to protect them.

Protect her.

Laura Roslin. He hadn't been able to protect her and that, above all other things, shamed him so profoundly that all he wanted to do was hide in his cabin and howl until he couldn't howl anymore, rage until all rage left him.

Laura Roslin; the woman they were now al waiting for in a silence so profound he felt as if he were back in those holy places of old, the temples of his childhood, the ones his parents dragged him to until he was old enough to deny them.

When the hatch finally opened and he caught a glimpse of auburn hair, he let out a breath he's been unaware he'd been holding and some of the tightness in his chest loosened. He heard a rustle behind him and beside him and noticed several people had knelt down, fingers to their forehead in a show of respect and devotion, others, among them Kara and Lee, Dee, Gaeta, Tigh – of all people – stood at attention, saluting their rightful President as she stepped out onto the hanger deck.

The heartbeat it took for her gaze to sweep over the people massed before her and unerringly lock in on him, seemed like a lifetime to Bill and in those precious moments before her eyes alighted on him, he drank her in.

She looked like hell.

Her hair was longer then it had been and it was a mess, standing out in all directions. She was wearing a dirty blue windbreaker, her face was smudged and her glasses askew. He noticed she held herself stiffly, as if feeling the weight of her years, and there were a few more lines around her eyes and mouth, the familiar ones just a little bit deeper.

She looked altogether beautiful to Bill.

There were tears in her eyes, those seascape eyes that had haunted his dreams these months past. As her gaze locked with his he crossed the space dividing them in four long strides.

"Madam President." His salute was crisp as ever and his gaze never wavered from her face as he offered her his arm, gave her a small smile, gave her what was left of him.

She glanced at him, at the use of her former title, but did not even try to correct him. It was hers by right. She'd earned it with every impossible decision she'd had to make during their flight from the Cylons, with every tortured breath she'd drawn when she was close to death's door and still fighting to attend to the duties of her office. If he knew the people she'd so fiercely tried to protect ever since the holocaust at all, she had become their president again, the moment the Cylons showed up and Baltar surrendered to them. If he knew her at all, she'd taken up that role again with grace, even though more than half those people had voted her out of office to follow Baltar's delusional pipe dream.

"Admiral." She rested her hand on his arm. The weight of it hardly registered and he noticed her cheeks were less full, gaunt almost, and the veins on the back of the hand resting on his arm stood out more prominently. She'd lost weight, quite a bit of it if he judged correctly.

She had yet to look up at him, avoided looking him in the eye for more than a fleeting second. She seemed to be almost hiding from him now that they were standing so close, toe to toe, and he ducked his head, searched out her eyes. What he saw in them shocked him like bullet to the gut. She looked crushed, deflated. Laura Roslin, invincible leader of men, prophet, warrior and teacher, looked up at him, not with joy, relief, or any of the myriad other emotions he'd seen wash over the faces of the colonists as they once again set foot on the deck of his ship, but with utter defeat.

Oh sure, she had her president strapped on, and to anyone not looking too closely she was smiling, appeared just as happy as the people surrounding them, but Bill was looking closely, and what he saw troubled him. Deeply. Her seascape eyes had always told him exactly how she felt at any given moment and right now they were a murky grey, shot through with green, the hue the seas took on, back on Caprica, just before a storm hit.

A small, sound growing exponentially louder drew him out of his contemplation and when he looked up he saw someone - he could swear it was one of Tyrol's men - had started clapping. As he watched, one by one, every person in the hanger deck joined in until the small, lonely sound had become a deafening roar.

Laura turned away from him, raised the hand that had looked so at home on his arm and after a moment the noise once again quieted down. She smiled her singular smile and Bill could see it was genuine this time, but there was a sadness behind it that he couldn't fathom.

"You do us too much honor, "she said. Her voice was a scratchy whisper at first, but it grew in size and volume until it rang out loud and clear against the metal bulkheads. "This applause is for us all, the people of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. We have all faced terrible loss, stood together against an enemy that seemed wholly indefeasible, and we prevailed."

At her words, the crowd surged forward, cheering and whooping once more. They seemed about to hoist Laura on their shoulders, as they'd done Bill only minutes earlier, and he saw her wince, saw her take a step back, and stepped out in front of her, held them back.

"As sorry as I am to break this up, "he said, his voice easily carrying to the back of the hanger deck, "we need to get gone. We don't know if there are any Basestars within jumping range."

At his words, Tyrol snapped to attention, gathering the deck crew around him. Lee and Kara, still looking dazed and vaguely out of place in her civilian attire, started rounding up pilots. Dee and Gaeta hurried in the direction of CIC. One look at Helo was enough for him to start organizing the refugees. Adama looked around at his people, his family, and felt a surge of pride; that they'd survived so much and were still capable of so much, of becoming more than they were, was a blessing and a balm to him. It gave him hope.

The small, familiar, weight of her hand on his arm shook him from his reverie.

"Laura?" Now that everyone had dispersed there was no-one but her to hear him use her name in such an intimate way and he infused the one word with everything he hadn't been able to express until now. His relief, his pride, his shame.

"Admiral," she said, her tone as formal as if she were still addressing him before the crowd. His heart broke a little further, cracks spreading out like fault lines.

"I don't …"

She stopped him with an almost dismissive wave of her hand. "You're probably needed in CIC," she said.

"Yeah." He wanted to touch her, to shake her out of the seeming fugue state she appeared to have fallen into, wanted to make her look at him, acknowledge him, forgive him. He knew he didn't have the right, so he took a step back, stood at attention.

"Okay then," she said, nodding to herself as if she'd won an argument. She wrapped her arms around her midriff, hugging herself, and took a few steps away from him, moving stiffly, then with more confidence.

"Madam President," he said, saluting her, then turning on his heels.

"Bill." Her soft voice stopped him in his tracks. He held his breath, didn't dare turn around and look at her. It was the first time she'd called him by his name since they were reunited, the first time he'd heard her voice speak his name in months. "We do need to talk," she said, "and we will. Just not right now, but soon."

"Okay then," he breathed.

"Would you mind if I used your cabin to freshen up a bit?"

The question surprised him, until he remembered that Colonial One had been Baltar's lair for months. She probably didn't want to be spending her nights there until the place had been put to rights, until she was reinstated.

"Of course," he said. "You're more than welcome to use my quarters for however long you need." He tried for a little levity. "Your old place needs fumigating, huh?"

Her faint chuckle carried him all the way back to CIC, but Saul's absence, Kara's dazed look and the defeat in Laura's eyes was what stayed with him while he led them all to safety, away from that Gods forsaken rock they'd hopefully named New Caprica.


	2. Chapter 2

The guard Zarek had drafted to protect her when they fled New Caprica had apparently assigned himself to her side permanently. Jammer, she remembered, that was his name, or at least his call sign; Jammer. Laura was grateful for his assistance as he cleared a path for her through the throngs of people milling about the hangar deck. Grateful for Tory's silent presence by her side. Her former aide had been an invaluable support to Laura these past few months, and Laura made a mental note to thank her. Suddenly, now that they were out of harm's way, the thought that she hadn't done so yet, had taken the younger woman's help for granted, shamed her. She resolved to do better.

As the three of them moved away from the crowd, Laura let out a private sigh of relief, and allowed her shoulders to sag a little, feeling the soreness set in after their adrenaline fuelled rush to salvation and freedom; all the aches and pains of the last several weeks reasserting themselves with a vengeance.

But she couldn't let her guard down just yet. There were too many people in Galactica's many corridors, they all seemed to want - need - to tell her of their relief and gratitude at having been spared, of the losses they had suffered. Laura understood their need, shared it, and acknowledged them with a look or a gesture. It was all she had left in her to give them and it was all they asked, it was enough. But each successive encounter chipped away at what was left of her stamina. That, and the fact that there was not one amongst them aware enough to enquire into what she wanted, what she needed. But then, that was the burden she had willingly taken upon herself when she accepted the office of President of the Twelve Colonies, so long ago; to be the one doing the caring, not to be the one being cared for; now, it was her penance.

It seemed to Laura they had been winding their way through Galactica's corridors in this way for hours, when all of a sudden they rounded a corner and she thankfully recognized the hallway that led to Adama's quarters; it was blessedly all but deserted. Her limbs began to tremble and she had to clench herself rigid in order not to shake herself apart. Leaning against the bulkhead with one hand, she hugged her ribcage and tried to take a few deep breaths, which only made the tightness in her chest increase, which in turn added to her tremors.

"Madam President?" Tory's voice, her hand coming to rest on her arm, her uncharacteristically gentle presence by her side, steadied Laura enough so that she was able to make it the rest of the way to Adama's quarters with most of her dignity intact.

Vaguely, she heard the hatch open, saw Jammer stand to the side and spring to attention. She whispered, "Thank you," as she passed him, dismissing him with a gentle wave of her hand, but he remained standing next to the hatch, and she knew he was not going to budge from there until Adama returned or someone came to relieve him.

With a small nod of appreciation in his direction, she stepped through the hatch into the privacy of Adama's quarters, and for a moment she just stood there, soaking in the ambiance, the musty smell of his many, many books, the scent of leather and wool, that other, indefinable smell that was uniquely his. She closed her eyes, inhaled too deeply and was rewarded by another stab of pain. An unwanted groan escaped, traitorous how her body betrayed her, and Tory was instantly by her side. Seconds later, Laura found herself on the couch, Tory kneeling before her and removing her shoes.

"Tory," she began, "thank you, but you don't have to do that."

"I know," came the curt reply, then softer, "but I want to." Her erstwhile aide looked up at her and for a moment, Laura could have sworn she was going to tell her something, something important, but the younger woman swallowed and looked away, seemed to change tack. "You've carried us all for so long, let me do this for you now, let me help you," she said instead.

Laura gave her a soft smile of acquiescence and gingerly leaned back into the comfortable embrace of Adama's worn leather couch, unconsciously letting another small moan escape her lips. At the soft sound Tory climbed to her feet and towered over her, looking down on her with what Laura was surprised to find was a mixture of guilt and compassion.

"You're starting to hurt again." It wasn't a question and Laura simply nodded, regretting the action immediately when a wave of nausea swept through her. Tory was talking to her but for a while Laura was adrift, lost in a fog of her own, until gradually she noticed the younger woman's tone had taken on an almost hysterical edge. Fighting the queasiness down, Laura tried to focus instead on her former aide.

"Will you be okay for a bit while I go look for Doc. Cottle?" Tory asked, pacing in front of her. "I'm guessing it was more important to take that frakking journal with you than to reach for your medication when we fled!" Hysterical and pissed off.

"Yes, I will, and, yes, it was," Laura said, raising her right arm and resting it across her eyes, shutting out the outside world, letting her left arm hang limply by her side. "And yes, it would be good if you could go find Cottle, please."

At the last word, Tory went barreling for the hatch as if shot from a cannon. "I'll be right back. I'll send Jammer in to watch you."

"No!" Laura lifted her arm long enough to shoot a sharp glance in the direction of her former aide, and then covered her eyes again, secure in the knowledge that the younger woman would obey.

It was no use hiding from Tory, she'd been there the day Laura was released from detention. The insurgency had set up a vigil outside the detention centre, all while plotting to break in and break her out, she'd learned later. She had been infinitely grateful it had been Tory who had been posted outside when they finally released her. The younger woman knew her well enough to take Laura to her own tent and have Doc. Cottle examine her there; was used to keeping secrets. Following Laura's decree, she hadn't told anyone anything, just maintained to anyone and everyone who came asking that Laura was fine, just tired, a good night's sleep was all she needed, not to worry.

