FIC: Turn the Page ~ Chapter 37
Title: Turn the Page ~ Chapter Thirty-seven
Author: bugs
Genre: AU, Romance, Drama
Rating: T+
Word Count: 3,100
Chapter 37:
"Our cell phones," Bill said as his gaze darted to the uncurtained windows; anyone outside could see them in the Mother Superior's office.
Before they had turned in for the night, Elosha had requested their phones to place in holding during their stay. "I put them in a locker in the east wing," the older woman said, her dark eyes worried. "Across the courtyard."
Bill silently cursed this news.
The room suddenly plunged into darkness.
"I'll get a candle," Elosha said, her voice calm.
Familiar with the room, Laura moved to the door and locked it.
"Good," said Bill as he heard the bolt engage. "Before lighting a candle, we need to close those curtains."
"I can do that," said Laura, hearing the quaver in her own tone.
As she carefully picked her way around the furniture to the first windows, they all jumped at the sudden rattle of rain hitting the metal roof.
"A storm's come up," Elosha said unnecessarily. "Perhaps this Cavil person isn't here. The storm has knocked everything out?"
"I won't risk it," Bill said, resolute.
Laura closed the last heavy velvet curtain, blocking out what little light had bled into the room.
After some rustling, Elosha said, "I can't find a match."
"Keep talking," said Bill. "I have a lighter."
The candle's glow illuminated the room as he lit it.
"I need to go for that phone," Bill announced.
"No," protested Laura.
He shook his head, the crevices in his face deep and unyielding.
In that moment, Laura cursed the fact that she'd never learned how to use feminine wiles. Her father, faced with a houseful of women, hadn't offered any resistance, and nuns never felt the need to be weak and deferential. At this moment though, she wanted to weep and cling to Bill's manly arms. All she could see was Billy's blood-soaked shirt again, and hear his last breaths.
But the resolution in Bill's eyes shook her out of this. She straightened her shoulders and moved to stand before him. "You'll need a guide to the courtyard."
Close, she saw the fear in his gaze. "But you won't let me go--" she said.
"I can't be worrying about you," he explained, cradling her face. "That Cavil..."
"Let me explain the route then," Laura said, taking a deep, calming breath before starting.
When she finished, Elosha triumphantly offered a tiny flashlight she'd found in her desk drawer. "This will help."
"He's got natural night vision goggles," Laura said, fighting tears.
His grin shone in the dark. "I'll be careful," he promised, taking the penlight. "I'll just use this when I need to check my way."
But before he left the room, he kissed Laura, the kiss of a lover leaving for years, not minutes. Laura tried not to take that as a sign, her fingertips shaking as she pressed them to her bruised lips. She held the door for him to slip out, touching his back one last time before locking the bolt behind him.
"He'll be fine," Elosha said and for a brief second, Laura was painfully impatient with her friend.
"Yes," she forced herself to say.
Bill crept along the corridor, passing the front entrance's heavy oak doors. He knew better than to try leaving the building that way, even though the temptation was great. His car, and his handgun locked in the trunk, was a dozen yards away. But if he know this Cavil, he was waiting outside for some fool to try and make a break for it.
As though someone else shared his thoughts, he sensed movement behind him. He dove into a doorway just as an explosion blew the front entrance open. Covering his head, Bill avoided the debris flying at him.
When the dust settled, dim light leaked into the foyer, tempting Bill once again. He waited, but no shadowy figure appeared in the doorway. Cavil must still be waiting outside.
He had to get his cell phone. Chancing it, he slipped out of his hiding place, and resumed his course to the back door. But when he arrived at the location that Laura had shown him on the map, his hand lingered on the knob. If the front door had been rigged...
A window. He looked up at the high sill above his head helplessly. Then he heard a scrape on the stone floor behind him. Not daring to think, he hurled himself toward the small body he made out in the shadows.
The two women had been sitting together, their ears straining for any sound. There was only the slow tick of the Mother Superior's old grandfather clock in counter-rhythm with the rain, counting the few minutes since Bill had left. When there was a sound, Laura wished it had stayed silent; they heard a muffled boom like a dropping heavy metal tray in the distance.
Laura instantly jumped up. "I must go," she said.
"No honey," Elosha said, grabbing at her.
"I have to go," Laura said desperately.
Elosha stared at her for a long moment. Finally she gave Laura the candle after lighting another from it. "God go with you."
