Ageless Attraction - Chapter 25
Co-Written by just_reading_u
A/U Not our characters/not making money
Rated M
Set during Resurrection Ship Part 1
Chapter 25
Laura stood and peered through the sickbay curtain. The woman lying on one side in the bed looked tiny and fragile. Laura knew how the girl felt to some extent. However, unlike her, this woman didn’t have anyone offering comfort in the cold impersonal sickbay. Lieutenant Agathon was sitting in a cell on Pegasus. Cain was going to murder Helo and the Chief.
There was no other way she could describe what Cain wanted to do with the men. She knew she could almost be classed as oversensitive in relation to someone being raped at the moment but the brief hearing that Agathon and Tyrol went through could not in any way have explained the extenuating circumstances involved. Laura had read over the details of the incident and the only way she could interpret it as was accidental death. It could hardly be described as premeditated murder or be a crime worthy of the death penalty.
She looked in at the woman again. Cain saw Sharon as a thing, not a person. She understood this, however, she couldn’t help but remember Sharon’s attitude just before going to Kobol. Sharon loved Helo. Sharon loved the unborn child she carried. Sharon had saved her and Bill on Kobol. She felt like she owed the Cylon some sort of allowance for that alone. As she watched Sharon now in sickbay, she realised that Sharon looked just as upset and shaken as she had after her ordeal with Meier.
She sighed and turned away from the room to see Bill coming in through the door.
“Laura? What are you doing here? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she answered. She was actually so weak now she was surprised she was even standing. Most of her days were spent lounging around Colonial One. She had made an extra effort today to dress and come to Galactica. The need to see Sharon’s condition for herself had been peculiarly strong.
She now coughed intermittently as she spoke: a sign that the cancer had moved to her lungs. She assumed once it moved to another of her vital organs, maybe her liver, she would be near the end. She didn’t need to tell Bill any of this though, so instead she just snorted and added, “Well, I’m not. But you know...”
He inhaled a deep breath. She wished she could just give in and let him wrap his arms around her. It would be so easy to let his strength soothe her for just a few minutes at least.
He looked over her shoulder.
“You spoke with Sharon?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“You’re thinking about Kobol.”
She mutely nodded.
He reached out and rubbed up and down her arms in an almost absent-minded manner.
“It’s not the same, though,” she said. “He never...I mean, you came in time.” She noticed how her voice quivered slightly when she spoke.
“That doesn’t make what you went through any less traumatic,” he said.
She felt tears spring into her eyes. It was bewildering how often he could elicit tears from her. She never usually cried. He must think her so weak. He also probably had much better things to worry about at the moment than her.
His hands were still stroking her arms. She tried not to think of how wonderful it felt. She blocked out the thought of his hands gently stroking other parts of her body. It was too late for that type of wishful thinking on her part.
“What are you going to do about Cain?” she asked.
He sighed and pinched his nose under his glasses.
“I’m not sure what I can do. She’s my superior officer. I can only hope we can find some sort of compromise when this mission is over.”
“Like she compromised with her civilian fleet?”
His head snapped up at her words.
“What have you heard?”
“Enough to know she has to be stopped, Bill. We just got the Fleet back together. We can’t let her split it again.”
He stared at her.
“You called me Bill again,” he said.
She could no longer resist. She reached out and held his hand. She was relieved when he never murmured any protest to the touch considering how he had reacted to her last attempt to comfort him over Cain’s heavy-handedness. “You’ll need to find a way to take over Pegasus,” she whispered. “You can’t let her stay in charge.”
“Laura, it’s not that black and white.”
“No. No, it’s not. Nothing is anymore,” she said.
She looked down at where their hands were joined and abruptly it all became clear. She squeezed his hand before dropping it and leaving the sickbay. She now knew what had to be done.
*
Laura found out that visiting Pegasus was not a straight forward procedure. Her request for a Raptor shuttle to the flagship was questioned and eventually denied. Apparently, security on the Pegasus was much stricter or a presidential Aide held little authority with the flashier Battlestar; or it was another sign of Cain’s paranoia.
It was a stroke of luck, therefore, when she learnt Starbuck would travel to Galactica for a strategy meeting regarding the resurrection ship mission. Laura sent a message for Kara to meet her before the girl returned to the ‘beast’.
Now, as Starbuck stalked into the ward room, the new CAG of Pegasus gave her an angry look and never bothered to take a chair. Obviously Kara was not in a sociable mood.
“Captain,” she said, using Kara’s new rank.
“What do you want?” Kara asked. “I’ve got a mission to prepare for. If you want me to jump away and collect another museum item, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.”
“The Arrow worked, did it not?” she pointed out.
Kara gave an exasperated sigh before flopping into the chair opposite her.
“Yeah,” Kara said. “What?”
“I’m not going to dance around this, Kara, so I’ll just say it direct. I want you to kill Admiral Cain.”
Kara blinked and stared at her.
“What?”
“I want you to assassinate Admiral Cain. I thought in the aftermath of the mission. People congratulating each other. Some general confusion will be present amongst the revelry. Being CAG you will be able to get close enough. Do the job. No one will ever even know who did it.”
“Are you high on chamalla?”