She was damned if she was going to reveal her weakness to anyone not on her need to know list now. Her need to know list was very short and two thirds covered. Doc. Cottle, Tory and Bill.

What was she going to tell Bill?

He'd already guessed something wasn't right, she'd only had to look in his eyes to know he was wondering about her, wondering what was going on with her. She'd deliberately asked the use of his quarters so that they might have a chance to talk. But what was she going to tell him?

Gods, she should have known that it would all come crashing down around her as soon as she'd set foot on his ship, in a way she had known, but what she hadn't counted on was that she was wholly unprepared for this.

Ever since she got out of detention, she hadn't let herself think past the next action, the next need to be met, the next problem to be solved. She'd survived on adrenaline and pills and the fervent hope that her act of betrayal would remain locked in that vile room they'd put her in the last time they came for her. Locked in that room within her heart, the one with the steel door with all the bolts and deadlocks, where she'd locked away all the other hurts and betrayals she'd suffered in her life, the wrongs she had perpetrated; all the ugly stuff. In an effort to forget what she'd done, she'd pushed herself beyond all endurance, had clung, more than ever, to the duties she had assigned herself; to serve her people, to protect them, even if this time it was from her own self.


	3. Chapter 3

Adama had wrapped up his business in CIC with brisk efficiency, assigning Gaeta with plotting the next several jumps, setting Helo the task of taking a head count. Almost as an afterthought, he'd tasked Dee and two of his own personal guards with trying to find out if Baltar had made it off the planet. He'd briefly considered asking Starbuck to do the honors but had figured that with Dee, the chances of the little frakker being airlocked were a lot smaller. Throwing him in the brig would not nearly hold the same satisfaction, but if anyone was going to airlock his ass, he reckoned it should be the woman currently holed up in his quarters.

His concern at her continued absence from CIC had gnawed at him. It wasn't like Laura to not be in the thick of things in a crisis.

As soon as it looked like things were under control, he ordered bi-hourly updates on everything from flight status to the housing of the refugees to food and water reserves, then gave Lee the ship and made his way to his quarters. The look on Lee's face told him his son understood and wouldn't disturb his time with Laura under any but the most dire of circumstances.

When Bill stepped into his cabin, he was rewarded by the sight of the former, and in his book soon to be, President of the Twelve Colonies sprawled out on his couch, her feet - dirty socks and all - up on his coffee table, glasses lying beside her in one limp hand.

He wanted to touch her, to hold her in his arms, to re-establish their connection. He wanted to kneel down and ask her forgiveness, he wanted her to absolve him, needed her to. Silently, he crossed the distance that separated them, almost tripping over her boots, left in a haphazard pile next to the table. When had she taken to wearing boots? All she'd ever worn were pumps, damned impractical on a spaceship but he'd loved to watch her purposefully stride along Galactica's corridors in them, high heels rattling like gunfire against the ships metal causeways.

Hesitantly he sat down beside her, almost afraid to breathe lest he disturb her slumber, yet unable to resist touching her glorious hair where it was cascading over the back of his couch.

"Tory?"

Frak, she was really out of it if she could mistake his hulking presence for her former aide's slight physique. Bill smiled and put a heavy hand on her shoulder, intending to alert her of his presence.

As soon as his hand alighted on her shoulder however, Laura bolted upright and he could swear he heard a soft moan.

"Laura, what's the matter?"

"Dream." Not one of her more articulate replies. "I had a bad dream." She leaned forward, massaged her temples with her right hand, her left was between them clutching her glasses. He gently took them from her, laid them upon the table, covered her small hand with his much larger paw. Her fingers felt clammy and when he looked up, he saw beads of sweat dotted her forehead.

"Must have been a doozy." He tried to sound nonchalant, tried to control the irrational fear that had started to eat away at his gut like battery acid at her earlier moan. She was here, she was alive, she was safe, but something was obviously very wrong. For a breathless second he feared it was her cancer, the thought that it might have returned was like a sucker punch to the gut. With a mighty shove he put the notion aside. They'd crossed that hurdle a long time ago, had put all that behind them. The Gods she believed in so fervently wouldn't let that happen again, wouldn't be so cruel, not after all they'd been through, after all she'd suffered in their name. More importantly, he himself wouldn't allow it.

Besides, he'd always prided himself of having pretty good instincts, and his gut was telling him something altogether different was bothering her.

"A doozy, yeah." The admission came out almost like a sigh; another crack, another fault line.

"Let me help." Without waiting for her permission, he got up, grabbed a clean towel and wet it at the faucet, filled a glass with lukewarm water.

As he walked back to the couch, the hatch swung open and Laura's assistant stepped through, a harried expression on her face, a bottle of pills in her hand that she unsuccessfully tried to hide when she noticed Adama's presence.

"Madam President?"

"There you are." Laura looked up at her former aide with a mixture of relief, guilt and shock, none of which Bill was able to place, then she glanced at him and quickly looked away. "Gods, my head aches."

He watched as the younger woman hesitated for a moment, then knelt beside Laura, shook two pills from the bottle, and unceremoniously presented them to her.

"Thank you, Tory." Laura accepted the glass of water Bill wordlessly held in front of her and swallowed the pills her former aide handed her. With an almost imperceptible sigh of relief, she sank back into the couch, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes again. The smudges on her too pale cheeks accentuated the way her cheekbones stood out and all he wanted was to hug her to him and run his thumbs along the planes of her face, so familiar yet so foreign.

For a long moment, Tory stayed on her knees, looking up at the woman before her with an unreadable expression, then she seemed to reach a decision, got to her feet and motioned for Adama to follow her to the other side of the cabin, out of earshot.

Bill followed her lead, silently stood and waited for Tory to tell him what was on her mind.

"Frak," Tory cursed, it was hardly the opening he'd expected from the usually reserved young woman and he suppressed a small smile. "Sir, I'm probably way out of line here, but I am not wrong in assuming you care a great deal about the President?"

"You're not wrong." In fact, he mused, you're more right than you could ever imagine. He chanced a quick glance over his shoulder. Laura hadn't moved but it looked like the deepening lines around her eyes and mouth had smoothed out somewhat.

"Good." Tory turned and stepped out into the corridor, started to close the hatch behind her. "Then you try and talk some sense into her."

Surprised at the young woman's exasperated tone, Bill turned back towards her, stayed the hatch with one hand. "Excuse me?"

Tory looked up at him, eyes pleading with him to understand. He'd never seen much in the way of emotion in those dark eyes but he could swear she was on the verge of crying now. "She won't listen to me," she sa_i_d, gesturing in the direction of her former boss. "I'm hoping she'll listen to you. Talk to her"

"That's what I'm intending to do," he said. "Is there anything specific you had in mind?" He sensed that the talk ahead could be a difficult one, some guidance wouldn't hurt.

"Well that's not just a headache for starters, and if I tell you more, she'd probably airlock me," Tory said with a crooked smile. "Anyway, she needs to tell you herself."

With that, the young woman closed the hatch and Bill turned on his heels, contemplated the auburn haired enigma that had taken up residence on his couch.

Where to begin?

"Laura?" It seemed as good a place as any.

One storm tossed eye opened. "Hmm?"

"You look like you could use a shower." He gestured at her clothes, her hair. Normalcy, he figured, there's safety in normalcy.

"Later, would that be good?" she said. There was a note of pleading in her voice that worried Bill. She'd never been one to plead with him for anything, unless it was about the important stuff and she saw no other way to have her way, gain his consent.

He forced himself to smile down at her, to tread softly. "Of course."

"So tired," she murmured.

"Then sleep."

"Hmm." She could barely hold herself upright against the back of the couch, but didn't seem to posses the strength to lie down either.

Her weakness undid him. He was beside her in two quick strides. With an unsteady hand, he helped her lie down, made her comfortable, and removed her socks. If his fingers strayed a fraction too long on the graceful sweep of her ankles, she was already drifting off to sleep and gave no sign that she had noticed.

For a moment, Bill just stood there, towering over her and taking in the sight of her. Funny how in his mind she was always so much taller than in real life. She looked so tiny and vulnerable now, her small form hardly making a dent in his well worn leather couch. Fragile, yet so strong and so utterly necessary to his own continued wellbeing.

The thought of how close he had once again come to losing her haunted him and it soothed his abraded nerves to simply play nursemaid for a bit. That she should go to sleep so easily on his couch made him realize that their closeness apparently extended all the way into her comfort zone; that he did. He liked it there and had every intention of staying, for as long as she allowed it.

Smiling he covered her with a blanket, called CIC for a sit rep and to tell them once again to alert him at the first sign of trouble, then sat down in the chair opposite Laura, and settled in to watch over her.

Later, he roused from a light sleep to find Laura tossing and turning uneasily, still asleep but with slow, silent tears dripping from under her long lashes, leaving silver tracks like scars on her dirty cheeks. He put a steadying hand on her hip in an effort to quiet her down before she hurt herself. She moaned softly and stilled somewhat when he touched her but she didn't wake up which simultaneously relieved and disappointed him. He wondered about her dreams, was curious to know what images had her thrashing about so restlessly, but at the same time was frightened to talk to her, to have his worst suspicions confirmed.

Undecided, he watched her writhe on the couch for a while, but then gradually her face relaxed and he breathed a sigh of relief. He drew his chair up a little closer, clasped her small, strong hand in his much larger one, and promised himself to never let go of it again.


	4. Chapter 4

Laura woke up to the smell of aftershave and gun oil and the rumble of Bill Adama's voice and for a moment she continued to feign sleep, just so she could feel warm and safe and protected for a while longer. It had been so long since she'd felt that way. The unexpected sound of Jack Cottle's smoke roughened voice had her sitting up in short order, though, an action she immediately regretted when her aching body protested harshly and the room started to spin around her. She quickly closed her eyes in an effort to quell the nausea rising in her gorge, to stop the world from whirling out of control.

"Whoa." Her soft expletive had both men by her side almost without transition, and the hand she'd put out to steady herself against the coffee table was suddenly engulfed in a strong, familiar grip. Her fingers clasped in Bill Adama's warm hands. Gods, it felt like coming home, or coming apart, she wasn't sure which. When she opened her eyes the blue of his gaze was dusky like the twilight skies over her clear glass lake on New Caprica. Just to the right of him, Cottle glared down at them from behind the haze of a half smoked cigarette.

"Laura, are you alright?" Bill asked, concern seeping through his voice like blood through a bandage. She could practically touch the guilt behind it, it rolled off of him in nearly tangible waves. She found she didn't have the strength to focus on it, one more need to be met, she couldn't do it. But then she realized he wasn't asking her to. All his attention was focused solely on her, he wasn't asking anything for himself, and it was making her uncomfortable. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at her like she might be the one in need of some solace. She didn't deserve it, least of all from him, so she pushed it away, tried to push him away.

"I guess that's the question, isn't it?" Her chagrin at her own conflicting needs made the remark come out even harsher than she'd intended.

"Excuse me?" She caught a glimpse of his tight mouth, his startled eyes, and felt guilty.

Leaning forward carefully, she scooped her glasses off of the table and donned them, needing that piece of her armor. She looked at both men in turn over the rim. "The question you and the good Doc. were discussing just now; am I alright?"

Bill's expression softened, he even had the grace to blush and look down at his shoes. Cottle was not so easily swayed however, he stabbed his cigarette in her direction and snorted loudly.