Laura didn't know what to say and just nodded. "I will be careful," she promised.
Outside the door, she shielded the candle so as little light as possible escaped. She hurried down the chilly corridor. The storm lashed the windows high above her head, sounding like rattling gunfire.
The sound had come from the direction of the front entrance. But when Laura arrived, all she found was the door hanging askew from the hinges, the wood blackened and splintered by what appeared to be an explosion. She peered out into the night, but was too wary to step outside. When she scanned the area again with her candle, she discovered a small pool of blood on the black stone of the entryway.
Stifling her moan of worry, she followed the spots trickling along the floor and the smeared handprints on the white plaster walls. They led to the chapel.
She eased through the doorway. All the sisters were gone from the pews, but she could hear rasping, pained breathing.
"Bill?" she dared to call out hoarsely.
There was no reply, only more labored breaths.
She followed the sound.
"Doctor Baltar!" she exclaimed as her candle's dimming light cast its glow on the man, curled in a fetal position between two sets of pews. "What are you doing here?" she hissed, crouching by him.
He gurgled and gasped. She rolled him onto his back so she could discover what was wrong with him.
"What's happened?" she asked as she pulled the sticky, blood-saturated shredded shirt from his belly.
"Tried to get out. Explosion," he mumbled through dry lips.
She stifled her thought. Serves you right
"Cavil?"
"Think he's rigged all the ways out."
Laura's heart lurched. She'd been so grateful to find it was not Bill wounded, but now she needed to pray he did not attempt to leave the building. He had to be warned--
She rose. Baltar grabbed her hand. "Don't go--"
She stared down at him in the dark. It would be so easy to leave him like this, to tell no one she'd found him--
"Please," Baltar whined.
"Wait," she ordered him and hurried to the altar. As she yanked off some altar cloths, she noticed the tablet was still there. The sisters must have left it when they fled. She tucked it under her arm and returned to the injured man.
"Where'd you go?" he whimpered.
She didn't bother to answer. First she made a pad with a lovely white silk runner, then ignoring his groans of pain, rolled him enough to wrap another long strip of fabric around his middle to hold the bandage down.
"We need to get help," she puffed, settling him on his back again.
Baltar stared unseeing up at the dark ceiling far above.
"I don't want to die," he whispered.
Laura held back more uncharitable thoughts. "You're not going to die," she replied, not bothering to sound sincere.
He kept talking, despite the effort. "I have so much more to do."
"So much to make up for," she said tartly.
"I'm creating new life; what's wrong with that?" he mumbled, his eyes glazing.
"It's not your role," she spit out.
"But it is," he insisted. "My destiny--"
"I'm going to destroy the tablet with Billy," she said, cutting him off.
"Doesn't matter," he said, laboring with every word. "I have so many souls now. Yours--You will live forever."
Speechless, she stared down at him. The darkness was gone; her fury lit the chapel, making it bright as dawn.
"Let me check your wound," she said, reaching for his bandage. She pulled it away, and the flow of blood increased.
"No," Baltar moaned weakly.
"You'll be fine," she gently reassured him, but found herself keeping the pad of material away from his injury.
"This is not your choice to make, Laura," a voice said from the shadows.
The chapel was pitch black again, and she had to blink hard to find the source. Elosha was there, coming to them out of the darkness.
"He--"
"Not your choice," the older woman said firmly.
Giving a short nod, Laura replaced the bandage and pressed it tightly against the doctor's belly.
"Thank you," he said weakly.
"You shouldn't have come," Laura said to Elosha. "It's dangerous."
"So is playing it safe," the older woman said, settling beside them and rearranging her robes.
"Excellent advice," said another voice out of the darkness.
Laura shifted the tablet to hide it under her thigh.
John Cavil was nothing more than a voice and the glint of the whites of his eyes. "Give it to me."
"What?" asked Laura, forcing her voice to remain level. "What do you want?"
"You've got it. Give it to me."
They could not see the man, but could hear the cocking of his weapon. The doctor moaned in fear.
As much as she loathed what Baltar had done with Billy's memories, Laura sensed that this man would do something much more evil.
"I don't have it," she said, feeling somehow outside of her body. She'd always been a terrible liar--
"You have it. I know you do." He was becoming impatient.
Elosha rose, a pillar of strength in dark wool, to block Cavil's view of Laura.
"No--" gasped Laura.
