FIC: Turn the Page ~ Chapter 35
Title: Turn the Page ~ Chapter Thirty-five
Author: bugs
Genre: AU, Romance, Drama
Rating: T
Word Count: 2,400
Chapter 35:
Laura unlocked the front door of the house and peered inside. There was only darkness and silence inside. Bill wasn't home and the rooms were empty.
Rather than turn on the lights, she wandered down the hall in the dimness, her fingertips tracing the oak wainscoting. She felt a bit wicked, as though she was an intruder in the place she was most welcome.
The formal living room looked out on the dusk-cloaked backyard. A tall, thin figure stood at the window, a long black line in her blurring vision.
"Billy," she whispered.
He smiled down at her. "Good to see you," he said in his shy way.
She stood trembling before him, unable to even touch.
"Walk with me," he said gently, leading her from the room.
There were so many questions she had for him..."Are you in pain?" she asked.
He just smiled.
"Where are we?" she asked next.
They climbed the stairs.
"You're home," he told her.
At the door to the bedroom, she stopped him. "I'm so sorry, Billy. It was all my fault--"
"That Catholic guilt," he said wryly.
She shook her head. "But you wouldn't be...If it weren't for my stupidity--"
He opened the door and she was shocked by what she saw.
Bill stood on one side of the bed. On the other, Lee and Kara huddled together. Laura lay on the bed, her bare head swathed in a scarf. Her face was drawn and waxy. She was barely breathing, aided by oxygen. The white-haired doctor from her recent appointment moved from the shadows to stand beside Bill, murmuring in his ear.
"What's happened?" Laura gasped. She turned away, grabbing Billy's arm like a lifeline.
"You said you had cancer, remember?" the young man said quietly.
She trembled but had to look back. All the fear she'd felt at her mother's diagnosis--selfish, basic terror--welled in her chest.
Bill took Laura's thin white fingers, enveloping them with between his two larger hands.
"I'm so sorry, Dad," Lee said, his voice choking.
"Nothing to be sorry for, son," Bill said tenderly, his gaze on Laura's face.
Her anxiety subsiding, Laura watched the tableau curiously.
Right behind her, Billy murmured in her ear: "Don't you just hate these people?"
"No," she insisted, staring up at him, confounded by his uncharacteristically harsh manner.
"Oh, but you don't love them either," he continued on relentlessly. "The people in this room are the closest thing you've got to family and you've never really let them in."
She tried to protest but her words faded away. "I..."
"Watch them try to comfort each other," Billy said, still brutal. "At least you haven't taken that away from them. You didn't rob them of their empathy--yet."
Her shoulders slumped. She couldn't argue with his sharp assessment. Ignoring the need in Bill's eyes, she had always held back a piece of herself. Now she may not have the chance.
But if she had another chance...
"Billy, does this mean...Am I dying?" There she was, being selfish again. She hung her head in shame.
"What if you were?" Billy asked. His usually gentle expression was remote.
He gave a little shrug. "We're all dying, just at different rates." His gaze finally warmed when he grinned. "Live like you're going to die tomorrow."
She sighed unhappily. "When did you get so philosophical?"
"Got nothing to do but think these days," Billy said practically.
Bill sank to the chair beside the slumbering Laura, cradling her hand to his cheek.
"Rest, my love," he said, his voice broken.
Laura had to turn away.
Billy shook his head mournfully, his impatience back. "You don't love people. Is that clear enough? Practical enough for you, Sister Laura?"
"I got it the first time," she said testily. She walked to the window at the end of the hall and looked out on the dark street. "Why are we doing this?"
Billy followed her. "You've had a couple of chances, and instead of taking them, you've just tied yourself in tighter and tighter knots until no one could pick them open."
He stood behind her and his voice lower, but remained urgent. "Or is the string going to snap here, now?"
Laura couldn't answer. She stared out at the row of black-windowed houses on the street. No cars drove by; no one strolled on the sidewalk. "Where is everyone?" she asked.