"Spare us the histrionics, young lady," Cottle said, punctuating each word with another small stab of his rapidly dwindling cigarette. Ash floated down to the floor in a lazy drift and she idly wondered if she should outlaw the damned things when she became President again, just to spite him a little, take him down a peg or two. Surprised at the realization that she was already thinking of herself as the President, she considered her presumptuousness for a moment, then concluded that she had never really stopped being just that, except for one brief moment. She shied away from that thought, filed the notion of once more becoming the President away for later, concentrated on Cottle's rant. She tried to get a word in edgewise, but he wasn't having it. "You and I both know what the answer is to that one," he continued, "and I suggest you let the Admiral in as well, or I'll have to break my oath and tell him myself."

"Jack." The note of warning in her voice would have stopped even the most unruly of Quorum members in their tracks, especially when combined with what she thought of as her nr. 1 glare, but neither deterred him in the slightest.

"You know I will too, so stop procrastinating. And take those," he pointed at the small bottle of pills on the table. "They don't solve anything but they'll at least make you feel better."

She had to agree with him there, eyeing the bottle wistfully, they would offer some relief, and the need for relief was becoming ever more pressing. Steeling herself, she put off swallowing the tablets, trading relief for the ability to stay focused and lucid enough to tell Bill what he deserved to hear. The familiarity of the whole scene, Cottle scolding her, Bill hovering close by, served to bring the reminder home, brought with it a different measure of relief. She was back, she was safe, her people were safe, it was okay to let go, at least for a little while. Cottle had chewed her out on New Caprica on more than one occasion, but now he was doing it in Galactica's familiar surroundings, on New Caprica there hadn't been anyone to unburden herself to, and suddenly it struck her with the force of a nuclear blast, now there was, she was home.

"Okay." How pathetic to suddenly feel safe and secure while being yelled at by her cantankerous doctor even as she was hiding out on Bill Adama's couch. It was a sad testament to her frakked up life that she could find comfort in the situation.

"Just like that?" Cottle looked mildly shocked at her easy acquiescence.

"Yeah." Her constricted throat wouldn't allow for anything else and suddenly she felt the overwhelming urge to cry, to let her tears finally run free, but she knew that if she started now, she would never stop, so instead she looked up into his craggy face and gave him a tiny smile.

He reached out to her, his long surgeons fingers stroked her cheek, tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. "You don't have to carry the weight of the world alone anymore, Laura." His hand rested briefly on her head, a benediction of sorts and then he stalked away, off to Life Station or wherever else he was needed, closing the hatch behind him with a soft snick.

"I know," she whispered, truly thankful for his loyal, if grumpy, support, another person she hadn't shown nearly enough appreciation to. Another thing added to her list of things to do better.

Bill had quietly moved away during the doctor's diatribe and now walked back into her line of sight, two steaming cups in his hands.

"Tea?" He handed her one of the cups and she gratefully took it, she hadn't realized how chilled she was until she wrapped her hands around the teacup.

"Gods, yes, that smells so good." Cinnamon and honey and a mixture of other ingredients she couldn't identify. Cautiously, she scooted back on the couch until her back was against the armrest, tucked her legs under her and took a small sip. As warmth spread through her she was surprised to hear her stomach growl.

He smiled knowingly. "I'm guessing you could eat as well. Would you like me to order us something?"

"Later perhaps." She took another small sip, blew on her tea until her glasses fogged over, shivered a little. As if that were his cue, Bill sat down next to her, so close his thigh touched her feet, warming them.

Pepper, just a hint of pepper, and cloves, if she was not mistaken.

"Laura, what happened down there?" His gentle eyes sought hers, but she did her best to avoid his gaze. Underneath the granite exterior was a man she could share everything with, she knew this, but still she was afraid, so she prevaricated.

"I'm sure Jack told you all the gory details." Not fair, Cottle would never betray his oath, nor her confidence, even though he'd threatened to earlier. Or in any case, not so easily.

"You know he didn't." Never one to beat around the bush, Bill's steely glare told her this was no longer up for discussion. "You know it's you who has to tell me."

"I'm not sure I can." That was true at least, but she still couldn't meet his eyes.

"Laura," his soft voice, so near, nearly undid her. The touch of his callused fingers on her cheek, lifting her face to his, was feather light. It always surprised her how such a large, hulking man could be so gentle, and never more so than right now. "Laura." Demanding now. "I've been a soldier long enough to recognize you're suffering from post traumatic stress. Whatever they did to you, whatever it is you're hiding, if you don't tell me, if you let it fester, they'll win."

That, more than anything, broke her. "They already did."

"Tell me." So kind, so generous.

"I don't know how." Nutmeg, somehow the scent made her remember her mother, the both of them in the kitchen of their summer house on Sagittarius, chopping up vegetables for her mother's special holiday soup.

"Start at the beginning."

"Okay." She could do that, that sounded manageable. She nodded once, sat up straighter, moved away from him a bit. She mourned the loss of the closeness they had just shared, the small comfort his wool clad thigh warming her bare feet. But she needed to put some distance between them, in order to tell him what he needed to know, what she needed to tell.

"Okay," he breathed, and said no more. He just sat there, silently, watching her as she attempted to gather her thoughts.

She spent a moment gazing down into her teacup, teetering on the brink of clarity and terrible revelation, as she had so many times, so long ago, every time the Chamala visions took her. She stared down into the all but empty cup, as if from the dregs of her tea, she could conjure the exact shape of the thing she needed to unburden herself of, and then she began to speak.

"They stepped up their reign of attrition just before you came back," stumbling at first but then growing more sure of herself, "almost as if they knew you were on your way. Hundreds of us had already been rounded up by the Cylons, held in detention , questioned, tortured. Others simply vanished. I knew it was only a matter of time before they would come for me."


	5. Chapter 5

When they finally came for her, they came late at night, well past curfew. Probably, she thought, so that nobody would see her being taken away. Her hands were tied, a hood thrown over her face. She had been the President of the Twelve Colonies after all, ever since the holocaust. The most photographed and well known face in all the fleet, and they wouldn't want anyone inadvertently looking the right way, to know they had taken her, to try and stop them. To almost everyone living on New Caprica today, she was - still or once again, as the case may be - Madam President, even though the majority of them had voted against her in the last election. After Baltar threw in his lot with the Cylons and left everyone else to rot, most of those people who had been so quick to discount her when he seduced them with empty promises, had once again turned to her. Whether she wanted to or not, she had become responsible for them again.

She had taken up the mantle, just as before, because somebody had to take command, because she had never stopped feeling responsible for these, the last remnants of the human race. She had started organizing what had been an uncoordinated uprising into a full scale insurgency, making battle plans for when Bill would come back, having men and women who had no business holding a gun, trained to shoot and not miss, organizing and rehearsing evacuation protocols, under the guise of fire drills no less.

And it had all led her here, to this very moment. It was disconcerting, stumbling after her captors in the dark. The rough scratch of the hood against her face, the smell of sweat in her nostrils, not her own, some previous victim had worn this same hood, had stumbled down this same route. Her bound hands were frakking with her sense of balance; noises were distorted, the metallic clanging of Cylon Centurions, endlessly patrolling the encampment, the sound of a gate drawn open and closed. Somewhere, incongruously, she could smell a campfire and the aroma of coffee brewing, the scent so familiar and somehow safe it made her stomach ache.

They locked her in a cell, took her shoes, forced her to strip off her own clothes and put on a prison jumpsuit, took her glasses, and then, just as she thought the interrogation would begin in earnest now, they just left her there; alone in her cell. It wasn't all that big, and completely empty, safe for a privy bucket in the corner. And it was bright, too bright. Without her glasses all she could do was squint into the glare and it was already giving her a headache. Knowing it was probably futile, she searched the cell anyway, looking in vain for any means of escape, something with which to defend herself perhaps, but there was nothing.

After three complete circuits, she gave op, found a spot where there was some small measure of shadow and settled on the floor, her back to the wall. All there was left to do now, was wait and worry. She'd seen what they'd done to others that had been taken to detention, what they'd done to Saul, and didn't know if she'd be brave enough to take that kind of punishment and not give in to whatever it was they wanted from her. She'd never had her mettle tested in that way before. She'd never been this scared before either, not even when she was dying of cancer. That at least had been a path she'd been intimately familiar with, having had to watch her mother go through the same thing, she'd known what to expect, more or less. This was something new and unknowable and therefore terrifying.

Hours later and she was still al alone under the pitiless light, tired, so tired, but the brightness in her cell precluded sleep, it was dizzying and the incipient headache had grown into a full-fledged migraine. Every time she did manage to nod off, the clanging of a cell door, the sound of someone screaming, would be there to snap her awake. She wondered how long it had been already, the unrelenting light made it impossible to gauge the passage of time, was it morning yet, would anyone have missed her already, would they even know what had happened to her?

By the time her cell door opened and the Cavil and Doral models entered she was almost relieved. No more wondering, no more worrying. The time had come and she was a little surprised at the calm that descended over her the moment she laid eyes on her opponents.

"Ms. Roslin." Cavil greeted her almost cordially. "I hope you haven't been too uncomfortable."

Laura slowly climbed to her feet; she'd been sitting on the freezing floor of her cell for what felt like days but probably had been hours, the cold, unforgiving stone wall against her back, and was chilled down to her bones. She was resolved to show them no weakness though. "Well the amenities leave something to be desired, that's for sure." She was rather pleased with how calm and in control she sounded.

He actually laughed and then motioned to Doral, who stood leaning against the wall, just inside the door, posture deceptively relaxed. Laura had mastered the art of reading body language though, honed it to a fine skill during her term as President, and to her, the way he held himself was more like a snake in a box than anything else. Poised to strike at the push of a button. Doral muttered something under his breath and stepped out of the cell for a moment to return with two chairs. Cavil gestured for her to take a seat while sitting down himself.

"Please," he said, when she remained standing, "sit down. I'd like to conduct this interview in as civil a manner as possible."

"I'd hardly call being dragged here in the middle of the night civil," she said, pitching her voice at that timbre she'd reserved for the more unpleasant press conferences she'd had to conduct during her presidency.

She had only a moment to try and interpret Cavil's frown and then from the corner of her eye she saw Doral uncoil. "It's more civil than an airlock, you high and mighty bitch," he hissed, as his fist blurred towards her, "and you've put enough of us out of one to earn yourself a little payback."

The blow landed on her left cheekbone and sent her flying into the wall behind her, her head hitting the unyielding stone with an audible crunch. For a moment all she could hear was the roar of a thousand misfiring synapses in her head, all she could see were stars, whole galaxies of them; she'd always thought the expression to be an exaggeration, but no, all too real. And pretty, her disjointed thoughts whispered, seductive even, _let's stay here, it feels like home._ She found herself sliding down the wall, sliding towards darkness and willed herself upright, willed herself to stay conscious.

As the room came back into too bright focus, she saw Cavil holding a furious Doral back, away from her. Cavil was arguing something, it seemed, Doral was screaming at him, at her, but the clamor in her head wouldn't quiet down enough for her to make sense of what they were saying. She reached up, touched her cheek. It had already gone numb, safe for a line of fire traveling across what she guessed was going to be a pretty impressive bruise. She idly wondered if he'd cracked her cheekbone. Her fingers came away wet. Trying to focus on her hand, so close in front of her straining eyes, made the pain in her head ratchet up another notch, so she gave up the attempt. The red smear she was able to make out was a dead giveaway anyway.

Laura closed her eyes for a moment, willing the tsunami in her head to subside, she'd had enough practice at this during her fight with cancer after all, she was intimately familiar with pain, they were on a first name basis. After a moment she found the calm at the center of the storm and a measure of clarity returned to her.

"Don't," she heard Cavil say, his voice a hiss. "First, we try this my way. Second, if that doesn't work, we leave no visible marks. She walks out of here obviously battered like that and we'll have a problem. The moment she steps through those doors, all eyes will be turned towards her, make no mistake, there's a small mob of them outside already, waiting for her. We do not need her to become a martyr to their cause, they're already calling her Madam President again."

