DISCLAIMER: Don't own 'em. Not my fandom, so I'm not even fully
sure who DOES own them. I'm just borrowing them.
TITLE: "The Powers That Be"
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar
EMAIL: rowan_d1@yahoo.com
RATING: 18 +
SPOILERS: Through "Resurrection Ship Pt 2"
ARCHIVE: Just ask me. This really isn't my fandom.:D
SUMMARY: "He was supposed to see her safely home."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic contains spoilers only through
"Resurrection Ship Pt 2". I am entirely spoiler-free for all
succeeding episodes, so the progression from there in this fic is
entirely my random speculation and thereby not in any way
actually spoilery.:)
"The Powers That Be"
by
Rowan Darkstar (rowan_d1@yahoo.com)
And they found a cure.
*****
They found a cure....
*****
And they found a cure.
*****
And they found...
*****
She squints up at the light. It is too bright and infinite and
so warm she wants to bask and drown.
*****
He has this smile that makes her remember what it was like to lie
in the sunlight. Water on her skin from more than a shower.
Lying in the sand, letting the waves rush over her again and
again and laughing when she rolled with the water. Afterward the
sand left her skin smooth as silk.
*****
She's screaming and thrashing on the bed and the infirmary sheets
aren't sand and they aren't soft and she wants to crawl free of
her burning skin.
*****
His skin is hot on hers and she's pulling at his clothes, but
there's a tenderness in the haste that makes her thighs ache.
She's back on Colonial One and there's silk against her shoulders
and she can't imagine this feels like home. She always loved
open spaces and horseback riding on the weekends and she lives in
a transport ship.
She's falling in love with a man who stands for everything she
thought she didn't believe.
She's falling in love when she's not supposed to feel.
*****
He was supposed to see her safely home.
She's studied a fair amount of psychology in all those education
degrees and she knows there's something about survivors and
reaffirmation of life; she's probably still as much a victim of
her own chemicals now as she was when they were eating her away
from the inside out. But she doesn't care as his lips meet with
hers and she falls back onto the cushions that pass for luxury in
this place she still can't quite believe is what humans call
home. She's been too busy to feel.
His smile was never in the plan.
Nor the way he holds her gaze until she can't keep from feeling.
*****
"We shouldn't be doing this. Bill..." Her voice is hoarse and
childlike, hair caught at the corner of her mouth. "We can't..."
He stops for a moment, calloused and warm hand cradling her cheek
and she wants to cry and she wants to melt into his hand. He
looks into her and hears every word she says and most she never
will. No one has listened to her like this is too long to
remember. The people of the fleet are only shown Madame
President. Never the woman.
This man has never kept the two apart.
"Are you too tired?" he asks, something like pain flashing across
his eyes, and she's seen far too much of that. Her chest hurts
to know she is the cause of this one sting more.
"No, no, it's not..." she rushes to correct, spills over her
words, "it's just...who we are. We have a responsibility..."
And the set of his gaze shifts so subtlely she wonders if most
would even have seen. She's learned every nuance of this man's
tells in hour after hour after days without end of life and death
decisions. She feels her guts tighten, knowing his next words
will stretch in scope far beyond this bed.
"This," he says, reaching up, pushing her hair from her forehead-
-his tenderness is infinite and she doesn't want to let herself
believe he loves her--"this, this....is what makes us
worthy of surviving." His voice is deep with a passion and
conviction verging on desperation. The tenor sounds like he's
had too many cigarettes and lived on coffee, but it's soothing
her nerves like chocolate. He kisses her eyebrow, her closed
lid. It's imperative his gestures imply compassion, adoration,
hope--not lust. "This," he whispers, and his voice dances
in gooseflesh down her spine. "This is what it is to be human."
She finds she very much wants to be human.
*****
"Oh, Gods....please..."
Keep the fleet alive, assume command, make the call,
assassinate on demand, fear the Cylon, plan the battle, choose
your army, save the race, count the survivors, give them hope,
stay on your feet, save the fleet, save the fleet, save the fleet
never feel get rest no time to think drink eat don't taste count
heads count protein drugs pills doses floor moving keep standing
save the fleet never feel don't cry no one to cry to hum of the
engine always moving keep moving or die keep them alive don't
leave them behind Laura no one calls me Laura no one need this
need this skin all over mine skin need want desire all melting
away and focusing down to this moment--
"Bill--" she hardly knows the breathless voice that tears from
her throat as her nails dig into olive skin, and this man is
moving above her, all power and muscle with dog tags that drag
cold and wild between her breasts and the scar down his chest
reminds her how life falls through her hands when she forgets to
feel for herself.
"Please..." she whispers again.
He lowers his face close to hers and his breathing is deep and
strong and she feels cocooned from the world in this place that
is all she has for her own. She has never minded being the
woman of the two, she has never thought this weakened what she
knows she is capable of. This man never has either.
"Please..." she pulls his shoulder down and buries her
face in his warmth, squeezes her eyes closed and forgets all
pretense of strength, "Gods, I need this...please..."
He doesn't ask. She knows he understands. He knows how to lead
her where she needs to go. Ironic, when she is to be the one to
lead the human race to salvation. Every muscle she has is
shaking with need. Need to feel. Need to ignite and explode
with life. She catches hold of her own hair and holds it against
his shoulder as she clings, linking skin and limbs and minds.
When she comes it is in flashes of sunlight and lavender fields
and dresses without sleeves and a warm body against her back in
the first hints of dawn.
*****
She is still shaking when they have fallen soft against one
another. As his senses come down, pulling him back into the
moment, the concern crosses his brow once again, and he pushes
the hair from her face, her skin damp with their mix of
perspiration, and she can hear Doc Cottle's words ringing through
his thoughts as though they were on a radio. "You'll still be
regaining your strength for a while. Rest all you can..."
"Are you okay? You all right?" he says before she can speak and
dispel the fear.
"I'm fine," she assures. As her words take form in the air and
her voice sounds a bit more like her own and she meets the most
earnest eyes she has ever held, she repeats, "I'm...fine.
I'm...fine." And her eyes are flooding with tears now as
the reality bleeds in and her voice is soft and sweetly broken.
He hears every note of the truth.
She shatters into quiet sobs and he lowers on top of her,
crushing her and drowning her and holding her to the ground, a
tether to this life she loves so much more than she let herself
believe. "I didn't want to die," she whispers in sobs into his
shoulder, and he cradles her closer.
"I knew that. Even when you didn't, Laura. It's okay. You're
okay. We're okay" he whispers.
And she knows something more of this man she, too, will not share
in the morning.
He covers her damp skin. He cradles her close.
*****
Sunlight from a sun-simulator lamp spilling in from the main
compartment, stealing through the curtains of her private
quarters. A shuffle of movement beyond she knows will be Billy.
Work to be done.
A fleet to save.
A warmth against her back.
A shift in breath.
The gentlest kiss against the side of her neck she has ever felt
in her life and she smiles with a bittersweet ache that burns her
guts.
A silent departure.
Ghosts on her skin.
Darkness out the windows.
A fleet to save.
*****
rowan_d1@yahoo.com