[Fic] Phantasm 2/4
Title: Phantasm [PG-13]
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Spoilers: From 3x19 Crossroads Part 1 forward.
Characters: Bill Adama, Laura Roslin, Lee Adama
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Author’s Note: For summary, disclaimer and warnings, see Part One. Part 2 of 4. I'm quite sad that I had to split this up.
Phantasm
Part 2
Death is not a curse. Life and death are the eternal circle, the law of life, under which all of us, heritage and worldly possessions be damned, are mandated. We are blessed in death, as we are in birth, as we are in death and so on and so forth. As the Lords of Kobol granted us, our first understanding is that all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again; so fear not the end of the cycle, nor worship the beginning any more so, but rather fulfill the days between. The only curse is that of an inadequate life.
- The Sacred Scrolls, Book of the Dead
The service is just like she would have wanted. In fact, it is what she wanted. She’d made it known and he had fulfilled her wishes to the letter, even though at the time the topic of conversation had depressed him so much that all he’d wanted to do was block his ears, curl up in a corner and pretend none of it was happening.
The priestess, one she’d become quite fond of in her final weeks, not bonded with like Eloshia, but enjoyed nonetheless, reads from the Book of the Dead, speaks of the eternal circle that is life and death.
He feels her chest against his back as her breath tickles his ear while she whispers in perfect synchrony with the holy woman, “’All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.’ I have to admit, I hope that part’s wrong. If I have to go through all of this again, I swear I will airlock the Lords of Kobol themselves the next time around.”
Bill forces himself to smother the rich chuckle that threatens to escape him. He drops his head and hopes that the people around him will take his shuddering body for muted sobs, since it really would not be appropriate to burst out laughing during the former president’s funeral service.
He can just imagine telling them that it’s her fault he’s laughing because she’s whispering smart-ass cracks in his ear. He’d be instantly declared a loony, which, judging by the warmth against his back and the light laughter he can hear, might very well be a fair assessment.
“No, you’re not crazy, Bill. Just grieving,” she tells him and the reminder that she is in fact not here making jokes, that the pain he feels is for her, that the ache in his chest is simply the place she used to fill, is enough to kill the humor.
Attempting to focus again, Bill forces himself to listen to the scripture being read, but how is he expected to focus when she is now in front of him, standing tall and turning in a full circle to survey the room?
She shrugs and then turns back to him. “The service is perfect, though not quite as intimate as I’d imagined.”
It’s not as if we put a man on the door to hold out his hand for invitations, he thinks and she laughs. He has to admit however, it’s not as small as he would have liked either, with only the family and close friends.
While most of the fleet are respectful enough to stay away, content to attend the public service that will be held later in the hangar deck, with full honors and all the pomp a president of the Twelve Colonies deserves, quite a few people who simply like to claim they were close to her showed up at this one.
He sends a glare in the direction of the current president and the Quorom assholes that he’s sitting with. If only they knew what she really thought of them. He happily remembers the many tirades she’d have after a meeting. He could picture her, storming into his quarters, muttering to herself in a quite unladylike fashion, ranting to him as she left a trail of shoes and clothes from the hatch to the couch.
She despised the tedium they represented, could never get over the fact that they were so full of themselves. Now they sit at Laura’s funeral, not the President’s, and mourn her as if they’d been best of friends with her.
“Can you blame them?” she asks, smirking cynically. “There’s nothing quite like death to shoot a president’s approval ratings through the roof. I wasn’t even this popular when I was Pythia. It’ll be a massive boost for them, to be able to tearfully tell the people that they attended the private service.”
He grumbles quietly, but consoles himself with the thought that at least the media stayed the frak away. He glances to his right, where his son sits rigidly beside him and smiles to himself, knowing that Lee, or rather Delegate Adama, more than likely was the one who ensured that.
“The important people are here, that’s what matters most,” she consoles, smiling at him gently and then sending one of her wider smiles over to baby Nicky Tyrol, who happily chews on his father’s sleeve, probably the only person in the room who is untouched by the dark cloud over them.
The Chief himself is looking much like Bill feels, probably because this service is so similar to that of his late wife’s. Next to Galen, Racetrack is having trouble wiping away her tears, they’re coming so fast and Bill recalls that she was the president’s primary shuttle pilot, having delivered her safely on perhaps hundreds of raptor trips.
Across the room, Jack Cottle isn’t even pretending to listen to the priestess. He sits hunched over, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, with his elbows on his knees. The lines in his face are frighteningly prominent. He’s surrounded by his medical staff and two young nurses are clinging to each other and openly weeping.
