She isn’t sure why she let him into her home. Why did she let him in? Maybe, she suspected, I wanted to see him.

“This is...a fine place you're living in.” He hadn't seen her in nearly a year. That was the first thing that came to his lips when he saw the hastily, but cautiously built cabin.

“It's not much, but it keeps out the cold.” She straightened in vain her immaculate space, gesturing for him to sit on the couch he had given as his last gift to her on election night. It was the very couch that had filled the meager emptiness of his quarters on Galactica.

She sat down next to him, leaning sideways against the back of the couch to inspect her former admiral. He looked tired. There was more gray spreading through his thick hair than she was used to. There were more lines; unhappy, worried lines, the kind that accompanied long nights and little sleep. She didn't know what he saw when he turned to mirror her position and looked at her. He shared his still rarely-seen smile. She shared one bigger than she gave to others. She forgot they did this to each other. Too little, too late, she remembered.

“Tell me, how are things?” So much in the subtext, he told her in his indecision. You are my confidante, he reminded her needlessly. Those words, hidden in the silent distance of twelve months. When had they become these people?

“What can I say?” He removed his glasses, playing with them; not in a fidget, but in a thoughtful way. Expressive fingers. “They're not the same as when you were in charge.” She shrugged in her what-can-I-say manner. She fought for the presidency; she lost. It stung, but she had gathered her dignity and her reputation and had returned to her first love. Teaching.

“I don't expect they would be. President Baltar and I are different people, and we have different ideas of how the colonies should be run.” He nodded, finally putting his glasses down on the glass coffee table. He clasped his hand together to stop himself from touching her. The room's warm lighting played like instrumental notes on the lines of her face. He had the desire to hear them played.

“I would say things were better when you were in charge, but I'd probably be brought on up charges of treason,” he countered with grim resignation. Gaius Baltar was insane; a despot. Completely, undeniably, unequivocally unstable.

In hindsight, Laura was the myth. They prayed for their dying leader now, even as she lived and taught their children. Only recently had her name reached his office again. Once it had, it had wandered playfully into his mind and made itself at home. Or, better yet, had reclaimed the place she had owned in the past. Only in sleep had he escaped her name and then, her face had invaded his psyche. Sometimes he saw her dying at the hands of Baltar’s minions, in some final humiliating degradation of his choosing. Other times, it was simply random. As they worsened, he thought of her often and worried. Finally, the anxiety had risen to the point that he would not survive another day without laying eyes on her. He had to see her.

“He is a colorful man with near complete control over the Colonial government. The people have spoken and they spoke his name.”

“They were wrong.” Bill was quick to judge. He could afford to be at his age. They had been wrong and now they were paying the price.

“Perhaps,” she conceded. “But, I respect their right to be wrong. They are as a whole equally as fallible as I am alone.” She looked at him, issuing her customary challenge. “Why are you here,” she asked in that voice that gave flowers and clouds pause, though it was only intended for him.

“I heard your name mentioned in an educational debate at Headquarters. I didn't doubt it was the same Laura Roslin.”

She looked away towards the clock on her desk. She was flattered but was growing increasingly impatient with his reticence. If things could not be the same, she thought, perhaps they should remain the great memories they had been.

“You didn't answer my question and it’s getting late.”

“I know.” He reached out a tentative hand to touch her knee. It stopped her cold, as did the tremor in it. Bill Adama felt fear or anxiety with her. This was new. It had never been normal for Bill Adama to feel fear.

She covered his large hand with her slender one. “What's wrong?”

“Everything.” If only she could reach the answer he wouldn’t give her. It couldn’t be everything.

“What can I do?”

“Be the same Laura I knew a year ago.” It was a plea from a man in desperate situation. What had happened since she’d known him before?

“I am.”

Looking older than his many years and soul-weary, Bill rubbed his face, feeling like he'd said too much. And yet not enough. "I wanted to see you. I've missed you."

“And I've missed you.” Truthfully, she still did miss him. This person in front of her was a far cry from her invincible Commander-turned-Admiral. Despite the muscles filling out his uniform, he seemed frail. He was hiding something, something incredibly important.

A strange tension having built up within her, she began to laugh suddenly. Not to tease him or make fun, but in a sense of wonder at this man who, a year in the future, she still knew better than anyone. “Did you come to say you miss me or did you come for something else?”

Now, he looked chastised, but equally as amused. “I suppose I came for something else.”

“That is,” she asked, having more than a faint notion. “You,” he surrendered. A year without her moderating, soothing, at times combative influence had been a Caprica's night in hell. Another year...no, he couldn't have another one like the last.

