Fic: Tauron Trauma
Title: Tauron Trauma
Word count: 3700
Rating: T
A/N: Follows Tauron Cherry, Tauron Tradition, and Tauron Tramp Stamp.
Laura and the babies (yes, that's right. Babies!) make an emergency trip to Tauron.
Laura had nearly finished feeding the babies their breakfast - a bottle of breastmilk for Phin, the pickier of the two, and some pureed prunes for Sephie - when a brusque rap at the door startled her from her sleep-deprived haze.
“What the fr--?”
She stood, holding Phin to her hip and setting down the jar of prunes with a sigh of resignation. Checking to ensure that Sephie was securely strapped in her high chair, she instructed her daughter, “Stay put,” and went to see who was at the door.
“Mrs. Adama?” asked the dark-haired, uniformed man from under mirrored sunglasses.
“Roslin-Adama. What can I do for you?” she asked, shifting a squirming Phin to her other hip and looking over her shoulder to check on Sephie.
“You’re married to Captain William Adama?”
She nodded slowly.
“May I come in?”
A deep sense of dread settled in her bones, causing her to hold her sweet Phin even closer. “Do you mind telling me who you are and why you’re here, first?”
The man had the decency to look embarrassed as he removed his sunglasses and tucked them into the breast pocket of his uniform. “Lieutenant Colonel Rick Matthews, ma’am. I’m a Fleet-family liaison based here in Caprica City.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry to have to inform you--”
Laura gasped, her knees weakened; she leaned heavily into the door frame, afraid she might pass out. “Oh, gods.”
“Your husband is in guarded condition at a military hospital on Tauron,” he said hurriedly, aware that his introduction had given her the wrong impression. “I’ll be happy to explain the details--”
Dumbly, Laura nodded and stepped aside to let him inside. “Have a seat in the living room,” she said, gesturing to the toy-strewn area off the foyer. “I’ll be right with you.”
Her hands were shaking as she lifted Sephie from her chair and brought both babies into the living room, placing them on a rubber play mat and hoping they would entertain themselves. She sank into the couch and looked at the man expectantly, ready for an explanation even as she feared it.
“Your husband was on a classified peacekeeping mission near the Armistice Line,” he began. “There was an engagement, and Captain Adama’s Viper was destroyed. He ejected and was recovered by a SAR team, but he’s suffered some head trauma and other injuries that will require rehabilitation.”
Laura frowned. “Classified peacekeeping” sounded like an oxymoron, questionable at best. She knew Bill’s unit had been sent out near Tauron on his last few missions, but this was the first she’d heard anything about the Armistice Line.
“So where is he now?” She hated the thought of him injured and so far from home. He’d been due for a lengthy shore leave in just over a week’s time, only his second leave since the twins were born.
“In a military hospital on Tauron. He’s expected to make a full recovery, though it will take some time. And he’s not yet stable enough to be moved either to the main Fleet rehab center on Picon, or back here on Caprica.”
Laura thought frantically. Her work on her dissertation could continue anywhere, and the babies were big enough to travel, though, like so many other things, it would be difficult doing it by herself. “How long is he expected to remain on Tauron?”
“I really couldn’t say, ma’am.” The lieutenant colonel reached into his pocket and pulled out a card embossed with the Colonial seal. “This is my contact information, and I’ve written the name and number of the hospital on the back.”
Laura accepted the card and immediately flipped it over. “Hypatia Military Medical & Rehabilitation Center,” it read.
“Can you help me arrange a transport?” she asked.
* * *
Laura anxiously pushed the double stroller down the halls of the military hospital, restraining herself from running as she maneuvered the unwieldy carriage around people in wheelchairs or with walkers. Each double room, each passing curtain brought her closer to Bill.
Finally, she found his room number at the end of the long corridor. The room was sunny and bright, having extra windows due to being at the end of the building, but the floor-to-ceiling curtain was nevertheless drawn tightly around what appeared to be the only occupied bed.
Phin started crying as soon as the stroller stopped moving, as he tended to do. Sephie, who’d fallen asleep the moment Laura placed her in her seat, woke at the sound of her brother’s crying and added her own higher-pitched squealing to the cacophony.
“Hello?” Laura called, her effort to use a soft and unobtrusive tone futile in the face of her screaming children. She set the brake and lifted Phin out so she could bounce him on her hip; as soon as he stopped crying, so did Sephie.
“Let’s go see Daddy,” she whispered to their son.
“Laura?” croaked an underused, raspy voice.
