Beautiful in Her Armour 13/?

[mscrwth]

BSG Fic: Beautiful in Her Armour
Summary: Where do we go from here?
Rated: K
Spoilers: up 'til Revelations
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing. They belong to Ron Moore and co. and most especially to MM, EJO and the rest of the crew, who breathe life into them


When the Raptor touches down, there’s a moment, just a moment, where Bill can’t make himself move.

All that’s happened in the last day, finding Earth a hellhole, making love to Laura, seeing her go down under a madman’s bullet, hearing she had gone missing and not being able to go after her, waging war against the Cylons against overwhelming odds yet again, the way the enemy just stood down in the middle of battle when the battle had been going their way, it's all left him thoroughly pissed off and completely mystified.

He needs Laura. Usually when shit like this happens, she is by his side and together they make sense of things; not so this time. At a loss without her, he doesn’t know what to think of it all, which in turn confuses him more, he’s always been a man of reason and intelligence, used to carefully evaluating any circumstance and then taking decisive action. This utter confusion has him shaken up.

But that's not the worst of it. The worst of it; the thing that's left him paralyzed, that keeps him nailed to his seat even when the hatch has long since opened, is of another nature altogether. It’s the news Cottle gave him just before he boarded the Raptor.

Having made a short detour to the Life Station and having ascertained his son was going to live, Bill had been accosted by his CMO on the way out, and it’s Cottle’s words that keep going around in his head as he sits there, staring at nothing.

“Admiral,” Jack Cottles rough voice had hailed him, “Between all the injuries from the frakking riots and the battle against the Cylons I've had little chance to go over the President’s records like I promised, but I did find a moment to give them the once over and I found something pretty disturbing.” Cottle’s face is scrunched up like yesterday’s newspaper as he pronounces those fateful words, his craggy features displaying a deep sorrow that makes Bill afraid to ask the next question. As it turns out, he doesn’t have to; Cottle forges on without waiting for permission. “There’s no way to sugar coat this so I’ll just come out and say it. The President’s cancer? It was cured by the human elements in Hera’s blood, not by the Cylon.”

The implications of that staggering bit of news are not lost on Bill; they have had him frozen with indecision all during the ride down to the surface, contemplating his next move. It seems he is destined to always follow her down to some frakking planet or other, Kobol, New Caprica, now Earth, and always on some impossible mission. Put the fleet back together and help her find a mythical tomb which will point the way to Earth, rescue her and the rest of your people from Cylon occupied New Caprica against impossible odds, find a way to convince yourself that your suspicions are nothing but idle conjecture as you go down to Earth and face your own worst nightmare.

You can do it, he tells himself, you can set your fears aside and just concentrate on getting to her, you're the Admiral of the fleet for frak’s sake. You'll face whatever you have to face once you've found her and convinced yourself she’s alright. Then you can think about the other thing.

Resolve in place, Bill arises from his seat, leads his small team into the ruins of the city, towards the pyres he can see burning in the distance like a beacon calling him home, sure that that’s where Laura is.

Halfway up the beach, they encounter half a dozen Cavils and Dorals, surrounded by Cylon Centurions. In the light of the half moon, he can see the humanoid models are slumped onto the sand in defeat; their metal counterparts stand immovable, not threatening Bill and his party, their attention focused on Cavil and his brothers. Cautiously, Bill signals his people to circle around the small gathering of Cylons and make for the shelter of the nearest buildings.

Under the cover of darkness they’ve almost made it to the relative safety of stone and concrete when one of the Cavils spots the small group of humans making their way up the beach. He throws himself in their direction, shouting obscenities and Bill and his party look on in disbelief as one of the Centurions moves to intercept, holds the Cavil in a secure grip and signals with its bullet like head for the humans to proceed.

Dumbfounded, Bill leaves a few of his people behind when they hit the first buildings, telling them to take cover and keep a close eye on the strange tableau on the beach. He has no idea what’s going on but he’ll be damned if he turns his back on a possible threat even if at the moment the Centurions look to be on their side.