"Then she'll just have to stay and enjoy our hospitality until that heals, which gives us more time to get what we need from her. Give something back for every time she put one of us out of an airlock. I don't see the downside."

"Then look with better eyes. The longer she stays here, the bigger the chance that they'll mount a rescue operation and this insurgency will grow into a full size rebellion," Cavil's voice was low and dangerous. "Now back off."

As Laura opened her eyes, squinting against the light, Doral shrugged out of Cavil's grasp, adjusting his tie, nodding his assent. He stepped towards her and reached out his hand, grasping her arm, pulling her with him. She willed herself not to recoil at his touch, let him steer her towards the chair. Being in motion made her aching head swim. Each footfall reverberated through her skull and she was becoming increasingly nauseous. As he pushed her down, his hands on her shoulders, gripping her with bruising force, she caught a smear of red, a glint of gold. He must have cut her cheek with his ring as he hit her, she realized. It would probably scar. She chuckled softly at the irrelevancy of her thoughts and caught the look of surprise the two Cylons shared between them. Inappropriate humor at important times, it had always been one of her flaws, although Bill had turned it into a strength during her first debate for the presidency. The thought of him gave her strength enough to face her interrogators as they placed themselves in front of her again.

"Let's cut through the chase, gentlemen," she said. Her voice was steady, of which she was inordinately proud, which added to her urge to start giggling again. That, and her use of the term gentlemen and the fact that sarcasm was apparently lost on the two of them. She looked them in the eye, one by one, although the effort to turn her head, to swivel her eyes, was almost too great and made her nausea that much worse. "What is it you want from me?"

Cavil's smooth voice made her skin crawl. "Your cooperation, Laura," he said. "May I call you Laura?"

She didn't deign to reply, only raised an eyebrow at the word cooperation. The little bit she had picked up from their earlier discussion gave her some small measure of hope that she was going to get out of here relatively in one piece, though apparently not all Cylons agreed that was the road to take. For the moment though, it seemed Cavil did, and he looked to be in charge, so it's him she tried to concentrate on, though the incessant pounding in her head made it difficult to focus.

"So Laura it is." Cavil said, leaning forward well within her personal space. "I need you to tell me who your colleagues are."

"I have no colleagues. I'm the only qualified teacher around, which is kind of ironic if you think about it." She deliberately misinterpreted his question and was rewarded by a small flicker in his eyes that betrayed his annoyance.

"The leaders of the insurgency, I need their names."

"I'm afraid I can't give them to you."

Even though her head hurt like her cancer had returned and had taken up residence in her brain, she managed to conjure the smile she knew drove her political opponents nuts. That small, enigmatic smile she'd perfected over the years that was meant to unbalance her adversaries, make them think she knew more than them, had seen through their tactics, and was planning to wipe the floor with them any minute now.

"Don't be mistaken, Laura." Cavil's tone of voice was becoming sharper, knife edges becoming unsheathed. "We will get them from you. It's your choice whether we do this the easy way, or the hard way."

"You already have my answer."

Cavil climbed to his feet with an exasperated grunt. "We'll be back later, you obviously need some time to think this over," he said. With what sounded like a sigh, he grasped her shoulders and half lifted her out of her chair in a move almost as if he were going to embrace her. Then, with lightning speed, his knee came up and crushed into her midriff, robbing her of air. She doubled over in pain, retching miserably, and crashed down onto her knees on the harsh stone floor as he let go of her shoulders. The small pain of knees bruised as they violently hit the ground hardly even registered through the tempest in her head, the agony in her chest.

Cavil's voice came to her as if he was speaking to her from the other end of a long, echoing tunnel. "Remember. Only you can make this stop. Next time we'll not be so gentle with you."

Everything receded as they left and fear and despair took up residence in their wake; footsteps, retreating, further and further, the scrape of chair legs across her cell, the clang as they closed her cell door.

She sank down sideways onto the floor, slowly, carefully, resting her throbbing head against the cold stone, finding a small measure of relief there, even though her face was just inches away from the small puddle of vomit she had deposited on the floor just now.

Quietly, she passed out.


	6. Chapter 6

Laura paused in her narrative, looking at Bill from under her lashes, trying to gauge his reaction. He just sat there, as if chiseled from bedrock and left out in the changing seasons for an age, weathered and cracked. His elbows were on his knees, hands clenched between his legs, shoulders hunched, eyes on the floor. She moved a little, just enough so that she could touch his shoulder and he startled, sprang to his feet.

"Bill, I…" She trailed off, unsure of what to say in the face of his obvious distress.

"Gods, Laura." His eyes were still on the floor avoiding her gaze. His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides, the repetitive movement urgent with need. He was a man of action and she could see what it cost him to sit here and quietly hear her out and not storm and rage and vent his anger in passionate curses, take it out on the bulkhead perhaps, as there were no Cylons in sight to visit his wrath upon.

Leaning forward, she thrust her empty teacup into his hands, and arched her eyebrow at him when he looked at her in surprise. After a moment he took the cup with a feral grin, whirled around and flung it at the wall. The noise of the cup as it shattered against the metal bulkhead was loud as a gunshot in the silence and she flinched.

"Did that help?"

"Some," he growled. His back was turned towards her, but she could see his shoulders were a touch less rigid, that a little bit of the tension had left him.

"Then please sit back down, I'm not finished and I need to tell the rest. If I don't, now, I'm afraid I never will"

He nodded, once, "Yeah, I just, I need a minute."

He stalked away, disappeared into the head and Laura leaned back and closed her eyes, feeling disappointed by his defection, yet at the same time there was a sense of relief that he'd walked away from her rather than faced her, because she knew his expression would be one of naked anger and grief and regret, and she couldn't deal with his emotions right now, not while she was still in the middle of her tale. She sensed he'd known that, and had removed himself from her presence for that very reason. She took a deep breath in, as deep as her aching ribs would allow her, then counted to ten and slowly breathed out. A simple breathing exercise that had served her well in the past, when the stresses of holding the fate of so many in her weakening hands grew too much. She could feel some of the strain she'd been laboring under loosen. He would be back, she knew that, and she would tell him the rest, and it felt good to talk to someone about what had happened to her, even though the hard part was still coming.

Down on New Caprica, Jack had tended to her injuries, but she'd only told him what he needed to know to treat her. She hadn't told him of her fear and doubts, of her terror at being locked up, alone and helpless in that awful cell. He'd been the closest thing she'd had to a confessor and a friend. His usual irreverence still held, as well as his loyalty to her, his near devotion, and that was a comfort to her, his normalcy when everything else had been so frakked up. She suspected he could read most of her story in the physical evidence of the abuse she'd suffered anyway, and he hadn't pressed for more. She'd sworn him to secrecy; she hadn't wanted anyone to know, for fear of breaking the spell, breaking the insurgency's spirit. She knew full well that she'd become something of a mythical figure to them, a beacon of hope, a symbol of all they were trying to preserve. She'd even fostered it, telling them to keep the faith, that they should persevere, that the Admiral would come back for them. She needed them all to fight, to resist, and she knew that if Tyrol and Sam and the others were to know the extent to which she'd been hurt, it would break them, send them all into despair; or inspire them to avenge her, send them on a killing spree, either alternative would surely spell the end of the insurgency.

So she'd kept it all in, had hidden behind silence and bulky sweaters and large amounts of painkillers and had soldiered on as if nothing had happened. There had been no one there even remotely capable of seeing past the figure of the President, the Resistance Leader, the Prophet, and seeing the woman underneath. Not even Saul Tigh. He might have, but he'd been too wrapped up in his own pain, his vision had been quite literally truncated. The only other person who might have been able to cut through it, had been taken away early in the occupation and not even her husband knew if she was either alive or dead.

Even Tory, who had been there when she'd been released, had not known the whole story, only the bits and pieces Laura had been forced to share. The young woman had been her aide for a long time and knew her better than anyone on the surface. As Tory's keen eyes followed her and the younger woman started to fit the pieces together, Laura had revealed the bare bones of what had happened and had sworn her to silence. Tory had simply nodded and then helped her wherever she could, reminding her to take her pain meds when she got distracted over the needs of her people, or the tally of NCP collaborators; waking her every few hours those first few days, when the concussion she'd suffered made sleeping a dangerous proposition.

She still had headaches to this day, her body still hurt everywhere, and the stiffness in her joints from bone deep bruises and too much time spent on the cold, hard floor of her cell, angered her beyond reason. _You're_ _showing your age, Laura, dear_, she thought wryly, as she hoisted herself off the couch carefully, so carefully. She didn't heal nearly as fast these days as in her youth, when skinned elbows and bruised knees would disappear in a matter of days. It all made her feel weak and clumsy and out of sorts. Slowly she shuffled to the galley, dredged up another teacup, poured more tea and filled two tall glasses with cold water from the tap. As she passed the head, she could hear Bill moving about, heard water running and him, muttering curses under his breath. For a moment she debated whether or not to go in there, but she decided against it. The raw emotion behind those muttered oaths was too much.

The couch, then. With a sigh, she plopped the water glasses on the table, settled back with her tea, and eyed her meds. She'd lived under a fugue of painkillers ever since her release from detention, the chemicals muting her pain, even as they dampened her emotions. A necessary evil if she wanted to stay on her feet, keep up appearances. But she was safe now, here on Galactica, in Bill's quarters. Firmly, she decided she'd better start cutting back. There was no more need to keep up the pretense of being fine, least of all to herself. Beyond that, she needed the clarity of thought right now, couldn't afford the haze the pills brought on. This in-between time with Bill, while she was still just a civilian and didn't have the right to put on her Presidential mask, to hide behind it, was too important. Tomorrow, or the day after, she would reclaim her title, of that she had no doubt, and however much impossibly closer Bill and her had become, she would have to separate Laura from the President once again.

As she sipped her tea, she let her gaze wander, taking in the rug on the floor - digging her toes in, relishing the luxurious feeling after all those many months toughing it out in her sparsely furnished tent - taking in the paintings and photographs lining the walls, the overflowing bookshelves, all the little details that made these quarters his. A book lay face down on the table and she donned her glasses to read the title "Searider Falcon" one of her all time favorites. She picked it up as she took a sip of her tea, opened it to the first page, but the words blurred as acrid tears welled in her eyes. They'd made it, how many remained in the fleet was yet to be determined but they'd made it. They were safe; for now. Humanity had narrowly survived a second near extinction. The realization hit her with the force of a sun going supernova and she started to shake, her teeth rattling against the rim of her cup.

Tea sloshed over the table as she set the cup down with trembling hands, wrapped her arms around herself, the book clutched to her stomach as if it could keep in the hurt. Suddenly unable to breathe, she leaned forward, head between her knees, hands hugging her sides as a great shuddering sob wrenched from her from somewhere deep within. That place with all the bolts and deadlocks, perhaps; and just as she thought the dam would surely break, Bill was there beside her. His warm hands anchored her, one callused palm on her knee, the other burrowing under her hair, rubbing circles into the back of her neck, while she fought to keep the tears at bay just a little longer, to get her breathing under control.

"You're cold," his voice rumbled seconds or days later. The couch shifted as he stood up. She heard him rummage around and then warmth descended as he draped a blanket over her shoulders. She wrapped it tightly around herself, leaned back and burrowed into it, accepted the teacup he handed her, wrapping one hand around its heat, the other still clutching the book to her like a lifeline.

His momentary absence had allowed her to get a grip on herself and as he plopped himself down beside her, she flashed him a grateful smile. She knew he took it as intended, a gift, when she saw his face relax a bit, saw him reach for his tea, then settle down beside her.