Helo stands tall behind his wife, jaw clenched. It surprises him that Sharon has tears glistening in her eyes, that she’d be moved by this particular woman’s death, though it shouldn’t; even when you despised Laura Roslin’s actions, you couldn’t help but be awed by the woman herself. Even when you hated her, a part of you couldn’t help but love her fiercely.
The young mother clings to Hera, whose face is buried in her breast. Bill wonders if the child is old enough yet to understand the significance of what is happening around her, if she knows that Laura has left them and will not return.
“She knows,” says the lady herself quietly from where she sits in front of him. “We have a special bond, the two of us. She knows that I’m gone. Knew the moment it happened, even before I was found.”
Saul is further down on the same pew as Bill (front row for her family), grim-faced, hands twitching in his lap for a hard drink. Another hand, smaller and softer, reaches out and covers the shaking appendages and Bill looks up at Caprica’s face. She’s in tears. He knows the pregnant cylon has spent a lot of time with Laura lately. He doesn’t know what they discussed, Laura never would say, but her posture had always given away the depth of the conversations.
When his eyes focus on Baltar, sitting in much the hunched position as Cottle, he almost wants to leap over the pews and strangle the life right out of him. How dare he, of all people, be here? What gives him the right to sit there and pretend to grieve for her?
Her breath is against his ear again. “Leave it be. He is mourning, in his own way. Besides, it could be worse. At least he didn’t bring his harem.”
True, he’ll concede that, a rare show of good taste on the doctor’s part. In fact, he’s rather secluded, by himself except for the two women near him. One of the sixes, a brunette one from the base star came as a show of respect, an extended hand for which he will thank them in kind one day.
It’s the other young woman that catches his attention though. A shot of red hot anger rushes his veins at the sight of Tory Foster, but he quells it. She’s a cylon, true, and she did stab her boss in the back, but even he, in all his protectiveness, can’t deny that she’s hurting, the look on her face portraying her pain, so he lets it go. He’ll give her this, this one short day, but then she’d better hope to never cross his path again.
Kneeling in front of him, she rests her elbows on his thighs and puts her chin in her hands, looking over at Tory as well. “Really makes me miss Billy. So loyal, so most definitely not cylon material.” Then she looks up at him and smiles. “At least I get to see him again now, just as I remember him.
“I guess that’s one good thing to him dying when he did, he’ll always be preserved like that; young and intelligent and warm and kind. Bright-eyed for the future, before the circling sharks in the political game could take any chunks out of him. Perfectly preserved.”
“And how will you be preserved, Laura?” he questions quietly, so that only Kara, close on his left, throws a concerned look in his direction.
Her smile is self-deprecating. “President, prophet. Maybe like Kara described, ‘Crazy frakkin’ witch’. I’ve even heard the word martyr being used, though my decision to end it when I did had nothing to do with getting the fleet to the Promised Land. It was purely selfish and I don’t apologize for that, so if they want to call that an act of martyrdom, then at least that’s one part of the history books that will reflect on me better than the truth.” She cocks her head then and asks, “How will you remember me, Bill?”
With the gentlest of smiles, he tells her, “Only as the love of my life.”
“Hmm. That’s probably my favorite, then.”
“Dad,” comes a hushed whisper from Lee, and when Bill looks up, the room is looking at him expectantly.
For a moment, he worries that he’s spoken too loudly to the thin air that they see, but the priestess clarifies the situation by repeating herself. “Admiral, perhaps you’d like to say a few words on Laura’s behalf?”
The figment in front of him turns her head to look over her shoulder at the holy woman. “On my behalf? She makes it sound like a ‘thank you and goodnight’ routine.” She looks at him again and winces in sympathy. “I’m pretty sure she’s asking for a eulogy.”
The whole room is still looking at him, but he can’t make himself stand up. Not here, not now; he isn’t ready to talk about her without having a complete breakdown. He certainly isn’t about to say goodbye to her in front of all these people.
He looks at Lee beseechingly and shakes his head, saying quietly with a throat that is suddenly all too raw, “I can’t … I can’t.”
Lee grasps his shoulder tightly. “It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay; I’ll take care of it.”
A wave of relief washes over Bill as his son stands and Kara takes his hand firmly in her own and squeezes. Just a month ago, he would have worried how his weakness in this moment looks to those around him, but with his chest tightening uncomfortably, he just doesn’t give a frak.