At the foot of the hill from which the fires blaze, they encounter Racetrack and her party, along with Tyrol and Anders. Racetrack quickly fills them in on what happened after they set down. He gathers she was able to rescue Anders and Tyro, who were being held along with the rest of the landing party in the relatively intact building they are currently holed up in. Sharon, Caprica and Baltar were separated from the group and led up the hill, where they were joined by another party a few hours later, this one adding the President to the mix. Unable to gauge the intent of the group at the top of the hill, Racetrack and her party carefully laid down a perimeter and were just now conferring on their course of action. Further reconnaissance had revealed a number of Cylon contingents honing in on the hill top, one from the beach, the other from amidst the ruined city but the Toasters were acting strangely. The whole situation had clearly been way over his people’s heads. Bill can’t say he blames them, he’s feeling out of his depth himself too, and that’s putting it mildly.

Impatiently, he stops Racetrack’s narrative with a wave of his hand; he’s heard all he needs to know. As relieved as he is to see them, Bill only has one thing on his mind, it’s the only question that means anything to him at this point. He turns towards Tyrol, intending to get the information from him by force if needs be. His former deck chief looks so sad and forlorn, it makes Bill remember himself. This is not just about Laura, not just about the Admiral and the President, every one of them, every one of their people, in some way or another has been affected by the last four years, Tyrol wears his heartbreak on his sleeve, for all the world to see and the profound sense of misery he projects moves Bill to take a more lenient approach. Remembering Chief Laird died when Laura was taken from his hanger deck Bill decides to put Tyrol first and give him what he needs.

“Chief, you’re back in the hot seat,” he barks, “the old girl needs some TLC from you as soon as we’re back.

“Aye, Sir!” Tyrol snaps to attention, a slow smile spreads across his face like an early thaw. Such a small thing, so easily done, whatever else happens, Bill is glad he was able to give Tyrol this gift and see him come back to himself.

“Good.” Bill swallows, feels his Adam’s apple bob up and down like a floater on a fishing line being tugged down by a giant carp. “Now tell me the truth, is she one of you, is she the final one?”

Tyrol bows his head for a moment, then raises his eyes to meet his burning gaze and speaks one word. “Yes”

Bill turns around slowly, punches the wall behind him with his already damaged fist. The pain doesn’t register; Tyrol’s hand on his shoulder hardly seems real. All that’s real is the thing he’s been dreading most.

Laura is a Cylon, the last and the first of the enemy they had fought for so long, one of them.

Only now there is no us or them, Cylons are human, humans are Cylons. The Universe has been stood on its head, up is down and left is right; some humans act like mindless machines and some Cylons are more human than even the best of mankind’s children.

Saul, for all his faults, is as loyal as they come, Tyrol is a man of integrity, he lives to serve the old bucket, his crew, his family and friends, Sam is as brave and steadfast as they come, even Tory who defected is only as confused as she is because she loved with all her heart, and found that love thwarted by circumstances.

And Laura, willful, independent, brave, brutal and uncompromising, magnificent Laura, who gave up her soul to safeguard the fleet, who would purchase humanities survival with her life’s blood, who gave him her heart, that most precious commodity which she had so long guarded from him for fear of compromising her duty to their people.

Her people.

That she should turn out to be the enemy, a frakking skinjob, is the biggest blow of all, she who had for so long fought so hard against them.

He cannot believe the irony of it; that he may well have to kill her to protect their people, her people, the people of the fleet they so assiduously guarded; against her own kind as it turns out, against herself, all these years. Yet he knows he may have to, it’s what she taught him after all, the people come first everything else is secondary.

But there’s another lesson he’s spent a lifetime learning.

There is also love.

It’s a lesson he’s learned well, and he doesn’t know how to disregard it when she is the one who finished teaching it to him. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to raise his hand against the woman he worships above all else, when she embodies everything he’s learned of love.

It is unfathomable to him that this is what it comes down to. Can he do it? Raise his hand against her? Take her life? He hasn’t had to with Saul and the others, they have not betrayed them yet, but he senses Laura, as the last of the Final Five, is in a whole other league than the rest of the Cylons, an unknown quantity,

Can he take her life?

In the end, he knows that in her name, he can and he will. He will kill her if he must, if only to save her from becoming that which she abhors, a mindless automaton, slave to her own programming, or a tyrant, drunk on the power the reunion of the twelve models could conceivably give her. Either way, a fate worse than death. He knows she would not want him to stand idly by and watch her become the thing that will bring their people to their end, even if their people were no longer strictly her people.