She drew back the curtain carefully, not sure what to expect. The sight that greeted her made her stomach drop at the thought of how close she must have come to losing him.
“Oh, Bill,” she said. Gauze bandages were wrapped around his head, and his left leg was propped up on a thick stack of pillows. His left arm, too, was splinted and wrapped up in a compression bandage. An IV access was taped to the inside of his right elbow.
“That’s a sight for sore eyes. And head, and leg,” he said. “C’mere.”
She approached him and, hitching Phin up higher on her hip, leaned over to place a gentle kiss to his lips.
“Not quite how I would have liked to greet my husband after all this time apart,” she said, smiling. She would have gotten a sitter to take the kids out to the park for an hour the moment he got home. She could count on one hand the number of times they’d made love since the babies were born, the unfortunate fact of Bill’s off-world assignments and the reality of life with two demanding infants. Now that the babies were finally a bit bigger and Laura was feeling more like herself, she’d intended to do something about it.
“Sorry about that,” he said, giving her a meaningful look. An appreciative look, if she knew her husband. She pushed her unruly hair out of her face and leaned down to kiss him again, lingering this time.
Phin’s fussing prompted her to pull herself away with a sigh. “Do I need to put you back in your seat?” she asked him rhetorically.
“Gods, he’s huge,” Bill said, looking at his son in wonder. “I think he’s doubled in size since I saw them last.”
“Ba-ba-ba!” declared Phin, reaching out an arm to his father.
“Wish I could hold you, buddy.” The joy in Bill’s eyes faded to disappointment as he shifted uncomfortably in his bed. “He has your eyes, sweetheart.”
Phin’s green eyes had still been an ambiguous hazel the last time Bill had been home. Laura held him up in a standing position at the edge of Bill’s bed so that Bill could see him better, and Bill smiled again. She slid her hand along his upper arm, bare thanks to his attire of a hospital gown. His skin felt cool and clammy; she’d have to bring him some blankets.
“Bill? Tell me what happened and where we go from here.”
He sighed. “Can I see my baby girl first?”
“Of course.” Laura hadn’t thought about how Bill wouldn’t be able to see Sephie from his reclining position. She pulled up the bars of the bed’s guard rail and propped Phin up against it. “Stay put,” she told him, glad the babies were not yet particularly mobile.
She turned around and deftly lifted a grinning Persephone from the stroller, cradling her in the crook of her arm. “Here’s Sephie,” she said softly, holding her out to Bill.
Bill placed his right hand over Phin’s little foot as he drank in the sight of his daughter. “Hey, muffin.”
Laura pulled off the girl’s knit hat and tried to tame wispy red hair with her fingers. Phin bounced his hand up and down over Bill’s excitedly as Sephie watched and wiggled in Phin’s direction. Giving in to the nonverbal cue, Laura placed Sephie next to Phin at the side of the bed, tucked in between Bill’s prone body and the guard rail.
Bill’s eyes welled with tears, and Laura wished she could crawl into the bed with the three of them and tell him everything would be all right. Instead she pulled a chair closer, and when Sephie tried to roll over onto Bill, plucked her daughter from the bed and onto her lap.
“So are you gonna tell me what happened?” she asked gently. “The Fleet liaison wouldn’t tell me anything at all.”
“I’ve got a few questions of my own,” he admitted. “I was unconscious when they recovered me after I ejected. The doctors told me they guessed that I got hit by a piece of my Viper after it exploded. Though the leg they think might have happened while I was still in the cockpit.”
“So what are your diagnoses?” she asked, wanting to get it over and know what they were dealing with.
“Head trauma-- they had to drill a hole in my skull to relieve the swelling, but that’s a lot better now, I just have these pounding headaches. Ligament damage and some deep wounds around my left knee. I can’t put any weight on it yet.” He looked down over his body, taking stock. “And something with my left arm. Burns, I guess.”
“Gods, Bill.” She reached her hand through the guardrail slats so she could hold his. “It sounds as if you are lucky to be here at all.”
He didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes as she ran her thumb back and forth over the top of his hand. Laura gently turned his arm over and began tracing the ink scripted across the inside of his forearm, markings he’d gotten as soon as they’d decided that the names Phineus and Persephone would suit their newborn children just fine. She’d been the one in a hospital bed, then.
“Bill?” Laura said after a few moments. “Why the hell did your Viper explode?”
One eye cracked open and looked around the room, scanning where the ceiling met the wall.
Not here, he mouthed.
“When can I take you home?” she asked instead.