Sat on that couch, Bill beside her and the abyss averted yet again, the universe righted itself, just a little bit.

"I'm sorry I left, I…"

She forestalled him with a look. "I understand, it's okay."

They sipped their tea and sat in silence for a while, until at last she had gathered herself together enough to speak.

"Ready to hear the rest?"

"No. But I need to hear anyway." He looked at her, gave her his liquid eyes, his warm smile, his comforting presence by her side. His warm hand landed on hers, the one holding the book. Their fingers interlaced and he squeezed gently and some of his strength seemed to seep into her with the small gesture. "Are you ready to tell it?"

"As I'll ever be." She took off her glasses and started to lean forward, intent on placing them on the table, feeling her age as her abused body protested. Without a word, he took the frames from her, laid them upon the table. He squeezed her fingers once more, then released them and sat back a bit, facing her. The force of his stare enabled her to pick up the threads of her tale.

"I don't think I was out for very long. When I came to, I hurt too much to move, so I just stayed there, on the floor, curled up in a ball to try and protect myself, maybe disappear. I was so scared. The lights never dimmed, the screaming never stopped, the air was stale and reeked of despair and death. There were dark blotches on the wall that I could only assume were blood stains, and there was terror in the knowledge that my blood would likely be spilled at some point, left to soak into the concrete for some other prisoner to wonder about. After a while I didn't even feel the cold anymore. All in all, I'd say about a day went by before they came again."


	7. Chapter 7

A soft touch to her shoulder roused her and before she could think Laura shot upright, nearly passing out again from the blinding pain in her head at the sharp movement. _Bad move, Laura, bad, bad move,_ she chided herself as she slumped back against the wall. Unceremoniously, she leaned to the side and threw up what little remained in her stomach. There was no dramatic, where am I? Along with the pain in her head, the blinding lights glaring down at her, the soreness in her chest, the full extent of her situation had immediately registered.

_Buckle up; at least you didn't spit up any blood_, she told herself, using the stern voice she'd so often used with some of her more wayward students. Probably then, the knee to the gut had not done any internal damage, small mercies.

"Madam Pr…Ma'am?" The voice was familiar, the slip up telling, so Laura wasn't surprised, when she looked up, to find the Sharon model looking down at her. What did surprise her was the look of concern in those familiar eyes.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, chagrined that her voice wasn't as steady as she'd like it to be, wasn't obeying her directives.

The young woman – Cylon, she reminded herself harshly – avoided meeting her gaze, instead focusing her eyes on the spot just below Laura's left eye, where she could feel her pulse, her heartbeat, throbbing in the cut Doral had left her with.

"Making sure you're alright." Her voice was soft, wavering, and Laura guessed there was something else there but she was unable to focus on it through the blinding pain in her head. Through the ache, the thought surfaced that this was not Sharon. Sharon had been in Galactica's brig when the fleet jumped away. Boomer then, she intuited, the resurrected version of the model that had shot Adama. Angry at the affront of being tended to by this of all Cylons, Laura sat up a little straighter chewing on her lip to stifle a groan. She caught the sorrow and disgust in Boomers gaze, a fleeting look of pity.

"I'm fine, so leave." Laura turned her head away. Defiance and anger were all she had now; she didn't want their pity, especially not from this model. Boomer had nearly killed Bill Adama, the man they all depended on for survival, a truth that had been drilled home even more, when in his absence, Saul Tigh had taken over guarding the fleet and had frakked things up to the point of ruin. Yet Sharon had done so much to help them, had risked herself on their behalf, had risked her unborn baby on _Laura's_ own behalf. It was too confusing, especially in her present, befuddled state. Better keep it simple. She couldn't think of their oppressors in any other terms; they were _things_, they were machines, not human; if she let herself think otherwise, then the knowledge of what she'd done to Boomer's counterpart in the fleet would surely undo her.

"I'm not leaving until I check you out. Now hold still." Boomer's fingers were on her chin, exerting just enough pressure to force her face around again. Laura closed her eyes and shivered when Boomer's hands started to probe her bruised face, none too gently, and fire crackled along her cheekbone. The Cylon cleaned dried blood away with a dampened cloth and then there was the cool sting of ointment being rubbed into the cut decorating her cheekbone. Antiseptic, Laura's mind provided, as she recognized the hospital smell.

"There. That should heal with minimal scarring. What else?"

At Laura's continued silence Boomer threw her hands up in disgust. "You know they will keep doing this until you break," she said. "I can't save you from that, I can at least make you a bit more comfortable, now tell me, you're concussed, aren't you?"

"Yeah," she said; no sense in denying the apparently obvious. "Nothing to be done for that, unless bed rest and waking me every few hours with a nice cup of tea are an option?" She opened her eyes, looked at Boomer and saw her duck her head, saw shame in her and something like regret. "No, I didn't think it was."

Boomer quickly ran her fingers through Laura's hair, located the large knot that had formed on the back of her head and reported that at least she wasn't bleeding. As the Cylon looked at her pupils and pronounced them uneven and dilated, Laura couldn't help but see the young woman she had once ordered to find as many survivors as she could; to bring them back so that they could form a convoy and get to a safer place. That had been back when the world had ended. She'd just been told she had terminal breast cancer, hours later the Twelve Colonies had been nuked, the human race had been all but obliterated and the Presidency had been thrust upon her by default. Laura had accepted the responsibility and, seeing no other alternative, she'd made the one decision that had shaped all her actions afterwards; to gather together the last remnants of humanity, to preserve as many lives as possible. Gods, how much had changed since then. It was almost laughable to think that things had been simpler then, there at the end of the world. Cylon equaled bad, human equaled good, and that was that. All these shades of grey nowadays had a way of making her head spin.

Laura's eyes locked with Boomer's and something told her that Boomer remembered too. She found herself opening her mouth with no idea what she was going to say but a sound at the door drew her attention. Boomer quickly rose to her feet, moved away from her and Laura felt a profound sense of disappointment, regretting the lost opportunity. She swiveled her gaze to the door and to her dismay, the Cavil model stood in the entryway. The menace he exuded was almost palpable.

"You're looking better, Laura," Cavil said, as he entered her cell. "I see Eight took good care of you."

Laura slowly turned to face him, her head was still killing her but the nausea had passed, for the moment. She was in a fighting mood. She was done feeling scared, done with the weakness of her limbs, the pounding in her head. She'd already done this once before, carried on with her duties to the fleet through the breakdown of her body, to the point of death, fought tooth and nail, had been sick and weak and hurting until she couldn't stand it anymore, and had prevailed. She was damned if she was going to let a bunch of skin jobs get the better of her now. "Is that the policy from now on? Beat me up then patch me up?"

"Oh no, no, no, no." He laughed. "Rest assured that was a onetime thing." The patching up not the beating up, Laura knew from the look on his face. "We wouldn't want you to walk out of here with the mother of all shiners, what would people think?"

She threw him one of her impervious glares, the one that worked so well on troublesome Quorum members, as she slowly started to climb to her feet. For a moment the world slipped sideways and she feared she was going to pass out again, then the feeling passed. "So at one point I am going to walk out of here?"

"Only if you cooperate, Laura; only if you cooperate." He started to circle around her, and it was making her dizzy, his voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, booming like a distant explosion, then whispering intimately in her ear.

"You know I can't." There was a blotch of color on the wall near the door, old blood soaked into the concrete, she fastened her eyes upon it, let it anchor her to reality while her anger grew like a cancer.

"You can, and you will." Cavil hissed after a long beat. "It's only a matter of time."

He signaled and in walked the Doral and Leoben models. They momentarily stood in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder, obscuring her view, the loss of her focal point on the wall setting her adrift.

"It's a frakking reunion," Laura said, more to herself than anyone else.

Leoben and Doral stepped further into her cell and stationed themselves to either side of her. Doral wore his customary vacuous stare while Leoben wore a beatific expression, like he was seeing something wondrous.

"Still with the sense of humor, Laura." Leoben said. "I like that about you." His hands were clasped behind his back tightly, as if he were afraid that, given the freedom, they would caress her or hurt her of their own accord. Looking at his face, Laura was not sure which.

"I'm a funny gal." Fury was making her reckless.

"You're a riot," Doral said. His face was always so blank, his voice bland, but she'd already experienced his sudden shift into terrible violence and knew he was perhaps the most dangerous of the four models surrounding her. He regarded her for a moment, balled his fists and brought his right hand up, raking his knuckles painfully over the bruised side of her face, a warning of things to come. "Now give us their names."

She didn't trust her voice enough to reply.

"Laura," Leoben said as he stepped closer, invading her personal space, "these people betrayed you. You gave them everything, did things nobody should have to do, to ensure their survival, and they discarded you like an old rag when Baltar started his song and dance about this frakking mud ball. And then, when he revealed how truly weak he is, they turned right around and laid their burdens at your feet again. They let you down while you've sacrificed everything for them, why protect them at all?"

"You'll never understand," she seethed. _Danger, he's dangerous, don't listen to him_, her mind supplied as she reeled at the prescience of his statement; at how he seemed to be able to read her thoughts, hit her where it hurt the most. She remembered Adama's words, his model was insidious, able to plant the seeds of doubt and mistrust, as he'd done before, making her believe for a short while that Adama was a Cylon. She adjusted her earlier assessment, reined in her rage a little in favor of clear thought. This, unmistakably, was the most dangerous model.

"Then make me understand." His face was so close his breath stirred the fine hairs at her temple and it was all she could do to suppress a shudder. "I admire your dedication to these people, Laura, I truly do, but I don't understand."

"And you never will, because it involves concepts you know nothing about. Concepts like duty, loyalty, and faith."

As she spoke, she realized the truth of her words and it felt like a burden being lifted, despite the circumstances. He'd hit her with surface truths only. Yes, the people of the fleet had let her down; she had done the same to them during her Presidency, on more than one occasion. There was bitterness there, surely, and regret. But they were all, she as well as the rest of the fleet, only human, fallible, trying to do their best under impossible circumstances, and they had all been so very, very tired of running.

"Don't even start on that. Your people are scattered in their faith at best, unfocussed." He circled around her, his face never more than a few inches from hers.

"I'm not speaking for them; I'm no longer their President, do try to keep up." _Careful, Laura_, she told herself. _Airlock that temper of yours before it gets you into more trouble._ She took a deep breath to steady herself. "I can only speak for myself. And _I_ have faith, it's _my_ faith I'm talking about."

"Faith in what? You are caught here, end of line, you're never getting off this rock. What do you hold onto now, Laura? What is it that you put your faith in? The Lords of Kobol? They've deserted you, you must see that."

She drew herself up to her full height. "Perhaps. But then again, the Gods lift those who lift each other, and I have faith that when we do just that, lift each other, the Gods will always be with us. I have faith in destiny, hope, survival, life."

His hot breath on her cheek, his strange blue eyes searching her, his hand trailing up her arm, he repulsed her and yet she was fascinated by him, a dangerous model indeed.

"Ah life." His lips whispered against her temple, his hand on her shoulder held her in place as she tried to wrench herself away. "Let me tell you a secret. What life you have now is just a temporary reprieve. You were the dying leader, you always have been, and you will be again, soon."

He smiled at her then, sketching a little bow in her direction and stepping away, and she couldn't hide her shock. Couldn't wrap her mind around what he'd just said and while she was still off balance, Doral stepped into view, his red faced rage even more jarring after Leoben's beatific smile.

"Don't presume to tell us about life. Your precious insurgency kills indiscriminately, Humans and Cylons alike. Just today, a bomb took out five of us, along with two of your own people. They were alive and now they're dead. You did that."