Squaring his shoulders, Bill motions for his men to follow him. They silently ascend the hill, moving from shadow to shadow, slowly closing in on the gathering of people near the top. He does not see Laura. All he sees is half a dozen people with guns, standing in a loose circle around Baltar, Caprica, Sharon and Hera. All of them, captors and captives, are staring down at something, their attention focused on whatever is at their feet, rather than at their surroundings. Creeping closer Bill casts about for Laura, desperate to get a glimpse of her, unwilling to stage a raid when he doesn’t know where she is, when she could be caught in the crossfire, die from a stray bullet before he’s had a chance to speak to her, ascertain the truth about her, and decide his course of action. If she is to die because of what she is, of what she’s become, it is only fair he should be her executioner and look her in the eye when she does.

The group at the top remains oblivious of their approach and it’s only when one of them shifts his stance that Bill sees what they are all looking at so intently and an involuntary gasp escapes him.

They are all looking down at Laura; she’s on the ground, her body curled in on itself, trembling.

Rage erupts as he sees her lying there, so frail and defenseless, armed men standing over her. He's not sure but he thinks she's lying in a pool of her own blood; it stains her skin a lurid red where her cheek rests on the floor, drips steadily from her injured hand.

She’s in the throes of some grand mal seizure, it looks like; her limbs flail and thrash about, her eyes are tightly shut but he can see them moving rapidly back and forth behind her closed eyelids, she’s moaning in distress, mumbling something but he can’t make out what she’s saying, however much he finds himself straining towards her. Cylon or not, she calls to him, calls to him on some deep, primal level, he is her protector, she is his. She doesn’t deserve to be lying there, surrounded by guns and violence, suffering through some unimaginable torment when her poor body has already gone through so much. Thoughts of her too thin form assail him; frail and yet strong with the power of the spirit within, undulating on top of him as she rode him to oblivion earlier today. He has to forcibly quell the image as he tears his eyes away from her body writhing now on the cold ground of a devastated Earth.

Bill signals his men to circle around and surround the kidnappers and their captives. They move stealthily through the dark, Sam taking a contingent left while Tyrol leads his men off to the right. When Bill signals the attack, his people smoothly move in and after a brief struggle a couple of short bursts of gunfire and a well placed shot right between the eyes of the guy who looked to have been in charge of this fiasco, the battle is over as soon as it’s begun.

With purposeful strides designed to mask his hesitation, Bill stalks over to where Laura is still curled up on the ground, her eyes are open and whatever it was that had her in its thrall, she seems to be coming out of it. He looks on as she reaches out and gently closes the eyes of the man that abducted her and then she rolls onto her back, slowly lifts her gaze until their eyes meet. He points his gun down at her, releases the safety; the sound is loud in the silence.

He tries to picture it in his head; the Admiral of the fleet stands over the President of the Colonies, pointing a gun at her even as the sight of her almost breaks him. He passes judgment, squeezes the trigger and watches as the light that is Laura Roslin flickers out of existence and the Universe dims.

He can’t do it.

He has to do it.

"Laura." His voice is harsh with regret and unshed tears.

She mutely looks up at him from her prone position and all he wants to do is kneel next to her, take her in his arms and shelter her fragile body from the stone cold floor, hold onto her and never let her go again. He can’t, not while he still doesn’t know where her allegiances lie.

"Are you still you?" The question is laced with all the anguish of his desperate heart. Yes. Just tell me yes, he thinks, lie to me, I’ll believe you. His plea carries through in his voice, he knows by the flicker in her eyes that she’s heard him.

"Yes and no.” Her face is scrunched up, he can tell she’s in pain, so weary, but her spirit won’t bend, he sees it in her bewitching green eyes, hears it in her voice. Never one to obey his wishes just like that, she isn’t about to start now.

“What does that mean?” Please Laura, just please don’t say it, don’t make it real.

“I’m the last, Bill, the last of the Final Five.”

“I know,” he says, his voice catches in his throat; he can barely get the words out. His shoulders slump in defeat. “You’re a skinjob.” It comes out even harsher than intended; he doesn’t want to be doing this.

“Don’t...”