There was a roar of a gunshot, echoing around the plastered walls, drowning out the deluge on the high roof and Laura's scream.
She was splattered with blood in a hot wave, then something black was falling at her and Baltar. It writhed and rolled and she pushed it away with horror as it stilled with one final shudder. Her lone candle's flame flickered and danced, threatening to go out and plunge them all into blackness.
"No, no," she repeated, feeling a nightmare closing in like a fist on her throat.
Hands were reaching to lift her nearly weightless body, and she was in Bill's embrace, his arms tight around her, and a hot length of steel pressed to her lower back. It burned like a brand.
"What--" she gasped.
"It's over," he assured her, his voice rough.
Her fists balled, she pushed back from his comfort; she didn't need that now.
"Elosha," she called out.
A warm, soft hand took her shaking fingers and squeezed tight.
"I'm right here," said her friend, sounding shaken herself.
"What happened?" Laura garbled out.
"I couldn't wait for the cops," Bill told her tersely. "I went for my gun."
"How--" she wanted to know.
Bill looked behind him. "With the help of this young woman--"
A tiny girl in a simple gray gown stepped forward, her face under her wreath of curls still blanched white, her eyes wide. "Oh Mother," she gasped, clasping Elosha's hand. "It was so exciting!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't get your name," Bill said, his voice amused.
"Katherine," the young woman said quickly.
"She's one of our postulates," Elosha said, drawing Katherine close, her expression disapproving.
Sheepishly, he explained what happened. "I stumbled across her in the corridor--"
"He tackled me!" Katherine clarified.
Bill cleared his throat. "I asked if she knew of a lower window--"
"And then I told him I'd been a gymnast, and could get out through the window with a boost," she babbled.
Bill tried to get a word in. "Yes--"
But there was no stopping the excited young woman. "And I got his gun from his car!"
Elosha's eyes flamed.
"I've never even touched a gun!" gasped Katherine.
"Yes, well--" Bill tried to hurry the story along, seeing the distress on Elosha and Laura's faces.
"Help me," came a sad little voice from the floor.
"Oh!" Laura snatched up her candle and held it to Doctor Baltar.
He was under John Cavil's body. Everything that had just happened flooded back for Laura and she began to shake. The blood on her skin and clothes had chilled and become sticky. She sank to a pew.
Bill pushed Cavil's body off but then went immediately to Laura. "It's all right, it's all right now..."
"How could you make that shot?" she whispered. "What could have happened--"
"You were never in danger--or Elosha. I could see the whole room as though it were lit up," he explained, wonder in his tone. "The kill shot was right there--"
She pressed her hand to her mouth, fighting her nausea.
"God showed you the way," Elosha said, definite.
Laura and Bill's gazes met. He shrugged, and she smiled at him. "Yes, Mother," she said agreeably.
"Still dying here," complained Baltar.
"Oh my!" gasped Katherine. In a whirl of her long skirt, she turned. "I'll go for help!" She peeked over her shoulder. "It is safe--"
"Yeah, this guy was it," said Bill. He smiled ruefully at Laura. "Scared me shitless to put another rookie in harm's way--"
"You did what you had to do," she said, grasping his hand and holding it tightly.
"Always," he rumbled, passing his free hand over his eyes.
"Now it's my turn--" Laura stooped and picked up the tablet from the floor.
Sirens filled the air. With Elosha tending to his injury, the doctor watched Laura clasp the device to her chest.
"I know it won't make a difference with everything you're planning," she said to him, "but I have to save one soul at least."
Bill put an arm around her waist. "First, a bath, a meal, and at least eight hours of sleep for you."
Laura started to protest, then she allowed herself to lean against his familiar, soothing warm chest, finally letting go. She felt his wet cheek against her own, a baptism for two old, tired souls.
~*~
"I'm so sorry--we're interrupting," said Laura, apologizing from the tenth time. She'd awakened as though rising from a grave, determined to destroy the tablet's memory once and for all. Bill had assured her that he knew just the person for the job.
Ty shook his head, padding through his dark house. "We weren't sleeping, trust me. Not with a new baby in the house."
Bill brought up the rear behind Sharon. "I refuse to believe that meeting with Helena brought on your labor," he blustered.
The new mother rocked the baby in her arms. "It did, I tell you! That woman can breathe fire!"
"So I take it my contract's been canceled?"