"They don't exist anymore," he said, matter of fact.
She whirled around; the bedroom was now empty, the bed made.
Giving a sharp laugh, she confronted the shadowy figure beside her. She understood now. This wasn't her Billy; he was a Billy she'd created from her darkest fears. "If I follow that thought, humanity died because I died? If you're my subconscious, I've gotta say, you're a little full of myself."
He rolled his eyes. "Humanity didn't die because you did. They're just waiting...Waiting for you to grow the hell up."
Laura wasn't going to have any of it. She put her hands on her hips and glared up at Billy. "There's a lot of people who need to grow up more than me; who are selfish pigs!"
Billy only smiled. "You're thinking of Gauis Baltar."
"Your murderer!"
He shrugged. "He didn't pull the trigger."
"He might as well have!" insisted Laura. "He set all this in play--"
The young man raised his eyebrows. "So now you're making the doctor the deity he aspires to be?"
Exasperated, she stormed back to the bedroom, but stopped short.
Laura was back in the bed, her breathing even more labored. Bill huddled on a chair beside her, shuffling through papers, making notes with a red pencil.
Billy held her shoulders, keeping her from entering the room. Intensely, he told her: "I'm not saying Baltar's done more good than harm in the universe. He hasn't. The thing is, the harder it is to recognize someone's right to draw breath, the more crucial it is. If humanity is going to prove itself worthy of surviving, it can't be done on a case-by-case basis. A bad man feels his death just as keenly as a good man."
"Just tell me that Bill is still here...There--" Laura shook her head in confusion. "That everyone's still out there."
"Isn't that what Baltar's little experiment is about? The sense that mankind may be on the edge of some extinction and should live on?" Billy mused. "He's found a way for humanity to survive. We just have to decide if that's a life worth living."
"What do you want from me here?" Laura asked, feeling exhausted.
"Laura," whispered Bill, leaning over the Laura on the bed.
He seemed to take her hitched breath as a response and adjusted his glasses to read.
Bill's voice was hoarse from pain. "If I were to say the words, my boy is dead, it will be final, so I don't. I run, I hide, I sleep like I am dead myself. But he finds me. His hand is always on my shoulder, his breath in my ear, his blood in my veins. His murder was brutal, but his death is life; changing every day."
"Just love someone," admonished Billy. "Start with one person, and see how it goes."
"Love," Laura said, rolling the word around as if tasting a lychee fruit for the first time. She huffed a laugh.
A machine beside the bed made a sudden, urgent sound, a monotone that filled the room.
Bill looked at the device as though accepting a final bell. Leaning over Laura's body, he kissed her dry mouth. As he sank down to his seat, he murmured, "You go. You go to your rest now. I'm not gonna be selfish anymore."
He cradled her left hand, his thumb worrying at her bare ring finger, but he watched her features as they went slack, released from their pain.
Billy spoke with an urgency as though he were on a time limit, and Laura supposed he may be. "Live my life if you won't live your own," he urged her again. "Love, just love."
Loving Billy had been so easy...Perhaps loving a pricklier soul could be as simple.
She reached up to touch his face. He was her son; his voice was hers; his thoughts mirrored the unexplored crevices of her heart….The room darkened, and the boy's skin cooled under her fingertips.
The heart monitor was beeping again, steady and relentlessly. Laura's head was pounding in time. She cracked her eyes and focused on Bill's smiling face hovering above hers.
"Hey," he rasped.
She cleared her throat, finding it raw and parched.
He immediately grabbed the plastic water cup and bent the straw for her to drink.
"Thanks," she mouthed, glancing around the bed. A hospital; she wasn't home.
"Don't talk," he scolded.
She shook her head, struggling to sit up. He pushed the pillows forward to give her support.
Bill smiled, his lips trembling. "Missed you," he told her.
"Me too," she said hoarsely, laying her hands on his chest.
He tried to stop her again. "Don't--"
She had to say it, right now. "Love you," she managed to croak out.