“I need you to tell me I can still trust you, tell me you’re the same person I’ve known for four years, tell me…”

“I can’t. I’m not the same,” she says with her trademark bluntness. At the sound of her voice, the very timbre, tone and inflections identical to what he remembers from their many arguments, something uncoils inside of him. Her face, so earnest, her convictions, so passionate, she is so very dear to him. “But I can tell you that what matters to me is still the same,” she continues, and then takes his breath away.”You, always you.”

“Oh, Laura.”

Her smile is identical too, to the one that too rarely graced his love’s face, the one that would light up whatever corner of the universe they would find themselves in. “You, and Lee and Kara and everyone else, our people. It’s just that “our people” needs to be redefined. That’s something you’ll have to convince Lee of, he’ll need to know how to proceed when he steps up. He’s going to be alright, isn’t he? You need to tell him what happened here, how to move forward. Caprica and Sharon will help you, Galen and Sam and Saul. It’s almost done; I just need to figure out the last of it, where to go from here. Then you can kill me, if you must, though I’m pretty sure the Cancer and the Chamalla are doing a good job of that on their own. Will you help me get this last thing done, please?”

It’s the please that undoes him, she so rarely asks for help. The woman, the Cylon, the skinjob before him is the same woman he gave in to those many years ago, the woman whose lead he’s been following ever since. There’s no doubt, there never was, not really. She’s Laura Roslin, as ever putting the fleet before herself, putting the survival of their people, their peoples, first and foremost. For a moment as long as infinity, as short as a heartbeat, he stands and stares and continues to point his gun at her and then, as if in slow motion, he falls to his knees beside her and gathers her to himself so tightly he fears he will hurt her.

“What do you need me to do?”

“You know? I’m not quite sure,” she says. She looks a little sheepish with the admission and the sight of Laura Roslin looking sheepish is a thing to behold. He surprises himself by grinning down at her and when she starts giggling he can’t help but laugh out loud and together they laugh at the absurdity of it all and their shared laughter is a gift they give each other, freely and without regret.

The spell is broken when noises erupt from their left. D'Anna and Tory, locked in a strange battle of wills with their Centurion guards. D'Anna ducks and feints, throws herself bodily against her guards. The Centurions do not react, other than preventing her from escaping, they do make halting progress towards the top of the hill though, every time D'Anna throws herself forward, the force of the impact against her metal prison forces the Centurions to regroup, take a step backwards, forces the group upwards just a bit. Tory looks catatonic, moving with the group, her body propelled this way and that as D’Anna and the Centurions continue their strange dance.

At the sight of President and Admiral, wrapped in an embrace, shaking with laughter, D’Anna looks apoplectic with rage. Bill starts to rise but Laura’s weak grip on his jacket, her choked gasp, distract him and before he knows it, gunshots ring out and Laura is pushing him to the ground and he hears her grunt in pain, feels the impact as her body is flung against his, feels her blood spatter his face, turns and throws himself on top of her, feeling the sting as a bullet grazes his arm and his gun goes flying. His mind goes blank with sheer terror, frantically, he feels for her pulse, calls her name while at the same time he reaches for his gun which has skidded to a stop a few feet to his left. He sees the Centurions flip out their guns, they still have their backs towards him and all Bill can do is lean over Laura protectively as he sees D’Anna re-aiming her gun at them. Before she can squeeze the trigger again, before Bill or any of his people can do anything, Tory throws herself at D’Anna and her lithe body convulses with the impact as a bullet slices through her chest.

He’s still trying to process what happened when he feels Laura move beneath him she’s trying to push him off of her, all the while muttering to herself. “Don’t.” he hears her say, and “Stand down.” And as he follows her intent gaze he is utterly bewildered to see the Centurions pointing their guns not at Laura and himself or any of their people but instead at D’Anna. After a moment, they flip back their weapons and two of them grip D’Anna tightly between them. Another is holding her weapon, while a fourth picks up Tory’s lifeless body, cradling her almost reverently in the metal cage of its arms.

“What just happened?” Bill asks, bewildered.

“D’Anna, guess she doesn’t like being powerless, the identity of the Final Cylon was all she had.”

“That much I got, what about the Centurions, what about..”

“Later, Bill, I’ll explain later, now help me to my feet.”