* * *
It was a week later when Bill finally left the hospital, his wheelchair keeping him on a level with the twins in their stroller as Laura pushed the latter and an orderly the former into the bright afternoon.
The orderly handed Bill a pair of crutches and hovered closely as he made his way a few painstaking steps toward their transport. Once Bill was settled, Laura took care of getting the babies strapped into their seats and efficiently snapped closed the double stroller for storing in the back.
“You’re amazing,” he said as she finally sat down next to him and nodded at the driver that they were ready to go.
She gave him a tired smile. “You’re amazing,” she said. “You’ve made so much progress so quickly. We’ll be able to go home before long.”
They would be staying in family housing on the Tauron military base until Bill was cleared for space travel. In the meantime, they had some pretty major decisions to make.
Bill’s knee, shredded during his ejection, would never withstand the demands of piloting a Viper again. There’d been some talk of the possibility of a desk job on Picon, but those jobs had diminished in both number and importance in the years since the war’s end. The occupational counselor had encouraged Bill to start considering alternative careers in the face of his increasingly likely medical discharge from the Fleet.
Privately, Laura was relieved about this possibility. While she’d always supported Bill’s career-- it was such a huge part of who he was-- the thought of having him at home, around to help her raise their children, was incredibly appealing. She placed her hand on top of his.
“Home,” Bill said, the word sounding foreign, as if it were a difficult concept to grasp. Laura supposed that it must be, for him. Here on his ancestral world, a place he barely knew. And home for him had been a Viper for longer than it had been with her.
“We’ll figure it out, Bill.” She hoped she sounded more reassuring than she felt.
“I want to be with them, Laura,” he said slowly, nodding his head toward the babies behind them. “I need to be with you. You know how much harder it’s gotten to leave you each and every time I go off-world?”
She shook her head slightly, her eyes full of compassion.
“When I was out there, floating in space, losing air because my suit was damaged, all I could think about before I lost consciousness was that I’d never get to really know my children. And how much I love you,” he said. “You’ve given me this gift, and I’ve just--”
His voice was emotionally charged, broke slightly. Laura shushed him.
“Never mind that. You’re here, and that’s all that matters.”
The driver pulled up to the square gray box where Laura and the babies had been staying while Bill was in the hospital and the four of them would be calling home for the next week or two. It was identical to the hundreds of others they’d driven past.
“Here we are,” said the driver cheerfully. “Can I give you a hand with that stroller, ma’am?”
“That would be wonderful,” said Laura, flashing a grateful smile. She unhooked the car seats from their restraints and passed Sephie’s seat up next to Bill while she picked up Phin’s and carried him out of the van.
“Thank you so much,” she said, locking Phin’s seat into place. She returned a moment later with Sephie and did the same.
Bill had gotten his crutches, and with the driver’s help, made his way to the front door, Laura pushing the stroller patiently behind him.
“Home sweet home,” Bill said, collapsing into an ugly plaid couch and stretching his injured leg out and onto a battered-looking coffee table.
Laura waved goodbye at the driver after he’d helped her move the stroller into the house and sat down beside Bill, letting his good arm fall over her shoulders.
“It is,” she agreed, snuggling into his side. The dingy curtains and worn linoleum didn’t matter; they were safe, and together.
He placed a kiss to her hair and sighed as Laura slipped her hand under his shirt and tanks, her palm sliding up and over his pecs and coming to rest on his breastbone. Sephie started to cry quietly and squirmed in her seat.
Laura withdrew her hand slowly and looked at her wristwatch. “I need to put them down for a nap,” she said regretfully, not wanting to move.
“I wish I could help you,” he said, giving her a gentle nudge. “As soon as I can walk without crutches--”
“--you’ll be the nap enforcer,” Laura finished for him, smiling as she pushed herself up off the couch. “And you owe me more than a few diaper changes, too.” Picking up Sephie first, she turned back to him. “Why don’t you get settled in the bedroom while I put them down?”
Bill picked up his crutches and took several awkward hobbles out of the little living room, poking his head into the adjoining kitchenette briefly before following Laura as she carried Phin into the smaller of two bedrooms. It had one crib, the babies still small enough to comfortably share one and the room really too diminutive to hold more than the single crib, chair, and changing table anyway. Bill watched from the doorway as Phin instinctually wriggled closer to his sister and reached out his hand to hers.
“Do they always do that?” he whispered. “Hold hands?”
“They like to be touching when they sleep, yeah,” she answered. “Sometimes he’ll grab her foot instead.” She patted Sephie’s belly in soothing circles and stroked Phin’s chubby cheek as they obediently closed their eyes and drifted off.