Bill's smile became stronger, a confidence on his face that she'd never seen before. "About time," he rumbled at her.
She relaxed back into the pillows and Bil followed, gently gathering her close. She laced her fingers behind his wide back and leaned her cheek to his chest, listening to the comforting thump of his heart.
"You're supposed to say it back," she rasped accusingly, feeling as confident and liberated as he was.
He laughed, stirring her matted hair, and she was suddenly aware of her appearance. "I must look a mess." She touched her head where the bandage was taped against her shaved skull.
"Most beautiful woman in the world," Bill assured her, but all the events were coming back to her.
"Baltar," she mumbled, falling back into the pillows again.
"He managed to get himself into a passing taxi. Kara couldn't get the number and the police haven't tracked the driver down. Zarek or Baltar must have paid him off."
"He's gone?" she said in frustration.
"Or Cavil got him and his body will wash up on the rocks," said Bill with grim satisfaction.
When he saw the distress on her face, he shook his head. "Don't worry about that bastard. Just get better."
She forced herself to calm down, taking deep breathes. "Did you read to me while I was out?" she finally asked.
He smiled again. "Yep."
"From your book?"
"Yeah. You were the perfect audience," he said, shifting back in the hard plastic chair, but still holding her hand tenderly.
"I want to hear more," she insisted.
"No, no, you rest," he insisted, and she shuddered to hear the words again. She was remembering a strange dream...
Her eyelids drifted shut, her body failing her again.
When she woke, Bill was still there, sitting by the window tapping on his laptop. The sound had been a comforting lullaby but Laura felt refreshed and ready to take on the world. When she tried to sit up, her head whirled.
"Don't get up," chided Bill, putting aside the laptop to hurry to her side.
"How are you doing on your deadline?" she asked, her voice still weak.
Bill gaped at her. "Laura--"
She blinked slowly, fixing her steady gaze on him. "Bill."
"What happened to 'I love you'?" he asked, his eyes shifting.
"It's because I love you," she said crisply.
He just glared back. She didn't relent. Finally, he rolled his shoulders as though shrugging off a weight. "Okay, yeah, I'm supposed to send the draft to Helena Cain today and be ready for notes immediately, but what's another day?"
"Do it, Bill," she said, reaching for her water glass and the relief to her parched throat.
"See, you need me here," he pointed out, handing her the glass which was just out of her grasp.
"I can call a nurse. Go," she demanded.
He pursed his mouth in an obstinate line.
"And I'll get some work done," she said, looking around. "Is my tablet here? I can check my email. I'm way behind."
She was already formulating a plan. One duty done, she must perform one more, equally important. Billy must be put to rest. She still wasn't sure if she even believed in God anymore, but she needed to release his soul. She'd held onto her mother, and her father and sisters, for so long that they were like worn, heavy stones, barriers ahead in her path. Billy couldn't become that to her.
She'd contact Elosha, requesting that the sisters help her with a simple ceremony. Then she would destroy the device. But she didn't want to keep Bill from his duties either--she kept her face bland as she held out her hands for her tablet.
His expression uncertain, Bill gave it to her.
"Thanks, honey," she said, rolling the word on her tongue. She liked it.
He leaned over to kiss her goodbye and she was visited by that odd sensation again, but she managed to have a smile on her face when he pulled back.
"I'll see you soon," she assured him, patting his weathered cheek.
"Okay," he said, giving her a suspicious squint, but he gathered up his laptop, pulled on his coat and left.
Giving a nod, she turned on her device, stealing herself to hear Billy's voice again. Instead, an email alert immediately popped up.
Laura, it's Gauis. I must see you
A growl in her throat, Laura swung her feet off the bed.
Outside the room, Bill was checking with Lee before leaving the hospital. The young man had been waiting for his father, taking turns with Kara and Dee while Saul searched for John Cavil and Baltar.
"And she may wanna get out of that room, son." Bill sighed, anticipating Laura's next move already. "Help her if she must go, but don't let her out of your sight."