Laura gasped in protest but Sharon only chuffed a laugh. "It was. Then she read the news stories about your little adventure--" Her dark eyes looked Laura over with curiosity. "And she knows good publicity when she sees it. Husker's in love with a mysterious woman in the book--and there you are rescuing your lady love."
Bill could only shake his head. "I'll never get the publishing business."
"That's my job. Yours is to write the books," Sharon said crisply.
Ty turned his attention to Laura. "You need to kill the memory?" he asked, nodding toward the case in her hands.
She winced at his choice of words. "Yes, so it can never be retrieved."
"I've got a machine that will chew that up into tiny pieces," he promised her. "Out in the garage."
They all trooped out through the toy-strewn backyard to Ty's workshop. He rolled up the large door and laced his way between old half-assembled cars and stacked computer equipment after taking the tablet from Laura's chilly hands.
Laura lingered in the yard and Bill put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. "No need to watch," he assured her.
"No, it's not Billy. It's not like seeing him die again." She tipped her head back and stared up at the star-filled sky. "The storm's finally passed," she mused, needing something to think about other the sound of the machine inside the workshop coming to life with a grinding of gears.
Sharon had sat on a swinging chair hanging from an old oak tree. Unashamed, she opened her robe and began to feed her new daughter.
Bill glanced away, his cheeks reddening, but Laura watched the new little baby going through the motions as ancient as human life. "Baltar's got no idea what he's trying to do," she said, frustrated.
Sharon looked up. "You guys probably slept through the news."
"What's happened?" Bill asked.
The pitch of the machine in the shop changed; there was a deep, munching sound. Bill's arm tightened around Laura.
"Some poor assistant of Doctor's Baltar went to enter his supposedly high security lab and got blown to pieces for her troubles. It burned to the ground."
Laura's head dipped at the weight of her dark thoughts--gratitude, relief, sense of vengeance wrought.
Bill's lips were at her temple. "I guess Elosha's right. God took care of his own."
"You a believer now?" murmured Laura--the crunching of plastic and metal had ceased with one final thump.
She could feel his smile against her forehead. "You make me believe, my love," he promised.
End Chapter 37
E/N: Yes, I could end there, but admit it, we want some happytimes coda, don't we? WITHOUT Baltar and Shelly slithering around a magazine stand, shmarming up the screen with a bunch of BS about Hera.
Author: bugs
Genre: AU, Romance, Drama
Rating: T+
Word Count: 3,100
Chapter 37:
"Our cell phones," Bill said as his gaze darted to the uncurtained windows; anyone outside could see them in the Mother Superior's office.
Before they had turned in for the night, Elosha had requested their phones to place in holding during their stay. "I put them in a locker in the east wing," the older woman said, her dark eyes worried. "Across the courtyard."
Bill silently cursed this news.
The room suddenly plunged into darkness.
"I'll get a candle," Elosha said, her voice calm.
Familiar with the room, Laura moved to the door and locked it.
"Good," said Bill as he heard the bolt engage. "Before lighting a candle, we need to close those curtains."
"I can do that," said Laura, hearing the quaver in her own tone.
As she carefully picked her way around the furniture to the first windows, they all jumped at the sudden rattle of rain hitting the metal roof.
"A storm's come up," Elosha said unnecessarily. "Perhaps this Cavil person isn't here. The storm has knocked everything out?"
"I won't risk it," Bill said, resolute.
Laura closed the last heavy velvet curtain, blocking out what little light had bled into the room.
After some rustling, Elosha said, "I can't find a match."
"Keep talking," said Bill. "I have a lighter."
The candle's glow illuminated the room as he lit it.
"I need to go for that phone," Bill announced.
"No," protested Laura.
He shook his head, the crevices in his face deep and unyielding.
In that moment, Laura cursed the fact that she'd never learned how to use feminine wiles. Her father, faced with a houseful of women, hadn't offered any resistance, and nuns never felt the need to be weak and deferential. At this moment though, she wanted to weep and cling to Bill's manly arms. All she could see was Billy's blood-soaked shirt again, and hear his last breaths.
But the resolution in Bill's eyes shook her out of this. She straightened her shoulders and moved to stand before him. "You'll need a guide to the courtyard."
Close, she saw the fear in his gaze. "But you won't let me go--" she said.
"I can't be worrying about you," he explained, cradling her face. "That Cavil..."
"Let me explain the route then," Laura said, taking a deep, calming breath before starting.