"No." Her denial was automatic but her heart sank at the thought of more death, more of her people killed, the remainder of the fleet, being decimated one by one.

Leoben stepped up to her, whispered in her ear "At this point, only you can stop all this death and bloodshed."

"I'm just a schoolteacher; I have no power to stop anything."

Doral spat on the floor and stepped away from her and Cavil took his place. "Laura, you have to cooperate with us, there's really no other option."

"No…" As she started to voice her protest, something slammed into her from behind, and without transition she was down on all fours, re-bruising already bruised knees. Looking up she saw it was Doral who'd slammed into her, his fingers were clasped together in a two-handed grip, raised high above his head, ready to strike again. Vaguely, she heard Boomer voice a protest, then, pain exploded everywhere as fists and feet laid into her. She heard the crack as one of her ribs gave, was just able to bite back a scream as her shoulder was wrenched from its socket, felt blood begin to trickle down her hipbone when a booted foot landed a glancing blow there. It was too much; she hadn't been built for this. When darkness finally came for her, she let it carry her away willingly.


	8. Chapter 8

The rage that had been building in him like a tidal wave finally came to a head, when he heard her breath hitch and saw the unsteady movement with which she unfurled her fingers from the book she'd been clinging to and threw it on the table with a flick of her wrist; reached up and wiped at her eyes, where a few silent tears clung to her lashes. He wanted to storm and rage, tear up his quarters, this sanctuary where he'd been safe and sound while she'd suffered down on that frakking planet. He half rose from the couch, his hands clenching into fists, impotent with anger, the teacup forgotten between them. It shattered into a million pieces, shards striated his flesh but he hardly felt it. All he could see and hear and feel were the images she'd invoked, fists and feet blurring towards her, her blood on the floor.

"Gods, Bill! Are you alright?"

Laura leaned forward, grabbed his hands, the blanket falling from her shoulders, exposing her to his view. She looked so much frailer now that he knew what she'd suffered. Oblivious of her own discomfort she started to examine the cuts on his hands, but he'd caught her wince as she'd reached for him and took a step back, pulled his hands away roughly, almost irritated with her. It was just like her to put his welfare before her own, and a small part of him resented her for it. A bigger, much better part, caught the look of confusion she threw him and offered her a small, self-deprecating smile, a light shrug of his shoulders.

"I'm okay, don't worry." His voice sounded strained even to his own ears.

But he was not okay, he was not alright; he didn't think he'd ever be fully alright again. The thought of what had happened to her would haunt him for the rest of his days, the thought that he hadn't been there to stop it. He felt her searching gaze and looked away, kept his gaze firmly on the carpet. He felt as though he'd been swallowed by a black hole, didn't want the darkness in him bleeding out through his eyes and taint her, as he knew it must were their gazes to meet.

"Laura, I am so, so sorry for leaving you down there."

"What matters is that you came back. It's okay." Her graceful hands moved into view, tugged at his wrists, avoiding his cut fingers. He let himself be pulled down, sat beside her, his thigh touching her knee, the barest of touches, the small contact shooting electricity through him anyway.

"No, it's not. I never should have jumped away, I never…" His hands clenched and unclenched in helpless fury. The cuts weren't all that deep, they'd already stopped bleeding. Such a small penance for everything he'd done and failed to do.

"Jumping away was the right thing to do. You had only a skeleton crew, you were in no condition to fight them, they would have crushed you and then we really would have been lost."

She slid off the couch, actually kneeled on the floor before him, looking up at him, trying to meet his eyes. It shocked him, that she would do that, especially with what he now suspected was hiding underneath that tattered grey sweater she was wearing. It shamed him even more, so he closed his eyes, continued to avoid her gaze.

"But…"

"No, this is not up for discussion, you made the right decision."

"Then why doesn't it feel that way?"

"Bill, stop doing this." Her breath whispered secrets into his skin, it smelled of cinnamon and cloves.

"Stop what?"

"Stop blaming yourself for everything that happens. You really like to wallow in it sometimes, don't you? Figuring that anything bad that ever happened to the fleet, to _me_, is your fault. Well I'm not going to let you do it, not this time."

Laura moved away from him. Her harsh words surprised him into opening his eyes, looking at her. She reached back blindly, with none of her usual finesse, but all of her usual determination. He watched as her elegant fingers quested for her glasses, grabbed them from the table and put them on, and just like that, she was in full Presidential mode again. Her gaze locked on him, the brilliance of her eyes refracted by her glasses, made bearable.

"But if I hadn't told you not to steal the election, if I hadn't let you go down there, if I hadn't let you settle on that frakking planet, then jumped away at the first sign of trouble, then none of this would have happened."

She withdrew from him completely, climbed slowly to her feet, looking at least eight feet tall, a towering presence that humbled him.

"I'm sorry you think so little of me." She sat down in the chair opposite him, her deliberate choice to put some distance between them not lost on him. "I am perfectly capable of making my own decisions, thank you very much, and it was my choice, not to rig the election."

"After I all but forced you to." His worst decision ever. He'd taken the moral high road, appalled at what she had been willing to do to secure the Presidency, and had convinced her not to go through with it, telling her doing so would move her cancer into her heart. In truth, he'd only wanted to prevent her from doing something that would taint his own high opinion of her. He'd been selfish and it had cost humanity dearly, had cost Laura dearly.

She waved him off. "Your counsel was sound, but ultimately it was _my_ choice not to go through with it. _Mine_. My own." Throughout her speech, her voice never raised above a whisper but the searing intensity of her words, her presence, left his cheeks flapping as if he were doing 7 Gs in a viper. "It was also _my_ choice to settle on New Caprica," she continued unabated, "I chose to go down there, even though I knew Baltar was going to make a mess of things and the Cylons would probably find us. _I_ made those choices and if they were mistakes, then they are _mine_ as well, so stop blaming yourself."

He couldn't help but smile a little at that, it was so vintage Laura Roslin, President at large.

"Bill…" Something in her voice, so soft, startled him into finally looking at her - really looking at her - and what he found in her gaze made him reel. Her glasses were in her hands once more, somewhere during her diatribe, she'd taken them off. Unfiltered, her glorious green eyes were blazing at him, not with anger or recriminations but with what he could only describe as love, though the word was not nearly adequate to express what he saw in her. Despite the smudges and the dirt still clinging to her skin, the unruly riot of her hair, her muddy clothes, she looked radiant. Her inner fire and strength shone though like a beacon of hope, illuminating his despair, banishing it. She was incandescent. Her brilliance washed over him, warmed him, healed him.

He tried one last time. "I should have been there, I should have stopped them. I never should have…" Giving up, he leaned his forehead against hers, closed his eyes. To look any longer at her luminescence would surely annihilate him like an auto-da-fé, though he would gladly burn like a heretic, profess his faith at the altar of her.

And just like that, suddenly, with a quiet surety that surprised him, he knew she'd be alright, that they would both be, as long as they stuck together. They'd not shake this lightly, he knew that. Her tale would replay itself in his nightmares, and he shuddered to think what her own dreams would be like. But ultimately, he knew they'd survive and move on, stronger and more determined than before.

"Stop blaming yourself." Her voice thrilled through him, her luminous gaze caressed him, forgave him.

"Okay," he whispered. Her sharp intake of breath made him sit back, afraid he'd hurt her. Laura's beautiful face registered only surprise at his easy capitulation and he felt his smile grow wider for a minute before he sobered again, "but I'm still sorry. Sorry you had to go through all that."

"Bruises fade, Bill, bones knit. I'm still a little sore, but it's okay."

A little sore, he thought, yeah, right. Wordlessly, he handed her his water, which had sat undisturbed on the coffee table until now, grabbed the bottle of painkillers, shook out two of her pills and offered them to her. She took one, swallowed it down with a grimace, folded his hand over the other. "I need to stay clearheaded, thank you, though."

The trust and gratitude in her eyes moved him, emboldened him. He slipped a gentle finger under the neckline of her shirt. "Show me?"

By the dimming light in her eyes, he could see the discomfort his request caused her but he wasn't going to back down from this. Now that he'd stopped wallowing in his own guilt, he was able to focus completely on her again, and he could sense there were still things she hadn't told him, that this was the hurdle they needed to take before she could tell him the rest of her story.

"Bill, please, I..."

He withdrew his finger, shaken by how the small touch had thrown him. Her skin, so soft, the steady beat of her heart, the rush of her blood, and the flesh and bone reality of her. Trembling like he hadn't since he'd stolen a kiss from his first childhood sweetheart when he was nine, he got up and grabbed a clean towel, filled a small basin with water and brought it with him, sat beside her once more.

She gazed at him with such a look of trepidation on her face that he nearly wept. Bringing the towel up to her cheeks, he gently wiped the smudges away, the little bit of dirt that clung to the corner of her jaw, inspected his handiwork. He saw it now, the finger length scar that hadn't been there before. It followed the sweep of her cheekbone and wouldn't be visible to anyone not looking too closely. He pressed his lips to the thin white line and for a fleeting moment imagined he tasted the tang of salt, but when he drew back and looked at her, her eyes were dry.

"I need to see."

After a long moment, she put her glasses back on, that necessary piece of her armor sliding back into place. Her hands trembled as she pushed aside the neckline of her sweater and shirt, pushing them down to where he could just make out the top of her bra, the gentle swell of her breasts.

Bill lowered his gaze and winced as he caught sight for the first time of her swollen left shoulder. A long, still healing cut bisected the deep bruise wrapping itself around her collarbone, like an arrow pointing the way of his failure.

"What else?"

Wordlessly she grabbed the hem of the bulky grey sweater, the black shirt underneath. Keeping her eyes on his the whole way, she lifted her shirt until the material was bunched up just under the lower edge of her breasts.

Smarting with guilt and unshed tears, his eyes traveled down, to where a shoe shaped discoloration decorated her stomach, then up to the huge bruise that flowered on her ribcage, extending all the way upwards to just below her breasts and down to where the bruising disappeared below the waistband of her slacks. He gently rotated his fingers, not daring to touch her anywhere al of a sudden. She understood the gesture, stiffly shifted her position to let him get a look at her back; it too was battered and bruised, decorated with cuts and scrapes. Gently he lifted her sweater higher; the damage went all the way up her back, past her shoulders. The white strap of her bra bisected one of the deeper gashes. The cut was closed by a neat black row of stitches but a few small drops of blood still stained the material of her bra a lurid red. He lowered her sweater and she turned back to face him, started to lower her hands as well, to hide her hurts once again, but he stayed her.

"Gods Laura," he swallowed and looked up at her, down at the footprint on her abdomen, it was unfathomable to him, how anyone could do such a thing to anyone, but especially to the woman sitting opposite him; this beautiful creature, possessed of such strength and poise, regal and inviolate, even after everything she'd endured.

Her voice broke his trance. "Okay," she murmured, "maybe I'm more than a little sore, but I'll be alright, Bill" Her small smile made him unravel all over again.

How could he have missed it? How could he not have seen it the moment she stepped out onto the hangar deck? Sure, the Cylons had been very careful not to inflict any visible damage beyond the initial injury to her face, but he knew her. God's, he'd spent years gazing at her, learning everything about her. How she moved; how her hands would carry on whole conversations of their own as she talked; the sway of her hips; the way she cocked her head when she was fighting with him and about to go for a knock out; her purposeful stride; the lines of her face, spelling out the sorrow and heartbreak and joy of her life, the green of her changing eyes. To be fair, he had noticed something was off, her stiff movements, the look of defeat as their gazes met for that too brief second when she first stepped onto his hangar deck, but he hadn't put it together, hadn't realized how bad things had gotten for her down there. He should have. He should have known the moment he saw what they'd done to Saul. He should have known she would be the biggest target down there, that they'd never leave her alone, that they'd try to break her, try to destroy the one woman who had stood against them; had stood like a bulwark against the annihilation of the human race.