"Yes, Dad, I won't let you down," Lee said.
End ~ Chapter 35
Author: bugs
Genre: AU, Romance, Drama
Rating: T
Word Count: 2,400
Chapter 35:
Laura unlocked the front door of the house and peered inside. There was only darkness and silence inside. Bill wasn't home and the rooms were empty.
Rather than turn on the lights, she wandered down the hall in the dimness, her fingertips tracing the oak wainscoting. She felt a bit wicked, as though she was an intruder in the place she was most welcome.
The formal living room looked out on the dusk-cloaked backyard. A tall, thin figure stood at the window, a long black line in her blurring vision.
"Billy," she whispered.
He smiled down at her. "Good to see you," he said in his shy way.
She stood trembling before him, unable to even touch.
"Walk with me," he said gently, leading her from the room.
There were so many questions she had for him..."Are you in pain?" she asked.
He just smiled.
"Where are we?" she asked next.
They climbed the stairs.
"You're home," he told her.
At the door to the bedroom, she stopped him. "I'm so sorry, Billy. It was all my fault--"
"That Catholic guilt," he said wryly.
She shook her head. "But you wouldn't be...If it weren't for my stupidity--"
He opened the door and she was shocked by what she saw.
Bill stood on one side of the bed. On the other, Lee and Kara huddled together. Laura lay on the bed, her bare head swathed in a scarf. Her face was drawn and waxy. She was barely breathing, aided by oxygen. The white-haired doctor from her recent appointment moved from the shadows to stand beside Bill, murmuring in his ear.
"What's happened?" Laura gasped. She turned away, grabbing Billy's arm like a lifeline.
"You said you had cancer, remember?" the young man said quietly.
She trembled but had to look back. All the fear she'd felt at her mother's diagnosis--selfish, basic terror--welled in her chest.
Bill took Laura's thin white fingers, enveloping them with between his two larger hands.
"I'm so sorry, Dad," Lee said, his voice choking.
"Nothing to be sorry for, son," Bill said tenderly, his gaze on Laura's face.
Her anxiety subsiding, Laura watched the tableau curiously.
Right behind her, Billy murmured in her ear: "Don't you just hate these people?"
"No," she insisted, staring up at him, confounded by his uncharacteristically harsh manner.
"Oh, but you don't love them either," he continued on relentlessly. "The people in this room are the closest thing you've got to family and you've never really let them in."
She tried to protest but her words faded away. "I..."
"Watch them try to comfort each other," Billy said, still brutal. "At least you haven't taken that away from them. You didn't rob them of their empathy--yet."
Her shoulders slumped. She couldn't argue with his sharp assessment. Ignoring the need in Bill's eyes, she had always held back a piece of herself. Now she may not have the chance.
But if she had another chance...
"Billy, does this mean...Am I dying?" There she was, being selfish again. She hung her head in shame.
"What if you were?" Billy asked. His usually gentle expression was remote.
He gave a little shrug. "We're all dying, just at different rates." His gaze finally warmed when he grinned. "Live like you're going to die tomorrow."
She sighed unhappily. "When did you get so philosophical?"
"Got nothing to do but think these days," Billy said practically.
Bill sank to the chair beside the slumbering Laura, cradling her hand to his cheek.
"Rest, my love," he said, his voice broken.
Laura had to turn away.
Billy shook his head mournfully, his impatience back. "You don't love people. Is that clear enough? Practical enough for you, Sister Laura?"
"I got it the first time," she said testily. She walked to the window at the end of the hall and looked out on the dark street. "Why are we doing this?"
Billy followed her. "You've had a couple of chances, and instead of taking them, you've just tied yourself in tighter and tighter knots until no one could pick them open."
He stood behind her and his voice lower, but remained urgent. "Or is the string going to snap here, now?"
Laura couldn't answer. She stared out at the row of black-windowed houses on the street. No cars drove by; no one strolled on the sidewalk. "Where is everyone?" she asked.
"They don't exist anymore," he said, matter of fact.