When she finished, Elosha triumphantly offered a tiny flashlight she'd found in her desk drawer. "This will help."
"He's got natural night vision goggles," Laura said, fighting tears.
His grin shone in the dark. "I'll be careful," he promised, taking the penlight. "I'll just use this when I need to check my way."
But before he left the room, he kissed Laura, the kiss of a lover leaving for years, not minutes. Laura tried not to take that as a sign, her fingertips shaking as she pressed them to her bruised lips. She held the door for him to slip out, touching his back one last time before locking the bolt behind him.
"He'll be fine," Elosha said and for a brief second, Laura was painfully impatient with her friend.
"Yes," she forced herself to say.
Bill crept along the corridor, passing the front entrance's heavy oak doors. He knew better than to try leaving the building that way, even though the temptation was great. His car, and his handgun locked in the trunk, was a dozen yards away. But if he know this Cavil, he was waiting outside for some fool to try and make a break for it.
As though someone else shared his thoughts, he sensed movement behind him. He dove into a doorway just as an explosion blew the front entrance open. Covering his head, Bill avoided the debris flying at him.
When the dust settled, dim light leaked into the foyer, tempting Bill once again. He waited, but no shadowy figure appeared in the doorway. Cavil must still be waiting outside.
He had to get his cell phone. Chancing it, he slipped out of his hiding place, and resumed his course to the back door. But when he arrived at the location that Laura had shown him on the map, his hand lingered on the knob. If the front door had been rigged...
A window. He looked up at the high sill above his head helplessly. Then he heard a scrape on the stone floor behind him. Not daring to think, he hurled himself toward the small body he made out in the shadows.
The two women had been sitting together, their ears straining for any sound. There was only the slow tick of the Mother Superior's old grandfather clock in counter-rhythm with the rain, counting the few minutes since Bill had left. When there was a sound, Laura wished it had stayed silent; they heard a muffled boom like a dropping heavy metal tray in the distance.
Laura instantly jumped up. "I must go," she said.
"No honey," Elosha said, grabbing at her.
"I have to go," Laura said desperately.
Elosha stared at her for a long moment. Finally she gave Laura the candle after lighting another from it. "God go with you."
Laura didn't know what to say and just nodded. "I will be careful," she promised.
Outside the door, she shielded the candle so as little light as possible escaped. She hurried down the chilly corridor. The storm lashed the windows high above her head, sounding like rattling gunfire.
The sound had come from the direction of the front entrance. But when Laura arrived, all she found was the door hanging askew from the hinges, the wood blackened and splintered by what appeared to be an explosion. She peered out into the night, but was too wary to step outside. When she scanned the area again with her candle, she discovered a small pool of blood on the black stone of the entryway.
Stifling her moan of worry, she followed the spots trickling along the floor and the smeared handprints on the white plaster walls. They led to the chapel.
She eased through the doorway. All the sisters were gone from the pews, but she could hear rasping, pained breathing.
"Bill?" she dared to call out hoarsely.
There was no reply, only more labored breaths.
She followed the sound.
"Doctor Baltar!" she exclaimed as her candle's dimming light cast its glow on the man, curled in a fetal position between two sets of pews. "What are you doing here?" she hissed, crouching by him.
He gurgled and gasped. She rolled him onto his back so she could discover what was wrong with him.
"What's happened?" she asked as she pulled the sticky, blood-saturated shredded shirt from his belly.
"Tried to get out. Explosion," he mumbled through dry lips.
She stifled her thought. Serves you right
"Cavil?"
"Think he's rigged all the ways out."
Laura's heart lurched. She'd been so grateful to find it was not Bill wounded, but now she needed to pray he did not attempt to leave the building. He had to be warned--
She rose. Baltar grabbed her hand. "Don't go--"
She stared down at him in the dark. It would be so easy to leave him like this, to tell no one she'd found him--
"Please," Baltar whined.
"Wait," she ordered him and hurried to the altar. As she yanked off some altar cloths, she noticed the tablet was still there. The sisters must have left it when they fled. She tucked it under her arm and returned to the injured man.
"Where'd you go?" he whimpered.
She didn't bother to answer. First she made a pad with a lovely white silk runner, then ignoring his groans of pain, rolled him enough to wrap another long strip of fabric around his middle to hold the bandage down.
"We need to get help," she puffed, settling him on his back again.
Baltar stared unseeing up at the dark ceiling far above.
"I don't want to die," he whispered.