"Are they broken?" He traced patterns in the air above the bruise on her side, not daring to touch her, and saw her shiver, as if the displaced air alone was enough to cause her discomfort.

"It's mostly just a lot of bruising, but yeah, they did manage to crack two, hairline fractures."

"How many times?" He had to swallow down his rage at what they'd done to her in order to be there for her, but it was tearing him up inside worse than Boomers bullets had done. He wanted to hug her, comfort her, cry with her, take her pain upon himself, kiss her and hold her and never let her go again, but he knew that wasn't what she needed from him right now.

"That was it, the beatings stopped. They tried…," she looked down at her hands, still clasping the hem of her shirt and lowered the material back down over the evidence of her pain like a shield. "…they tried other means of persuasion."


	9. Chapter 9

After that, they'd left her alone for what seemed like a long while. They'd brought her food and water and Boomer had come in to patch her up again after all. This time Laura had been too out of it to even voice a protest, except when Boomer had manipulated her dislocated shoulder back into place. Laura had cursed Boomer and the rest of her kind with a passion then, and then she'd passed out again. She woke up intermittently, tried to drink, to swallow some food, only to have it come up again in a violent spasm of nausea that was hell on her ribs. As she lay against the wall, curled up around herself, she saw fresh spatters of blood, her blood, decorating the wall, painting the floor crimson, and cried a little.

Through it all, Leoben's words kept going round and round in her head. _You were the dying leader, and you will be again, soon._ Was he frakking with her head or was he implying that at some future point the mantle of the dying leader would be thrust upon her again? _All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. _She didn't want to be the one dying again, wasting away while having to make life and death choices for the survival of her species, each impossible decision eroding away her soul as cancer ate away at her flesh. Why did it have to be her, surely, the Gods wouldn't be so cruel, giving her back her life only to take it again?

On the other hand, some part of her understood, accepted it even. The scriptures foretold that a dying leader would lead humanity to the promised land, but would not live to enter it. If that was the condition she'd have to meet in order to achieve her objective, so be it, didn't the needs of the many outweigh her own? Some small, buried part of her, had even felt more than a little adrift after her cancer had so magically disappeared. Oh, she'd reveled in her return to health, in the fact that she could move and breathe without pain after suffering under the weight of her mortality for so long, but underneath it all, her cure had seemed like a cheat somehow. She'd given up so much on her quest to find earth, sacrificed her morality, her femininity, her soul, to the altar of her one singular - seemingly Gods given – imperative; to lead her people to their new home. With her cure had come the sneaking thought that maybe she'd given her life to something frangible and illusory, that she'd clung to the scriptures to give meaning to her own demise - her death in exchange for the salvation of her people - only to discover the universe had played a cruel trick on her.

Then again, maybe Leoben had been simply referring to her present situation? Were they going to kill her, torture her to death, execute her, make an example out of her? It was somehow the easier explanation, but she didn't think it was the right one. Based on what she'd inferred from Cavil, they needed her alive, were afraid to make a martyr out of her.

As time went on and she became a little more lucid, she pushed the thoughts from her mind, trying to concentrate on the here and now, trying to gauge how much time had passed. It was impossible really, the ever glaring lights didn't allow for days and nights, but by the frequency of the food she was delivered, she guessed about 5 or 6 days went by before they came for her again.

They took her to a different cell this time; Leoben and Doral marching along on either side of her. She walked the short distance under her own steam, even though it took all her willpower to just put one foot in front of the other. She hurt everywhere, her concussion had not fared well under the earlier beating, and the intervening days, spent curled up on the cold, hard floor, had done little to assuage it. Her shoulder screamed abuse at her and her ribs vehemently protested every step, but she was determined not to show them how weak she was.

The cell they took her to was empty like her own, except for what looked like a dentist's chair in the middle of the room. _How incongruous_, she thought, but all too soon the chair's purpose became clear. They strapped her in it, attached some kind of sensors to her fingertips stepped back out of her field of vision.

"Well, well." It was the D'Anna Biers model doing the talking this time; she paced back and forth, in and out of Laura's field of vision, in and out. "You've proven a lot more resilient than any one of us would have given you credit for. It's interesting."

She did her best to look unperturbed, but underneath Laura was afraid, so very afraid. Her head was killing her, making it difficult to think, to concentrate on what was going on. She'd never been subjected to such brutality before, to have such violence directed against herself was profoundly disturbing. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this, not even her fight with cancer. As personal and invasive as that had been, it had also, on a fundamental level, been wholly impersonal. It had not been directed at _her, _at her person, at Laura Roslin.This continued abuse _was_ and that made it more terrifying than anything she'd gone through in her life.

Laura's composure cracked a little as Biers stepped right up to her, her face inches away from her own. "Where's Adama? " The question took Laura by surprise, she was unable to bite back her answer, keep the vitriol from her voice.

"About to descend on you like …"

She never got to finish her sentence, Biers twiddled with a small device and Laura felt all her nerves catch on fire as electricity coursed through her. She clamped her jaw shut, refused to give them the satisfaction of making her scream. After what seemed like hours but were probably seconds, Biers dialed the device down and the firestorm receded.

"That was just a taste, Ms. Roslin." Biers looked down at her with pity and a hint of disdain. "Adama's not here to protect you. He's not coming back. The sooner you accept it, the sooner we can put this sordid business behind us and start working together."

"He is. He is coming back."

Laura was barely conscious of saying the words, in her mind she had gone to that place in the mountains beside the lake; the spot she'd told Bill about. Only now there was a cabin, with a veranda, and Bill was waiting for her there, looking down at her as she approached, wearing that rare, wide smile she loved. As she stepped up to the porch he reached out his hand, his eyes alight with joy, and she saw herself reflected in them, saw that she was beautiful to him, as he was to her. She extended her hand, reaching for his, meeting him halfway. The moment their fingers touched, electricity again swept through her, worse than before, and Laura went rigid in the chair. Her back arched, her aching head was thrown back, her abused body screamed in protest, but the hymn of all her earlier hurts paled beside the symphony of pain that now clanged through her veins.

Then, just as suddenly, it stopped and her body fell back in the chair. Panting she came back to herself. All her senses were heightened, she could feel the aftereffects of lightning still crackling along her nerve endings; there were tears in her hair and an acrid smell hung in the air, somewhere out in the hall, someone was laughing and a door clanged shut.

"Adama abandoned you to us."

"Never."

Laura fought her way back. They were sitting on a grassy patch out by the lake, Bill and her, drinking and smoking as they'd done on Groundbreaking Day, laughing. Behind them, up the hill a short ways was the cabin they'd built. The sun was shining down on them, warming her skin as his presence by her side warmed her heart. He blew out a smoke ring, a perfect circle, and she tried to emulate him but failed miserably. He laughed and reached for her and when his fingers made contact with her skin, the firestorm swept through her again. And still she refused to cry out. The muscles of her jaw ached, her _teeth_ ached, but she refused to give them the satisfaction of making her scream.

"There's no hope. Adama left you here to die."

"No."

Her head was on his chest, the reassuring thump of his heartbeat lulling her to sleep. Idly, she ran her hand up and down his torso, imagining she could feel the path of his scar buried underneath his clothes. _"You're such a tease, Laura Roslin,"_ he rumbled, making her giggle and flush at the same time and as she looked up at him and their eyes met, her world went supernova.

"He jumped away, he's not coming back to rescue you."

"No."

Bill was walking beside her, leading her up towards their cabin. He paused on the porch, looked down at her and as this lips descended and met hers, pain again swept through her, rising like a storm, lightning and thunder lighting up her nerve endings. A hurricane gathering in intensity until all she could think of was the absolute need to let out some of the pressure, to give voice to her agony, it was too great, she was lost in it. Her jaw unclenched but before she could scream, the brutal splendor, the terrible majesty of the thunderstorm took her, swept her away, and this time she drowned in the deluge.

She came to an unknown time later, to find Biers hovering over her.

"You can make it stop. Work with us, Laura. You're still the President, we all know it. The people will listen to you. You'll replace Baltar and we can all start looking to a better future."

"No."

She closed her eyes, clenched her jaw, waiting for the onslaught, but for some reason it didn't come. When she opened her eyes again, they were looking down at her. Biers looked at her curiously; even Doral's face had lost some of its bland creepiness. Leoben leaned down, traced the al but healed scar on her cheek with the knuckles of his right hand.

"Stop looking to the sky for answers. Join us," he whispered, his voice almost like a caress, "Please Laura, make us stop hurting you."

She shook her head no, too weak to speak, and instantly, fire burned through her veins again as Biers dialed up her machine, twisted the control all the way to the right and it was agony and it was ecstasy, and she was too tired, too worn out, too drained. She saw herself on her deathbed, right before Hera's blood had worked it's miracle cure, saw those long ago sub light ships destroyed by raiders as she jumped the rest of the convoy to safety, saw the Olympic Carrier explode, saw Billy, cold and alone in the morgue, saw Elosha, dead on Kobol, saw Galactica jump away. All her losses, all her failures; it was all too much. As pain screamed through her like a nuclear fire she could do nothing but scream with it and in that instant she gave in, she gave up.


	10. Chapter 10

Laura paused in her narrative, unsure how to proceed. She deliberately didn't voice the last of what she'd seen in her extremity; Bill's retreating figure, walking away from their cabin, into the woods, abandoning her. After all she had suffered, watching him walk away was what had finally broken her.

"That's when I gave in." She sagged back into the couch, tucked her legs beneath her, and pulled the blanket over her lower body. Sighing, she took off her glasses, let them dangle between her fingers as she massaged the bridge of her nose. Her left arm had once again found its way to her midriff. It was pressing on the bruises there, but the position was really the most comfortable to her still healing shoulder. The pill she'd taken earlier had helped but in the retelling of her ordeal, each individual pain had flared up again and she was aching quite badly. _And still the mistress of the understatement, Laura love. _Her mother's voice, strong and clear and so very dear to her.

"Laura," Bill's voice provided a counterpoint, brought her back to him, "Laura, I've seen grown men twice your size crumble under the weight of what they put you through. Don't do this to yourself."

He'd already forgiven her, as he always did, even when she didn't ask for it, and she hadn't asked for it, not yet, not when he still didn't know the full extent of what he was forgiving her for.

"I let them down," she said, needing him to understand. "They were all looking to me to guide them, lead them, Tyrol, Sam, even Saul, and I let them down." For a moment the world swam away from her as tears threatened, but she shook herself, carefully, mindful of her aching head, and everything came back into focus.

"Don't judge yourself so harshly." His eyes were midnight blue, fraught with pain and endless possibilities; his voice matched his stare.

"If I don't, who will? Bill, if I don't question myself, who will?" Her voice sounded harsh, even to her own ears. He didn't have the right to forgive her so easily, when the worst was still to come.

"There's no need." He refused to indulge her. She very nearly cried and rallied her defenses, put her glasses back on so she could glare at him all the better.

"Yes, there is!" Laura curled her right hand into a fist, beat out the rhythm of her words against her heart, where she hurt the most. "They offered me a way out and I considered it, Bill."

And she had, she had considered it, and it was that which she'd tried to hide, not the injuries to her body, the injuries to her spirit. She had pushed her momentary betrayal away, locked and bolted the door to that room in her heart where the Olympic Carrier resided. The room that contained Billy and Elosha, her love for them as well as her guilt over their deaths, the place where her cancer lived next to her cure; the room that held all those things that were too painful to ever contemplate, all those things that would weaken her. She'd locked her time in detention away in there as well, and had returned to the business of organizing the insurgency with a vehemence that had startled even Cottle and Tory.

