Picking Up Where We Left Off
Title: Picking Up Where We Left Off
Rating: T
Word count: 1500
Summary: Bill helps Laura resume her presidential duties after her improbable cure.
Her life as she knew it had ended over six months ago. Now this short but eventful life that had been thrust upon her unexpectedly, improbably, since then, was about to end as well.
She groggily contemplated the bulkheads of the Galactica whizzing by above her. Galactica. Its decommissioning had enabled this second life in the first place. Hopefully it would continue to protect the precious remaining lives in existence.
As she’d once observed to Bill, in politics, one can die over and over again. But she was no longer standing. Could no longer perform her duties as President and protector of the civilian fleet. Strapped to a gurney, having just entered the Life Station surrounded by her aides, she lamented that her time had apparently come, that she and Bill would no longer be partners in leading the Fleet. Just as they had attained a level of understanding and trust that she would have never thought she would reach with the craggy-faced Commander (no-- Admiral now, she remembered), she was leaving him.
Doc Cottle hovered over her. "Let's try to get her comfortable, people," he instructed the nurse and medic. "Get her out of that suit and set her up on an IV of fluids." He leaned in closer. "Madam President, can you hear me?"
Laura comprehended but found herself unable to respond. She settled for nodding weakly as her eyes slipped shut. As people moved all around her, she dreamed of her family, her home world. She dreamed of Kobol and the tomb’s starry sky, and she wondered what it all meant. She dreamed of Earth, and was comforted by the thought that her death would somehow lead her people there. That Bill would lead the people there. She hoped she wasn’t leaving too soon.
48 hours later
Adama peered around the curtain, finding Laura sitting upright, looking alert but exhausted and wan. He stepped inside and closed the curtain behind him. "Madam President..." he said, trailing off, clasping his hands nervously over his stomach. "You're looking...well."
"Am I?" she replied doubtfully, her voice hoarse with disuse. "Who would have thought?" She glanced down at her body and squirmed uncomfortably in the hospital bed. "Billy tells me you have an insurgent in the brig. I'd like to speak to him. But I don't think I'm appropriately attired.”
He cleared his throat. “The situation is under control.”
“I think my clothes are in that bag over there. Do you mind checking?”
Sighing, Bill crossed the room to the chair by the privacy curtain and looked inside Laura’s black tote bag. He didn’t find much more than her agenda book and some pens and paper, but her clothes--a black suit and silky blue blouse, a pair of sheer hose, and basic white undergarments--were neatly folded beneath the bag.
“Yeah, they’re here,” he said. His voice echoed in the now-quiet room, out of place in the silence that had followed the frenetic moments of Dr. Baltar’s intervention.
Laura, silent as a stone in her bed, didn’t respond.
“Madam President?”
She blinked and turned her head to face him. “I’m sorry, I was just thinking about the things I need to do.”
He picked up the bundle of clothing and brought it to her side. “I think you need to continue to rest, Laura.”
“I’ll rest when I’m dead, Bill,” she said, cracking a smile at the irony. Moving slowly, she brought her legs around the side of the bed so they were hanging off the edge. She tentatively swung them, testing her muscle control and shivering at the contact of cool air on the bare skin.
She turned her gaze from her toes up to Adama and found him looking down at her with an unreadable expression.
“I’ll let you get dressed, Madam President,” he said, moving back into a formal stance as he prepared to take his leave.
Laura looked up at Adama. “Do you think...could you please help me?"
His eyes widened, saucerlike. “Shouldn’t I get the nurse for that? Or perhaps Billy?”
She shook her head. “She just worked for two days straight. I heard her say so when she went on her break a few hours ago. I really don’t want to bother her. And as far as I know, Billy is on Colonial One, keeping an eye on things.”
“If you can’t dress yourself, surely you aren’t recovered enough to go interrogate the prisoner in the brig,” he protested.
Indignant, Laura pushed herself off the bed, wobbling for a brief, horrifying moment before Bill caught her. Her hands against his chest, his steady around her waist, they stood, eyes meeting as they both remembered the last time they’d been in this position.
The warmth of him against her and his woodsy masculine scent, both of which she thought she’d never experience again, overwhelmed her senses and made her head swim even more. She leaned forward slightly, letting her body press against his.
“Laura,” he whispered, before cupping her chin in one hand and brushing his lips against hers. But having been in this position once in reality and several more times in her dreams, she was expecting it. And this time, she kissed him back.
“Are you going to help me?” she asked him again once their lips parted.
Wordlessly, he nodded, and reached behind her to untie the fastener at the back of her hospital gown. Once he had gotten it free, she fumbled through the pile of clothes and picked out a pair of white panties, stepping into them carefully as Bill stood ready to catch her, should she topple over on her weak legs.
Panties in place, she turned her back to him and slipped the gown off her shoulders, letting it fall onto the tangled sheets of the bed. She managed to get her bra in position supporting her breasts, marveling at the lack of painful sensation in the left one, but struggled to reach her arms around to fasten the clasp.
“Bill, please,” she said without looking at him. “Can you fasten it?”
It took him several attempts to line up the hooks correctly and get them to catch, but then, he was probably even more out of practice than she was. After he succeeded, she could feel the tender trail of his fingers along her spine, sweeping along the slow curve of her lower back, before he stepped back to a more respectable distance.
Her blouse, thankfully, was not only still intact, but unbuttoned. Her left arm slid in easily, but the right side of the shirt dangled behind her body. She didn’t need to ask him this time; he identified the problem, brought the shirt up and helped guide her other arm into the sleeve. She pulled it closed and began buttoning, starting at the bottom and working her way up.
“Thanks,” she said. In his effort not to look at her breasts as they gradually disappeared beneath blue silk, he’d ended up ogling her still-bare legs instead. He cleared his throat when she plucked her skirt out of the dwindling pile and began stepping into it.
“Think I’ll forego the stockings for now,” she said, smiling. “I don’t think our detainee will mind. Though, I need to ask Cottle if he knows where they put my shoes.”
Our detainee. Gods, the concept felt good to her, even if the situation was an alarming one. She’d felt so guilty about leaving him alone, but now...now they were back where they’d been, working together, sometimes challenging one another, but always toward the same ultimate goal.
Balance threatened to abandon her and her vision briefly went blurry, reminding her that she had given up on trying to get into the hose not because of the brig’s casual dress code, but because she knew doubted her ability to properly to get them on. And while Bill had been a good sport about helping her dress, certain things were simply best left undone by others.
His arms once more went to her sides, and this time they lifted her up slightly so that she was sitting at the edge of the bed. She hummed gratefully and eased down to lay on her side.
“I think I can find a wheelchair to take you down to the brig,” he said, sounding resigned. “I still think you should remain here...”
She shook her head weakly and smiled. “No. I need to do this, the sooner the better.” She fixed her gaze, beseeching him, and found silent acceptance accompanied by a curt nod.
“Thank you, Bill.”
He hesitated as he turned to leave.
"Laura, I'm glad you made it."
She reached for his hand, squeezing it with a burst of returning strength. She didn’t know what the implications of her survival would be, but she couldn’t help feeling--selfishly--that she was grateful to have the opportunity to find out.
"You know...I am, too."