Laura held back more uncharitable thoughts. "You're not going to die," she replied, not bothering to sound sincere.
He kept talking, despite the effort. "I have so much more to do."
"So much to make up for," she said tartly.
"I'm creating new life; what's wrong with that?" he mumbled, his eyes glazing.
"It's not your role," she spit out.
"But it is," he insisted. "My destiny--"
"I'm going to destroy the tablet with Billy," she said, cutting him off.
"Doesn't matter," he said, laboring with every word. "I have so many souls now. Yours--You will live forever."
Speechless, she stared down at him. The darkness was gone; her fury lit the chapel, making it bright as dawn.
"Let me check your wound," she said, reaching for his bandage. She pulled it away, and the flow of blood increased.
"No," Baltar moaned weakly.
"You'll be fine," she gently reassured him, but found herself keeping the pad of material away from his injury.
"This is not your choice to make, Laura," a voice said from the shadows.
The chapel was pitch black again, and she had to blink hard to find the source. Elosha was there, coming to them out of the darkness.
"He--"
"Not your choice," the older woman said firmly.
Giving a short nod, Laura replaced the bandage and pressed it tightly against the doctor's belly.
"Thank you," he said weakly.
"You shouldn't have come," Laura said to Elosha. "It's dangerous."
"So is playing it safe," the older woman said, settling beside them and rearranging her robes.
"Excellent advice," said another voice out of the darkness.
Laura shifted the tablet to hide it under her thigh.
John Cavil was nothing more than a voice and the glint of the whites of his eyes. "Give it to me."
"What?" asked Laura, forcing her voice to remain level. "What do you want?"
"You've got it. Give it to me."
They could not see the man, but could hear the cocking of his weapon. The doctor moaned in fear.
As much as she loathed what Baltar had done with Billy's memories, Laura sensed that this man would do something much more evil.
"I don't have it," she said, feeling somehow outside of her body. She'd always been a terrible liar--
"You have it. I know you do." He was becoming impatient.
Elosha rose, a pillar of strength in dark wool, to block Cavil's view of Laura.
"No--" gasped Laura.
There was a roar of a gunshot, echoing around the plastered walls, drowning out the deluge on the high roof and Laura's scream.
She was splattered with blood in a hot wave, then something black was falling at her and Baltar. It writhed and rolled and she pushed it away with horror as it stilled with one final shudder. Her lone candle's flame flickered and danced, threatening to go out and plunge them all into blackness.
"No, no," she repeated, feeling a nightmare closing in like a fist on her throat.
Hands were reaching to lift her nearly weightless body, and she was in Bill's embrace, his arms tight around her, and a hot length of steel pressed to her lower back. It burned like a brand.
"What--" she gasped.
"It's over," he assured her, his voice rough.
Her fists balled, she pushed back from his comfort; she didn't need that now.
"Elosha," she called out.
A warm, soft hand took her shaking fingers and squeezed tight.
"I'm right here," said her friend, sounding shaken herself.
"What happened?" Laura garbled out.
"I couldn't wait for the cops," Bill told her tersely. "I went for my gun."
"How--" she wanted to know.
Bill looked behind him. "With the help of this young woman--"
A tiny girl in a simple gray gown stepped forward, her face under her wreath of curls still blanched white, her eyes wide. "Oh Mother," she gasped, clasping Elosha's hand. "It was so exciting!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't get your name," Bill said, his voice amused.
"Katherine," the young woman said quickly.
"She's one of our postulates," Elosha said, drawing Katherine close, her expression disapproving.
Sheepishly, he explained what happened. "I stumbled across her in the corridor--"
"He tackled me!" Katherine clarified.
Bill cleared his throat. "I asked if she knew of a lower window--"
"And then I told him I'd been a gymnast, and could get out through the window with a boost," she babbled.
Bill tried to get a word in. "Yes--"
But there was no stopping the excited young woman. "And I got his gun from his car!"
Elosha's eyes flamed.
"I've never even touched a gun!" gasped Katherine.
"Yes, well--" Bill tried to hurry the story along, seeing the distress on Elosha and Laura's faces.
"Help me," came a sad little voice from the floor.
"Oh!" Laura snatched up her candle and held it to Doctor Baltar.
He was under John Cavil's body. Everything that had just happened flooded back for Laura and she began to shake. The blood on her skin and clothes had chilled and become sticky. She sank to a pew.