She snorted without mirth. “I wish. Kara, we have to do this.”
“You know, I really love how you always say ‘we’ and yet I always end up in the firing line. I’ve been beat up, shot and had my frakkin’ ovaries removed because of you and now you want me to shoot the highest ranking officer left alive in the Colonial Fleet. You’re insane.”
“She’ll kill him if we don’t kill her first.”
Kara frowned and shook her head slightly. “What are you talking about?”
“Pegasus and Galactica will go on another mission; another basestar that she thinks is vulnerable maybe. The President will agree as Cain will make it sound so reasonable. Then, there will be another. And another. Until one day Pegasus and Galactica go out and never return. She’ll take the Fleet’s only defensive weapon and abandon them. Civilians aren’t her priority; she’s at war. The only thing standing between her and this little scenario is the Commander. Admiral Cain will kill him at the first opportunity she gets. She won’t want to deal with him any longer than she has to. She’ll install a much more pliable Commander of her choosing. It won’t be Colonel Tigh. She’ll just point out his inability to command when Adama was shot. No one will disagree.”
“No, she wouldn’t. She might have a completely different management style but that doesn’t mean she won’t try and work with him.”
“Just like she worked with Stinger when he made a mistake? And how she’s tried to work with Lee since he’s moved Battlestars?”
“That’s different. They’re subordinates.”
“So is the Commander.”
Kara stood and paced up and down in front of the desk like a caged lion.
“She wouldn’t have to kill him. She could just demote him.”
“No one would accept that and she knows it. He’d have just as much power as if she left him in command,” Laura said. “She isn’t the type of woman who’d want to look over her shoulder for any period of time. No, she’ll need him gone as in never to return and for her that will mean only one thing.”
“No,” Kara said. “I can’t believe she’d do that.”
“Do you think you and Lee were some random choices she made for transfer?” Laura asked.
“No, of course not. She doesn’t like nepotism. That’s not a mortal sin.”
“It had nothing to do with nepotism. She chose you two as you were the most loyal Adama supporters. She’s using you to get to him. Promoting you, making you feel invaluable, ensuring that your loyalties will be divided when it comes to crunch time and you have to choose between her and him.”
“You can’t be right,” Kara whispered.
“I wish I wasn’t. If you won’t do it, I’ll have to ask Lee,” she said. “I’d do it myself but I’m afraid I’m a bit too weak.” Her voice took on a harder note. “I’m determined. I will not let her kill William Adama.”
“Look, Laura, I love the Old Man, you know that. But what you’re talking about…,” Kara trailed off.
Laura stood to look Kara directly in the eyes. She opened her mouth to speak. Nothing came out.
*
Just when Kara thought nothing could get more frakked up than it was, the Gods went and proved they could complicate things in more ways than Kara could imagine.
Laura frakkin’ Roslin was passed out on the Ward Room floor after telling Kara to assassinate Admiral Cain. Laura Roslin was a pain in the ass but for some reason Kara still liked her - in a way, loved her even.
Kara remembered Roslin on Kobol - so determinedly struggling on through the mud while they were hiking; shaking like a leaf when Meier had attacked her; smiling so hard when Adama had arrived even though it was the Old Man himself who had thrown her in the brig. They seemed to have forgiven each other quite quickly. Obviously to such an extent that she was willing to go to enormous lengths to ensure he lived.
Kara knew how she felt. Kara felt the same. William and Lee Adama were her last links to Zak. Kara would do anything for them.
Kara’s thoughts were stifled when Cottle burst through the door and threw around several orders.
*
Laura woke up in sickbay to Doctor Cottle fussing around her.
The doctor drew back the curtain when retrieving some instruments and she saw Bill and Kara deep in conversation at the far end of the ward. They both stopped talking and turned to look in her direction at the exact same time. She knew, by the look on Bill’s face, that Kara had told him about her request.
Cottle returned and swept the curtain closed again. The doctor proceeded to give her a needle and a stern talking to with regards to overdoing it; followed by strict instructions that she was to return to Colonial One for complete bed rest for the next few days. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the curtain pull back again to reveal Bill. Doc Cottle gave him a look of protest before finally relenting with a final order of ‘five frakkin’ minutes only’.
“Bill?” she murmured, feeling already groggy from the drugs Cottle had administered.
“Shh,” he said as he smoothed her hair back from her head. “You called me Bill again,” he pointed out.
She couldn’t help but snort and smile. “You’re a hard habit to break,” she said.
His thumb was rhythmically rubbing the bright green veins of her wrist.
“I spoke with Kara,” he said.
She gulped down the tears that once again threatened in his presence.
“She has to do it."
“Laura, we can’t just kill people when we don’t agree with their decisions.”
“Cain will. I know it,” she said with such force that she couldn’t stop coughing for several minutes afterwards. Bill was giving her a drink of water just as a medic arrived to assist her to her shuttle.
She took Bill’s hand and gripped it as tight as she could as the medic helped her into a wheelchair. Near the hatch she reluctantly loosened her grip on Bill’s hand. He smiled and gently touched her cheek.
She never said goodbye. Instead she tried to convince him once again that Starbuck had to kill Cain.
“Kara has to do it,” she said.
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