Fic: Don't Count Stars (7/??)
Title: Don't Count Stars(7/??)
Rating:K
Characters/Pairings: Adama/Roslin
Summary: Adama and Roslin and have a daughter. 'Nuff said really. Basically just imagine season three or two but with the whole story arc slowed down. AU obviously.
Comments are wonderful. Comments are magical. Comments are what keeps me writing to be blunt.
Previous Chapters: One, Two , Three , Four, Fifth and Six
Oura lay awake in her bed. A gentle draught came from the open window, carrying with it distant sounds of cars driving on the roads, trees swaying in the breeze and nighttime insects chirping their everlasting song.
To Oura’s ears it was all too loud and altogether too enticing to be good. Her bed had been made with expensive sheets. They were cool on hot nights and warm on chilly ones. And still Oura could hardly control her tears when she thought about her old comfortable bed nestled in the best corner of the Admirals’ cabin.
Her mother fighting a lost battle with the jumbled blankets, people sometimes coming in to talk with her parents after bedtime- she even missed having to get up according to military schedule.
Oura looked out the window again. The cold, starry sky was her last source of comfort. It was the only thing that hadn’t been turned completely on its head these past few days. She no longer lived with humans, the Cylons were acting kind, and being the only student, she was not behind in her schoolwork.
She wondered if they’d noticed she was gone yet on the Galactica. She hoped they hadn’t. Her parents were going to be so angry when she got back.
If you get back, she reminded herself sadly. Then a horrible voice whispered to her. What if you don’t Oura? What if the Cylons keep you forever and ever?
She hadn’t realized she’d been choking out muffled sobs when Caprica gently opened the door and crossed the room. “What’s wrong Ourania?” she asked, voice laced with concern, as she sat down on the edge of her bed.
Oura turned her head away from the blonde woman, trying to wipe her tears on the pillow.
“Nothing. Go away!” Oura hated that her voice wobbled.
Caprica however, only sighed and started to hum an old lullaby Oura remembered vaguely from the Gemenon officers.
“You’ll feel better tomorrow darling” was the last thing Oura heard before sleep took her.
***
Laura Roslin couldn’t move. The world, it seemed to her, had taken to moving in drunken slow motion. She was still in sick bay - that much she could force herself to acknowledge - but the rest of her mind was furiously fighting to acclimate itself to one nightmarish concept: Oura was gone.
Bill had long relinquished his hold on her. She could see him now, if she turned her head a little, nothing but another blue uniform among the many, all churning and all shouting. Laura slowly lifted her hands to rub her temples; she had a migraine some distant part of her being acknowledged. She couldn’t bring herself to care all that deeply.
All Laura could see was her daughter’s face. Oura’s flighty episodes and mischievous acts, given definite form by the little girl who would emerge from them, usually unscathed, seemed so welcome now. The very thought of Oura’s strangely serene eyes and her sweet features (a perfect blend between Bill and herself) gave Laura a feeling of having lost solid ground forever.
She had heard them whispering; her husband, Lee, Kara and that damned Cottle. They thought she couldn’t hear them but she did. Petty Officer Samuels statement said that he had seen Boomer... had seen that Cylon whore Boomer murder Oura. He’d written the Eight had choked her and he couldn’t reach them in time. Laura had heard Lee’s broken answer, Kara’s pitiful gasp but most deafening of all Bill’s stoic silence.
William Adama, ever the dutiful soldier, had approached her bed to tell her that their daughter was dead. Laura had wished he could have reconsidered that part. She knew in her gut that she would hate whoever uttered the information in more than a whisper, transforming it from horrible possibility into unbearable reality; and she needed Bill.
Her warning signs however went unheeded and she saw that he was struggling. The soldier was slipping and Bill’s voice was cracking as he delivered the most awful message she would ever hear. As the last of his disjointed mumblings faded away he rested his head on Laura’s stationary shoulder, she could feel the beginnings of deep sobs starting to wrack his sturdy frame. She knew now was when she should stroke his hair and comfort him.
Her hands did not move. She could sense their dull immobility almost as clearly as she felt the aching pull to run them through his grey streaked hair, her actions affirming that in some, now so insignificant way, they would be okay.
Instead she blinked at her husband’s gut wrenching break down and felt…and felt nothing. After the emotional agony of mere moments past, this relatively calm state unnerved, if not surprised, Laura. Her memories easily supplied the mocking reasons for her current mind frame; her apartment, her sisters- oh gods her little sisters- and then the police… the police…their words spilling out of Bill’s mouth… and then they were all gone.
Her old family, dead so long ago and now gone once more; the gods were truly cruel beings. She also knew what should come next; she should weep, nightmarish emotions would too overcome her fragile calm and her beloved Bill would comfort her. It was an admirable cycle really, but Laura suddenly knew that she would participate in that morbid farce no longer.
Bill felt Laura stiffen underneath him and lifted his face from a suit clad shoulder to appraise her near expressionless face. She hadn’t cried yet. Her make-up was still impeccable. But there was a twist to her mouth, a sort of hardness that reminded him uncomfortably of when they had first met, when he was the cantankerous Commander of a doomed Battlestar and she no more than a rookie President who had dared to question him - a time in short, when they had both hated each other’s guts.
“Laura?” he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up when she did not reply, but reached over to where her glasses had been deposited on a hospital tray.
“Laura come on - talk to me.” A sort of concoction of fear and anger bubbled up inside his chest as he watched her carefully place the familiar spectacles on her nose and proceed to ignore him while calmly collecting her remaining loose items.
“Laura?” he pleaded again after almost all of her stationary and paperwork were safely stowed in her bag.
“Admiral Adama, I’ll need my personal effects transferred to Colonial One by the end of this week. Any fleet business you wish to address will be discussed during meetings of the chorum and through my vice- president.” Her tone was cool, detached. It made the world glow red momentarily as Adama let himself be overcome by an anger more intense than he’d ever felt.
“No Laura- you are not leaving like this -” Even as Bill spoke the words her legs swung over the edge of the bed, her feet slipping into her heels at an impossible speed.
His wife was already halfway out of sickbay by the time he had recovered from what seemed like an eternity of pure shellshock.
“Laura our daughter is dead!” even before as the words reverberated around the now silent sick bay Bill regretted them.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Cottle taking determinately hurried puffs from his cigar while next to him Ishay cried silently. Lee had emerged from the shadows to place a comforting hand on his shoulder while Kara was doing a miserable job at attempting to shrink away from the whole scene.
Though William Adama noticed these details, it was Laura Roslin’s actions that captivated his true attention. She was removing her glasses once more, treating them like spun glass, her eyes momentarily abrim with unshed tears.
“I know our daughter is dead Bill, I know.” With that she turned and left sickbay.
***
Oura ate her breakfast trying not to show Caprica how much she enjoyed it. She had only ever heard of toast with jam and peanut butter from Galactica crew’s complaints as they ate the algae cereal.
She didn’t want to ask for another slice so she contented herself with licking the remaining peanut butter off her fingers. She had barely touched her mouth to her thumb however when Caprica’s hand shot out.
“Oura, that is disgusting. You are neither a dog- nor any manner of barbaric beast. We are civilized people and we will eat as such. If Leoben, or god forbid Cavil, sees you behaving like this, they will reconsider the special gift we have for you.”
Oura abruptly stopped being hungry at the mention of “the special gift” the Cylons had for her.
“What sort of gift?” she queried rubbing her arm, after Caprica had released her.
Caprica stopped eating and smiled dotingly at Oura
“You’ll find out soon darling, we’re visiting them today.”