She dropped her eyes, because she knew them to be shining too brightly. She shrugged her right shoulder, her bra strap having slipped down beneath her sweater. She couldn‘t do this yet. It was too soon. “I've recently finished decorating. Would you like a tour?”

“I would.” He stood first, lending her his hand to stand. She led him through the small homestead, showing him, with no small amount of pride where she lived. Oh, who was she kidding? It was rote, pure and simple. She didn't remember a thing she'd said while she pointed each room and its functions. Her only intention was to bring him to her bedroom, which was inconveniently placed towards the back of the cottage. He seemed to know that, but he played along like her good little flyboy.

He nodded at a photo he was in. He'd been there, he remembered that. A dance, an embrace, a kiss that should’ve been a secret kept and nurtured by them made public by those who sought to discredit her.

She opened the door to her bedroom, glad she'd gone on a random cleaning jag this morning and had done the laundry. The room smelt like her and filled his perception in the same way as a chest of memories brought every moment rushing back. Feeling a sweltering familiarity, he wrapped his arm around her waist from behind and drew her close to him.

“I've missed you,” he uttered in his gravelly-voice ardor. She made a vague noise in acknowledgement, freeing herself of his hold and winding around him. Not by sight, but by touch, she unfastened the clasps of his jacket and discarded it on the floor. Same uniform, new Order.

She yanked his tanks from his pants and over his head with the skill of having done it before. She combed the hair on his chest and counted the scars, old and new. She had a question for every one and there was a story to it. Later, she'd ask. She didn't want to know yet. The bed was comfortable for the first time after he'd torn her ill-fitting bra and hung her panties in a nice gesture over the lamp shade.

It could've been half as wide and still been cloud nine as long as they were together. The rough hair on his thighs scratched her bare legs as she straddled his lap, moving in slow endless motions that had driven weaker men to commit insane acts. She was that woman, from nowhere with nothing to her name who had the ability to bring a man to his knees. At her pleasure, no less.

Strength, she thought in deep concentration, was an aphrodisiac. The rush of blood at the sight and sound of strength was a foggy mix of the biological and emotional. Pride in his strength and the unbearable arousal of being so near to it without partaking or engaging was…too much for this willful woman.

They leaned on the strength of his ramrod spine and her legs like those of some graceful bird. He held her arms suspended above her and, recklessly, kissed her mouth with no regard to skin or tongue or teeth. And her agreeing moan was her only note as tame dark hair fell in wild strands between them.

When she gasped for breath, he was forced from her mouth by necessity. He went to her neck with a like abandon and kissed it. Skin and teeth and "Bill!" She wore his mark as he wore his rank.

Her chest and breasts were worshipped anew in his hands, her arms holding themselves above them now. Teeth and fingers, a new breath. He caressed her nipples with his tongue as the young partake in lollipops or icicles to the last.

The recklessness was catching. She pushed him down onto his back, loving the bewildered looks in his eyes at the shift in power. Baltar had stolen her office not her spirit. She planted her hands planted on his chest and bit lightly his bottom lip until she felt it part from its brother in a smile.

She balanced herself precariously and reached up to cradle his face in her palms. It fit like the final solution to a jigsaw puzzle; completing the picture. She would not let go. Not when he caressed her sides with her fingertips, eliciting a hiccup from her or when he quickened the velocity of their mating, meeting, union, lovemaking to a pitch that could've floored her.

She was filled to the brim with his thickness and speed; the sliding scale of 0 to oblivion. Still, caught like something tender in her lips, Bill cradled her pale ass, propelling her motions towards the inexorable end. With her mindlessness she cut his lip but didn't pause at the taste of iron between them.

It was ignore it or scream. Screaming would mean breaking the kiss. Breaking the kiss would mean more. Talking, saying something other than “I miss you.” She had spoken similar words in the past with painful consequences. She didn't break the kiss or let go of his face.

He crushed her to him like death had threatened her again or him. Her vibrating center thrilled him and sent a warm wash of pleasure to his nerves. The high-wire tension in the room ticked down, down, down until it lay level with them on the surface of the bed. Reluctantly, she ended the kiss and let him go.

Say something, she demanded of herself. “I’ve missed you.”

He brushed her hair from her face. “And I’ve missed you.” His eyes had become too dark to read but the joy was there. These were not the words she had dreamed of too often to believe in, but they were something and they meant something more.

Two days later, she would ponder that something underneath a cold dark sky as she attended the burial of her lover. His body was committed to the ground in the dead of night. Upon leaving her, he had been charged with treason and summarily executed; no appeals or stays granted. To the last, he was fearless and proud, facing death with open eyes. She had been there. She had watched.

“I love you, Bill,” she said; words it was too late for her to believe in but that acted as a salve on her raw heart. They meant something, they meant everything.

 

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