She whirled around; the bedroom was now empty, the bed made.
Giving a sharp laugh, she confronted the shadowy figure beside her. She understood now. This wasn't her Billy; he was a Billy she'd created from her darkest fears. "If I follow that thought, humanity died because I died? If you're my subconscious, I've gotta say, you're a little full of myself."
He rolled his eyes. "Humanity didn't die because you did. They're just waiting...Waiting for you to grow the hell up."
Laura wasn't going to have any of it. She put her hands on her hips and glared up at Billy. "There's a lot of people who need to grow up more than me; who are selfish pigs!"
Billy only smiled. "You're thinking of Gauis Baltar."
"Your murderer!"
He shrugged. "He didn't pull the trigger."
"He might as well have!" insisted Laura. "He set all this in play--"
The young man raised his eyebrows. "So now you're making the doctor the deity he aspires to be?"
Exasperated, she stormed back to the bedroom, but stopped short.
Laura was back in the bed, her breathing even more labored. Bill huddled on a chair beside her, shuffling through papers, making notes with a red pencil.
Billy held her shoulders, keeping her from entering the room. Intensely, he told her: "I'm not saying Baltar's done more good than harm in the universe. He hasn't. The thing is, the harder it is to recognize someone's right to draw breath, the more crucial it is. If humanity is going to prove itself worthy of surviving, it can't be done on a case-by-case basis. A bad man feels his death just as keenly as a good man."
"Just tell me that Bill is still here...There--" Laura shook her head in confusion. "That everyone's still out there."
"Isn't that what Baltar's little experiment is about? The sense that mankind may be on the edge of some extinction and should live on?" Billy mused. "He's found a way for humanity to survive. We just have to decide if that's a life worth living."
"What do you want from me here?" Laura asked, feeling exhausted.
"Laura," whispered Bill, leaning over the Laura on the bed.
He seemed to take her hitched breath as a response and adjusted his glasses to read.
Bill's voice was hoarse from pain. "If I were to say the words, my boy is dead, it will be final, so I don't. I run, I hide, I sleep like I am dead myself. But he finds me. His hand is always on my shoulder, his breath in my ear, his blood in my veins. His murder was brutal, but his death is life; changing every day."
"Just love someone," admonished Billy. "Start with one person, and see how it goes."
"Love," Laura said, rolling the word around as if tasting a lychee fruit for the first time. She huffed a laugh.
A machine beside the bed made a sudden, urgent sound, a monotone that filled the room.
Bill looked at the device as though accepting a final bell. Leaning over Laura's body, he kissed her dry mouth. As he sank down to his seat, he murmured, "You go. You go to your rest now. I'm not gonna be selfish anymore."
He cradled her left hand, his thumb worrying at her bare ring finger, but he watched her features as they went slack, released from their pain.
Billy spoke with an urgency as though he were on a time limit, and Laura supposed he may be. "Live my life if you won't live your own," he urged her again. "Love, just love."
Loving Billy had been so easy...Perhaps loving a pricklier soul could be as simple.
She reached up to touch his face. He was her son; his voice was hers; his thoughts mirrored the unexplored crevices of her heart….The room darkened, and the boy's skin cooled under her fingertips.
The heart monitor was beeping again, steady and relentlessly. Laura's head was pounding in time. She cracked her eyes and focused on Bill's smiling face hovering above hers.
"Hey," he rasped.
She cleared her throat, finding it raw and parched.
He immediately grabbed the plastic water cup and bent the straw for her to drink.
"Thanks," she mouthed, glancing around the bed. A hospital; she wasn't home.
"Don't talk," he scolded.
She shook her head, struggling to sit up. He pushed the pillows forward to give her support.
Bill smiled, his lips trembling. "Missed you," he told her.
"Me too," she said hoarsely, laying her hands on his chest.
He tried to stop her again. "Don't--"
She had to say it, right now. "Love you," she managed to croak out.
Bill's smile became stronger, a confidence on his face that she'd never seen before. "About time," he rumbled at her.