“No, Laura, stay down, you’re bleeding.” She looks down at herself, sighs as her eyes find the patch of blood staining her jacket and the blouse underneath and leans back into his arms. He sees her glancing over at the Centurions and the one with Tory’s body in his arms walks up to them and gently puts the young woman’s broken body down beside Laura. She pushes out of Bills grasp; he helps her up and watches as she leans over and kisses Tory’s cheek and then gently, so gently, closes her eyes. Sam and Galen kneel down beside the two and bow their heads as if in prayer as Laura falls back against Bill’s chest, her face scrunched up, tears freely flowing down dirty cheeks.

“Easy now, just lie down, let me see where you’re hurt,” he says as he gently pushes her to the ground and starts to pull up her blouse, there’s a nasty furrow along her ribcage but the bleeding has already slowed down. The sight makes him sigh in distress any way, how much more is she supposed to suffer?

“Don’t worry,” she says with a wry smile, as if reading his thoughts. “It won’t kill me, hurts though.”

He chuckles, taps his chest. “You’re telling me?”

She smiles for him but then her expression goes serious again. “But I’m dying just the same, Bill; I can feel it, the Chamalla…”

“No! Cottle can help you.”

“It’s too late.”

“Never, don’t say that.”

“But it is, and it’s okay,” she says with a faint smile. He hates her, in that moment; he hates her just a little, for giving up.”The Dying Leader, remember? For my death to have some meaning, that’s all I ever hoped for, since the worlds ended. That we found each other, had a chance to love each other, is more than I could ever have dreamed.”

“I don’t accept that. I don’t accept that your death is the price we have to pay to pay, I don’t accept that this is where we end.”

“Bill, this was going to happen, this was always going to happen. It’s what you do next, that changes everything.” She reaches up and with infinite tenderness strokes his cheek. There’s such certainty in her eyes, in her voice, he wants nothing more than to shatter that certainty, make her fight to stay with him.

There is also love.

He shushes her with his fingers on her lips and then he replaces his fingers with his mouth and he kisses her.

He’s sure she meant something grander, something much more heroic, meant that his next move should be to push forward and lead the people without her, as she would have done were he the one dying an untimely death. He can’t, he was never strong like that, he can’t do any of this alone, he needs her, she was always the strong one,

So instead, he does what his heart tells him to do, he kisses her and breathes for her, breathes life into her, and as he does, they join together, these two leaders, the first and foremost members of their warring tribes, mortal enemies though they had not known it. Friends and lovers and so much more; parents of the future. He breathes for her and on his breath is born faith, faith that the future can escape the past, that the cycle of destruction can be broken, if they but held fast to each other.

He pulls back only when he becomes lightheaded, rests his mouth near her ear and whispers to her, his voice soft as the wing beats of a dove, whispers to her of his love, of his undying devotion, tells her how proud he is of her, how they are going to build that cabin and do nothing but watch their people have babies.

She smiles that singular smile of hers as she listens, weakly burrows deeper into his arms. She is so frail, her body all but used up. He whispers her name, reverently. He has never believed in the Gods, in God. To him, watching that luminous smile spread across her beautiful face is the closest to heaven he’ll ever get and it’s enough

“Laura?’

She reaches up and gently swipes her thumb across his lower lip. He sees the breath and the scope of his own love for her reflected back at him, sees her completely unguarded for the first time and thinks that perhaps he knows now why she’s kept herself so closely buttoned up this whole time. The light of her love is blinding, it blazes from her eyes, stronger even than it did the first time she told him she loved him - and he’d been almost undone by it then. Unfettered, it is powerful enough to break across the barriers between them, between their peoples, break down hate and preconceptions. He shouldn’t be as bowled over by the power of it, she’s Laura Roslin after all; a force of nature even when now it seems nature had had no hand in creating her.

He reaches down and touches her face, leans down towards her and kisses her and she reciprocates with all the strength of her impossibly valiant heart. They kiss and for as long as their kiss lasts, neither one of them can tell where one ends and the other begins. Lovers they are, brought together by impossible longing, now joined as one.

“You did it. It is done,“ she breathes as their lips part and behind him Bill hears Tyrol and Anders gasp even as Laura clings to him tightly and whispers coordinates like secrets into his skin.

He holds her and weeps for the resurgence of hope.

.