Bill pushed Cavil's body off but then went immediately to Laura. "It's all right, it's all right now..."
"How could you make that shot?" she whispered. "What could have happened--"
"You were never in danger--or Elosha. I could see the whole room as though it were lit up," he explained, wonder in his tone. "The kill shot was right there--"
She pressed her hand to her mouth, fighting her nausea.
"God showed you the way," Elosha said, definite.
Laura and Bill's gazes met. He shrugged, and she smiled at him. "Yes, Mother," she said agreeably.
"Still dying here," complained Baltar.
"Oh my!" gasped Katherine. In a whirl of her long skirt, she turned. "I'll go for help!" She peeked over her shoulder. "It is safe--"
"Yeah, this guy was it," said Bill. He smiled ruefully at Laura. "Scared me shitless to put another rookie in harm's way--"
"You did what you had to do," she said, grasping his hand and holding it tightly.
"Always," he rumbled, passing his free hand over his eyes.
"Now it's my turn--" Laura stooped and picked up the tablet from the floor.
Sirens filled the air. With Elosha tending to his injury, the doctor watched Laura clasp the device to her chest.
"I know it won't make a difference with everything you're planning," she said to him, "but I have to save one soul at least."
Bill put an arm around her waist. "First, a bath, a meal, and at least eight hours of sleep for you."
Laura started to protest, then she allowed herself to lean against his familiar, soothing warm chest, finally letting go. She felt his wet cheek against her own, a baptism for two old, tired souls.
~*~
"I'm so sorry--we're interrupting," said Laura, apologizing from the tenth time. She'd awakened as though rising from a grave, determined to destroy the tablet's memory once and for all. Bill had assured her that he knew just the person for the job.
Ty shook his head, padding through his dark house. "We weren't sleeping, trust me. Not with a new baby in the house."
Bill brought up the rear behind Sharon. "I refuse to believe that meeting with Helena brought on your labor," he blustered.
The new mother rocked the baby in her arms. "It did, I tell you! That woman can breathe fire!"
"So I take it my contract's been canceled?"
Laura gasped in protest but Sharon only chuffed a laugh. "It was. Then she read the news stories about your little adventure--" Her dark eyes looked Laura over with curiosity. "And she knows good publicity when she sees it. Husker's in love with a mysterious woman in the book--and there you are rescuing your lady love."
Bill could only shake his head. "I'll never get the publishing business."
"That's my job. Yours is to write the books," Sharon said crisply.
Ty turned his attention to Laura. "You need to kill the memory?" he asked, nodding toward the case in her hands.
She winced at his choice of words. "Yes, so it can never be retrieved."
"I've got a machine that will chew that up into tiny pieces," he promised her. "Out in the garage."
They all trooped out through the toy-strewn backyard to Ty's workshop. He rolled up the large door and laced his way between old half-assembled cars and stacked computer equipment after taking the tablet from Laura's chilly hands.
Laura lingered in the yard and Bill put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. "No need to watch," he assured her.
"No, it's not Billy. It's not like seeing him die again." She tipped her head back and stared up at the star-filled sky. "The storm's finally passed," she mused, needing something to think about other the sound of the machine inside the workshop coming to life with a grinding of gears.
Sharon had sat on a swinging chair hanging from an old oak tree. Unashamed, she opened her robe and began to feed her new daughter.
Bill glanced away, his cheeks reddening, but Laura watched the new little baby going through the motions as ancient as human life. "Baltar's got no idea what he's trying to do," she said, frustrated.
Sharon looked up. "You guys probably slept through the news."
"What's happened?" Bill asked.
The pitch of the machine in the shop changed; there was a deep, munching sound. Bill's arm tightened around Laura.
"Some poor assistant of Doctor's Baltar went to enter his supposedly high security lab and got blown to pieces for her troubles. It burned to the ground."
Laura's head dipped at the weight of her dark thoughts--gratitude, relief, sense of vengeance wrought.
Bill's lips were at her temple. "I guess Elosha's right. God took care of his own."
"You a believer now?" murmured Laura--the crunching of plastic and metal had ceased with one final thump.
She could feel his smile against her forehead. "You make me believe, my love," he promised.
End Chapter 37
E/N: Yes, I could end there, but admit it, we want some happytimes coda, don't we? WITHOUT Baltar and Shelly slithering around a magazine stand, shmarming up the screen with a bunch of BS about Hera.