She relaxed back into the pillows and Bil followed, gently gathering her close. She laced her fingers behind his wide back and leaned her cheek to his chest, listening to the comforting thump of his heart.
"You're supposed to say it back," she rasped accusingly, feeling as confident and liberated as he was.
He laughed, stirring her matted hair, and she was suddenly aware of her appearance. "I must look a mess." She touched her head where the bandage was taped against her shaved skull.
"Most beautiful woman in the world," Bill assured her, but all the events were coming back to her.
"Baltar," she mumbled, falling back into the pillows again.
"He managed to get himself into a passing taxi. Kara couldn't get the number and the police haven't tracked the driver down. Zarek or Baltar must have paid him off."
"He's gone?" she said in frustration.
"Or Cavil got him and his body will wash up on the rocks," said Bill with grim satisfaction.
When he saw the distress on her face, he shook his head. "Don't worry about that bastard. Just get better."
She forced herself to calm down, taking deep breathes. "Did you read to me while I was out?" she finally asked.
He smiled again. "Yep."
"From your book?"
"Yeah. You were the perfect audience," he said, shifting back in the hard plastic chair, but still holding her hand tenderly.
"I want to hear more," she insisted.
"No, no, you rest," he insisted, and she shuddered to hear the words again. She was remembering a strange dream...
Her eyelids drifted shut, her body failing her again.
When she woke, Bill was still there, sitting by the window tapping on his laptop. The sound had been a comforting lullaby but Laura felt refreshed and ready to take on the world. When she tried to sit up, her head whirled.
"Don't get up," chided Bill, putting aside the laptop to hurry to her side.
"How are you doing on your deadline?" she asked, her voice still weak.
Bill gaped at her. "Laura--"
She blinked slowly, fixing her steady gaze on him. "Bill."
"What happened to 'I love you'?" he asked, his eyes shifting.
"It's because I love you," she said crisply.
He just glared back. She didn't relent. Finally, he rolled his shoulders as though shrugging off a weight. "Okay, yeah, I'm supposed to send the draft to Helena Cain today and be ready for notes immediately, but what's another day?"
"Do it, Bill," she said, reaching for her water glass and the relief to her parched throat.
"See, you need me here," he pointed out, handing her the glass which was just out of her grasp.
"I can call a nurse. Go," she demanded.
He pursed his mouth in an obstinate line.
"And I'll get some work done," she said, looking around. "Is my tablet here? I can check my email. I'm way behind."
She was already formulating a plan. One duty done, she must perform one more, equally important. Billy must be put to rest. She still wasn't sure if she even believed in God anymore, but she needed to release his soul. She'd held onto her mother, and her father and sisters, for so long that they were like worn, heavy stones, barriers ahead in her path. Billy couldn't become that to her.
She'd contact Elosha, requesting that the sisters help her with a simple ceremony. Then she would destroy the device. But she didn't want to keep Bill from his duties either--she kept her face bland as she held out her hands for her tablet.
His expression uncertain, Bill gave it to her.
"Thanks, honey," she said, rolling the word on her tongue. She liked it.
He leaned over to kiss her goodbye and she was visited by that odd sensation again, but she managed to have a smile on her face when he pulled back.
"I'll see you soon," she assured him, patting his weathered cheek.
"Okay," he said, giving her a suspicious squint, but he gathered up his laptop, pulled on his coat and left.
Giving a nod, she turned on her device, stealing herself to hear Billy's voice again. Instead, an email alert immediately popped up.
Laura, it's Gauis. I must see you
A growl in her throat, Laura swung her feet off the bed.
Outside the room, Bill was checking with Lee before leaving the hospital. The young man had been waiting for his father, taking turns with Kara and Dee while Saul searched for John Cavil and Baltar.
"And she may wanna get out of that room, son." Bill sighed, anticipating Laura's next move already. "Help her if she must go, but don't let her out of your sight."
"Yes, Dad, I won't let you down," Lee said.
End ~ Chapter 35