Bill would have been content just to watch the picture before him indefinitely, but the pressure of the crutches under his arms was starting to add to the pain he was already experiencing in his head and leg. Suddenly dizzy, he faltered a bit as he tried to maneuver himself out of the doorway and toward the second bedroom. Laura was at his side in an instant.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her hushed tone full of worry.
“Yeah, just need to--”
“Right.” Laura took the left crutch from him and propped it against the wall, wrapping his arm over her shoulders so she could support him for the several steps it took them to reach the bed.
“Thanks.” He eased himself down and lay back, taking in the room. Fleet-blue walls, military-issue metal chests of drawers. A small desk, littered with equal parts baby paraphernalia--pieces of bottles, a rattle, a little book made of heavy cardboard pages--and stacks of books and journals, colored pens and sticky tabs Laura used for her research.
His field of vision was suddenly crowded by the concerned face of his wife. “Do you need anything? Meds, water?”
He shook his head. “Just need to lie down for a bit.”
Laura joined him on the bed, stretching out alongside him as they hadn’t been able to do in far too long.
“Missed you,” he said softly.
She propped herself up on her elbow and bent her head down to nuzzle his ear. “I love you,” she breathed.
“About time we were able to do this,” he said. “Gods, Laura--”
“Shhh,” she interrupted. “Let’s just enjoy it, hmm?”
Bill drifted off into the soundest sleep he’d had since the medically-induced coma they’d put him in when he first arrived at the hospital.
* * *
Bill sat on the couch, trying his best to keep Sephie interested in drinking from her bottle. “C’mon, muffin,” he pleaded as she squirmed against his burned arm. “Just a little bit more?”
“Aaaaah!” The redhead pushed the bottle away indignantly.
“Laura, I think she’s done,” Bill called.
She appeared a moment later, sporting a large green stain on her white t-shirt. “She barely drank a third of it.”
“She really didn’t seem into it,” he observed. “And it looks like the Great Pea Experiment isn’t going too well in there.”
“There are more mashed peas on me and the floor than in Phin, that’s for sure,” she sighed. “I’ll go get him and they can switch meals.”
Soon a contented Phin was sucking away at a bottle, nestled in Bill’s arms, while Laura seemed to be having success in feeding Sephie the peas if her frequent congratulatory encouragement was any indication.
“Someday you’re going to have to start eating real food, you know,” Bill said to his son. Phineus just gurgled happily and returned to vigorously sucking.
A few minutes later Laura came into the living room with a cleaned-up Sephie. “We did it,” she said, settling next to Bill on the couch.
“Until they’re hungry again in three hours,” he pointed out.
She laughed and bounced Sephie. “One meal at a time, Bill.” She looked around the living room, strewn with toys. “Time to start packing up. I can’t believe how much crap we accumulated in two weeks.”
Their neighbors, military families with young children of their own, had proved both friendly and generous, and the twins had quickly become recipients of many a well-loved hand-me-down. Laura was impressed and grateful to have experienced the support network before Bill’s time in the military ended, even if both were necessitated by the same unfortunate event. And even if the stream of curious but considerate strangers had pretty much ensured that she’d gotten no work done since she’d been here.
“It’ll be good to be home,” Bill said, stating her next turn of thought as he gave his left knee a tentative stretch.
“You excited about going back to school?” she asked with a smile.
“Been a while since I hit the books,” he said with a grin. “I guess your scholarly tendencies have rubbed off on me, Dr. Roslin.”
“It’s almost-Doctor, Roslin-Adama,” she corrected him playfully, leaning in for a kiss. “And you’ll be great.”
“With the three of you around to keep me in line? I better be making straight As.”
“I feel like we should get tattoos to celebrate your decision to study military history.” Laura pushed up his sleeve and examined his bicep, which already held a tribute to the end of the war: a viper facing a dove, positioned over a list of the callsigns of departed friends returned to the soil.
He shook his head. “Nope. Next tattoos are for when you finish and defend your dissertation. Doctor.”
She ran her hand down his arm, trailing her fingers over the names of their children fortuitously inked into the arm that had suffered no damage in the accident. “Bill, I’m so glad you’re coming home with us, without another immediate departure hanging over everything.”
He shifted Phin to his other arm and tilted her chin up with his fingers. “Hey. It was time. I was an idiot not to realize it sooner.” He sighed. “The work just...seemed so important, you know? And it was what I knew how to do.”
“I still don’t understand what the hell happened to you out there,” Laura grumbled.