They had been the only people on the planet who at least had a small inkling where she was coming from, and she'd hidden even from them. Alone; by choice as much as necessity she'd borne her burdens alone, and now, in the safety of Bill's quarters, finally able to share the full extent of her anguish, she found she couldn't.

His strong hand covered hers where it beat a tattoo against her chest, stilled it. "Laura."

His voice was so warm, sweet like Ambrosia. Laura wanted to crawl into his arms and cry until there were no more tears to shed. She wanted to take comfort from him, let him love her - let herself love him - luxuriate in his embrace and let him chase the nightmares away, let him take over.

She couldn't.

She was strong in her own right, independent and self-sufficient. It had taken her a long time to grow into her own, and if she gave it up, gave in to him, she knew she would never be able to go back to that like she needed to; knew she would never be able to take back the Presidency and be an effective leader to their people. The position required a certain ruthlessness, here at the end of the world, where every decision was a matter of life and death, where one wrong move could spell out the end of the human race, as their sojourn on New Caprica had so eloquently illustrated. She couldn't afford to let herself be distracted by love, softened by it. And if Leoben's words were to come true, Gods' forbid, and she'd have to take on the mantel of the _dying_ leader again, there would certainly be no place for weakness.

But she did need to talk about what had happened, this she allowed herself, in this twilight time before the demands of their respective jobs consumed them again. She needed to take the sting of New Caprica out, before anger and hatred destroyed her just as surely as love would.

So she forged on. "I considered their offer, weighed the pros and cons in my mind. It started to make sense even. Supplant Baltar, maybe I would be able to do some good then, stop all the bloodshed, work out a way to co-exist peacefully."

Laura hung her head in shame, the hurt of it still too fresh. She knew - had known - that after all the Cylons had put the colonists through, there would be no chance of co-existence of any kind on that frakking planet. But for one brief moment, she had selfishly entertained the notion, had been ready to betray for no other reason than that they would stop hurting her. Ever since, she'd hated herself for showing such weakness, even if, rationally, she knew she shouldn't blame herself. She'd been under extreme duress, had been tortured, concussed, in severe pain.

"Don't do this to yourself."

Bill hooked a finger under her chin, forced her to face him. The fingers of his other hand were still wrapped around her own, their joined hands pressed over her heart. Tears were brimming in his eyes but he held them in check for her with a visible effort. It had always surprised her, the emotional nature of this man who at first glance seemed hewn from granite, unmovable, untouchable.

She took strength from his gaze. "I told myself it would be for the good of the people, but really, all I wanted was for the pain to stop."

"Oh, Laura." His thumb traced the thin scar on her cheek, leaving a cold, wet trail along the curve of her cheekbone and she was surprised to find there were tears in her eyes as well, threatening to fall. She forced them back.

"Bill. I gave up, I gave in. I lost my faith. They beat me, defeated me, and it was Gaius Baltar, of all people, who saved me from myself." There, the second worst thing was out and it felt like a weight being lifted from her shoulders.

"Baltar was there?" His frown was more eloquent than any string of curses.

"No, yes." Laura untangled their hands, got up to pace the room, needing to move. "Boomer, the Sharon model came into the room, told them Baltar was outside, demanding to see me. Apparently, keeping up appearances was important to them for some reason. I was this close to collaborating with them; this close," she held up her hand, her thumb and forefinger millimeters apart, "when they dialed down their frakking machine. They cleaned me up, gave me fresh clothes to wear, shot me up with I don't know what, some sort of morpha; it took the pain away, but kept me lucid; pretty strong stuff.

"Baltar walked in, handed me my glasses back as though they were a gift and I should be grateful, gave me a chair to sit on, creature comforts.

"He was underhanded and insufferable, as usual, but underneath he seemed so scared. He told me there had been suicide bombings and how the both of us should condemn them and he looked to be genuinely horrified and all I could think was if he even knew what kind of deal the Cylons had offered, that they were prepared to supplant him, that he had saved himself by coming here. I wondered if he knew, but figured he was just there by accident, saving his hide through sheer luck, as ever. It made – it _makes_ - my heart hurt to think that that's always how it is with him.

"Anyway, I told him no and for some unknown reason he still let me go."

She paused, sat back down beside Bill, her elbows on her knees, fingers clasped in a death grip between them. Baltar had had the gall to deny that people were being tortured under his regime and she had very nearly shown him the evidence of the abuse she'd endured but had thrown Tigh's name in his face instead, wary of revealing too much of herself to the little prick. It still stung, somehow worse than anything else, that blatant denial of her sufferings.

Quietly, she finished. "So yeah, it was frakking Baltar who saved me, _again_. If he hadn't come in when he did, I would have caved in to them."

"You don't know that."

"I do," she said. "I did. I gave up." Defeated, she looked down at her hands; they were grimy, her nails chipped and torn, dirt wedged beneath them. She needed a shower.

"We wouldn't be here having this conversation if you had." He gave her a gentle nudge but she kept her eyes riveted on her clasped hands, refusing to look up at him, too ashamed still.

After a beat he forged on, undaunted. "Laura, if there's one thing you should always trust about yourself, it's that you never give in, you never back down, and you never give up."

"In my head I did, strapped to that machine." She pried her fingers loose, hugged herself, as though the air in his quarters had suddenly become too cold.

"That doesn't count, now does it?" he said, "If we were to be held accountable for everything that goes on in our heads, we'd all be in the brig."

The unexpected bit of humor brought her head up, brought her out of herself.

"Perhaps," she breathed. After a long moment, she nodded, once, still not entirely convinced but starting to entertain the notion that maybe, just maybe, there was something to what he was saying. "Perhaps you're right."

"You know I am," he said with a small smile that she found herself returning. "I'm the Admiral, remember?" Then his expression became serious again, probing. "But that's not all, isn't it?"

"No." Damn him, bless him, for being so perceptive, for knowing her so well.

"What is it, then?"

"What's worse is that I lost my faith," she said, her voice hardly above a whisper. "I lost my faith. It helped me through so much, but in the end I lost it."

He moved to face her more fully. Muted light from the lamp on the end table threw his face into shadow, she couldn't read his eyes but his gentle voice spoke volumes. "Laura, with what those frakkers did to you, it's no wonder. I'm sure the Gods will forgive you."

"It's not their forgiveness I need," she said, looking down at the floor, at the buttons on his jacket, his polished boots next to her bare feet, the sharp crease in his trousers, anywhere but at him..

He cupped her face in his hands, tilted her head up. "What are you saying?"

Laura closed her eyes, took a deep breath, ignoring the burn, and faced him head-on. "I lost my faith in _you_, Bill. It's _you_ I cursed, for abandoning me - for abandoning us, but mostly just me - it's you I railed against. It's _you_ I lost faith in."

There, she'd said it. The worst of it was now out in the open, stark truth, couched in no uncertain terms. It was this betrayal that she'd carried with her, that had made her conceal her pain from everyone around her, made her push herself beyond the limits of human endurance. It was this betrayal she'd tried to atone for ever since. The hurt of it went so deep that even now, all she wanted to do was hide, from him, from herself, but she rejected the impulse, refused herself. Instead, Laura squared her shoulders, kept her eyes firmly on his, and awaited his judgment. In his eyes she saw a myriad of emotions, anger, grief, loss, as anticipated, and somewhere in the mix, something wholly unexpected, a hint of what she could swear was amusement.

"I am so sorry," he said. "So sorry you had to carry that burden with you. I think I've come to know you pretty well, even if I don't understand you half the time, and I can see how much that would bother you, how you've probably tortured yourself over it… losing faith like that, but let me tell you something, for a while there, I did too."

The unexpected confession shocked her out of her misery. "You did?"

"Yeah, I did." His thumbs caressed the corners of her mouth and Laura felt her lips turning upwards a bit. "Don't look so surprised," he continued, "You haven't cornered the market on self doubt, you know."

Tears threatened again, tears of relief this time, but she forced them back too. This was too important. "What changed?

His hands fell from her face and her skin instantly missed the contact. "Someone told me that the fleet would not be able to survive unless the man at the top could find a way to forgive himself."

"Wise words. I'm glad you had someone to set you straight."

"Sharon actually."

"Sharon?" Laura couldn't hide her surprise at that revelation, her hands fluttered upwards and she forced them back down, clasping her fingers in her lap.

"I think what she told me goes for the woman at the top as well. You have to forgive yourself Laura, there's no other way forward."

She recognized the wisdom in the words, even if she still didn't wholly trust the source, so she nodded her assent. "I'll try."

"That's all I ask." He smiled and then looked down at the floor, obviously at a loss as to what should come next. As she studied him, she felt a surge of relief at the realization that some of the weight she'd been laboring under seemed to have vanished. With that relief, a tight knot loosened in her chest and she could feel her eyes starting to burn. She'd been beating herself up over this for so long, had held herself so tightly, that now that she'd shared her sorrow, it was all she could do not to bawl here eyes out right here and now.

She swallowed, once, twice, determined to hold herself together, and then surprised herself, suddenly having to suppress a yawn.

Bill chuckled at the sight. "You should get some sleep," he said.

She prevaricated, afraid of what her dreams might bring, now that all of her demons were out in the open. "Hmm. I'd like to shower first, wash away the dirt?"

"You're welcome to use the head."

He jumped to his feet as she started to rise, ready to help her, but she waved him off, needing to do this herself, and managed to stand on her own. Gods, she ached. He stood beside her, almost at attention, not helping but ready to step in should she need him to. Grateful for his deference, Laura started to make her way to across his cabin. She felt his eyes followed her slow progress and when halfway to the head a thought struck her and she suddenly stood stock still, he was beside her in a few long strides.

"Laura?"

"I just realized I don't have anything clean to wear."

He smiled, obviously amused at her embarrassment and walked to his closet, rummaged around in the back, then came up with an old dress shirt and some sweats. They would be way too big for her, but they would have to do until she could contact Tory and have her scrounge up some clothes.

"Thank you."

Laura stepped into the head, out from under his searching gaze and slowly undressed. It was painful going; every muscle in her body seemed to have stiffened up on her. Her many cuts and bruises sang a chorus of woe and as she gazed at herself in the mirror for the first time since she'd allowed Jack to patch her up, she winced involuntarily. No wonder she felt as bad as she did, no wonder Bill had looked so distraught. But then again, she knew it would all fade with time, she would heal, move on.

Resolutely, she turned away from the image in the mirror and turned on the shower, letting the water heat up. It wasn't until she finally stepped under the torrent, that she allowed the tears she'd been holding in their escape. A huge sob tore through her and she sagged against the wall, slid down it to crouch on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. As water pounded down on her back and steam rose to envelop her, Laura at long last let go of all her pain and anguish. She cried for the many men and women dead on New Caprica, cried for innocence lost and faith shattered, cried for the end of a dream; cried, too, for the reemergence of hope, the solace found in the soft eyes of the man in the other room; her champion.

After a while, the force of her grief spent, Laura rose to her feet, thankful that the warm water had soothed her cramped muscles much as her crying jag had unclenched some of her sorrow. Still weeping, but quietly now, Laura soaped herself up, carefully washing her battered body, sluicing off the dirt and misery of New Caprica. Then she lifted her face into the spray, let her tears mix with the water cascading down on her, let them run their course and disappear down the drain.

If she would but close her eyes, she could pretend they were never there, but she was done pretending, so she didn't.


End file.