The figment quickly takes the younger Adama’s vacated seat and murmurs, “This should be good.” She takes Bill’s arm and gives him a sad smile. “I wish things had been different between Lee and I. We sorted it out mostly, in the end, but … I so wish we could have still been connected the way we were in the beginning. It’ll be nice to hear his final analysis of me.”
Bill has absolute faith that his son will not let her down. Lee loves her. Even after everything, the sour grapes they’d both fed each other, Lee is still devoted to her, protective of her. He won’t disappoint her now.
There is a long silence while the younger Adama gathers his thoughts and, for the first time since the service started, Bill pays attention to what is going on, watching his son clear his throat and try to push past the pain to begin.
“I worshipped Laura Roslin,” he starts, then clenches his jaw, takes a deep breath, and goes on. “I worshipped her. Here was this woman, this school teacher, who was suddenly thrust into an impossible situation, one that, even seconds before it happened, she never would have imagined herself in. Like the rest of us, she was completely blindsided by the apocalypse and yet … unlike the rest of us, she didn’t falter. Instead, she showed us how to get up off our knees.
“She once told me that she hated politics. Hated how difficult it was just to get people to agree to do the right thing. Hated how long it took to do that thing once it was agreed upon. She hated politics and in the blink of an eye she became the most powerful politician left alive.”
The breath he takes is shuddering, shaking his entire body. “What awed me the most though, was that she hadn’t just gone from school teacher to President of the Twelve Colonies … she suddenly became the only thing that was holding together the remnants of a devastated civilization.
“And hold it together she did. Even when we fought against her, tooth and nail, she was holding us together. Even when we condemned her, even when we treated her worse than we were treating our own enemies … she held us together, with nothing more than the sheer force of her will.”
Bill and Kara share a light smile at his choice of words and then Bill looks over at his companion. She meets his eyes, wiping away a few tears and then shrugs. “He’s exaggerating. I always had back-up.” And she squeezes his arm to show him who she considered the back-up, even if it is too much because, to his great regret, he hadn’t always had her back.
Lee has to pause, wipe away a few of his own tears and clear his throat again. “I worshipped Laura Roslin,” he repeats and then shakes his head sadly. “Which was probably the problem in the end because all I could see was the grace and the strength and the remarkable humanity … I forgot she was a person, a living breathing human being, with all the faults and flaws that came along with that.
“But she was just a human. She was a mother to some of us. She was a friend to others.” He looks over and meets Bill’s eyes. “And she was someone very special to someone else.”
Then after a pause he smiles, laughing a little and perking up as he says, “She hated high heels. Would kick them off the moment she got out of the office. She loved Aereon field berries; was in mourning for a week when the fleet ran out of them. You wouldn’t think it, but she loved to sit ring-side for a good fight, and understood the technicalities of it all better than most of us.
“When she really wasn’t in the mood for a Quorom meeting, she’d amuse herself by choosing a random word and then counting how many times it was shouted across the table,” he tells them and while many of the Quorom members look mildly offended, the room is lightening as people start smiling, remembering Laura.
Bill is smiling himself, even while tears fall down his face, because this feels right, so much more fitting than any reading from the Scrolls. She should be remembered like this, she deserves to be. People should be able to smile when they think of her.
Lee is on a roll, grinning through his tears. “She got the giggles when she was nervous. Full blown giggles that, try as she might, she could not stop once she’d started. While she was have her treatments in Life Station, one of her favorite ways to pass the time was to see how many cigarettes she could frustrate Doc Cottle into chain-smoking.”
Laughter is filling the air and Lee drops his head and wipes at his cheeks. He’s still smiling when he looks up again, but it’s more wistful. “President Roslin was cold and she was calculating and she was downright ruthless when she needed to be. But Laura … when Laura loved, it was with everything she had. When she laughed, you couldn’t help but laugh with her. Laura was warm, and she was funny, and just a little bit eccentric, and she was flawed and …”
He trails off, the smile slipping from his face, and the whole room sobers with him. Lee swallows heavily and then almost chokes on his last words. “She was human. And … and I find myself still worshipping her.”
Bill, with pride in his eyes, looks at his ghost and finds her trying to contain herself. The look he gives her clearly asks, ‘Well?’
She shrugs and wipes at her nose with the hand that isn’t clutching his arm. She meets his eyes, nods and says simply, “Yeah.”
Smiling, he places his hand over hers on his arm, and cries with her.
End Part Two.
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