“And as we discussed, I’ll be better able to figure that out from the University of Caprica than from some administrative job on Picon.”
“Thank the gods,” Laura said, smiling her gratitude at the choice he’d made--they’d made-- once his concussed brain was capable of considering such things.
“Ga!” shouted Sephie, bringing her hands together contentedly.
“But, Bill?” Laura asked, a sheepish blush creeping across her cheeks. “You’ll keep at least one uniform around...right?” The uniform held so many memories of reuniting, of her tearing that blue jacket off him...
He met her eyes and saw the passion there, his own blue gaze darkening in response. “Yeah, sweetheart.”
Next story: Tauron Tykes
Word count: 3700
Rating: T
A/N: Follows Tauron Cherry, Tauron Tradition, and Tauron Tramp Stamp.
Laura and the babies (yes, that's right. Babies!) make an emergency trip to Tauron.
Laura had nearly finished feeding the babies their breakfast - a bottle of breastmilk for Phin, the pickier of the two, and some pureed prunes for Sephie - when a brusque rap at the door startled her from her sleep-deprived haze.
“What the fr--?”
She stood, holding Phin to her hip and setting down the jar of prunes with a sigh of resignation. Checking to ensure that Sephie was securely strapped in her high chair, she instructed her daughter, “Stay put,” and went to see who was at the door.
“Mrs. Adama?” asked the dark-haired, uniformed man from under mirrored sunglasses.
“Roslin-Adama. What can I do for you?” she asked, shifting a squirming Phin to her other hip and looking over her shoulder to check on Sephie.
“You’re married to Captain William Adama?”
She nodded slowly.
“May I come in?”
A deep sense of dread settled in her bones, causing her to hold her sweet Phin even closer. “Do you mind telling me who you are and why you’re here, first?”
The man had the decency to look embarrassed as he removed his sunglasses and tucked them into the breast pocket of his uniform. “Lieutenant Colonel Rick Matthews, ma’am. I’m a Fleet-family liaison based here in Caprica City.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry to have to inform you--”
Laura gasped, her knees weakened; she leaned heavily into the door frame, afraid she might pass out. “Oh, gods.”
“Your husband is in guarded condition at a military hospital on Tauron,” he said hurriedly, aware that his introduction had given her the wrong impression. “I’ll be happy to explain the details--”
Dumbly, Laura nodded and stepped aside to let him inside. “Have a seat in the living room,” she said, gesturing to the toy-strewn area off the foyer. “I’ll be right with you.”
Her hands were shaking as she lifted Sephie from her chair and brought both babies into the living room, placing them on a rubber play mat and hoping they would entertain themselves. She sank into the couch and looked at the man expectantly, ready for an explanation even as she feared it.
“Your husband was on a classified peacekeeping mission near the Armistice Line,” he began. “There was an engagement, and Captain Adama’s Viper was destroyed. He ejected and was recovered by a SAR team, but he’s suffered some head trauma and other injuries that will require rehabilitation.”
Laura frowned. “Classified peacekeeping” sounded like an oxymoron, questionable at best. She knew Bill’s unit had been sent out near Tauron on his last few missions, but this was the first she’d heard anything about the Armistice Line.
“So where is he now?” She hated the thought of him injured and so far from home. He’d been due for a lengthy shore leave in just over a week’s time, only his second leave since the twins were born.
“In a military hospital on Tauron. He’s expected to make a full recovery, though it will take some time. And he’s not yet stable enough to be moved either to the main Fleet rehab center on Picon, or back here on Caprica.”
Laura thought frantically. Her work on her dissertation could continue anywhere, and the babies were big enough to travel, though, like so many other things, it would be difficult doing it by herself. “How long is he expected to remain on Tauron?”
“I really couldn’t say, ma’am.” The lieutenant colonel reached into his pocket and pulled out a card embossed with the Colonial seal. “This is my contact information, and I’ve written the name and number of the hospital on the back.”
Laura accepted the card and immediately flipped it over. “Hypatia Military Medical & Rehabilitation Center,” it read.
“Can you help me arrange a transport?” she asked.
* * *
Laura anxiously pushed the double stroller down the halls of the military hospital, restraining herself from running as she maneuvered the unwieldy carriage around people in wheelchairs or with walkers. Each double room, each passing curtain brought her closer to Bill.
Finally, she found his room number at the end of the long corridor. The room was sunny and bright, having extra windows due to being at the end of the building, but the floor-to-ceiling curtain was nevertheless drawn tightly around what appeared to be the only occupied bed.
Phin started crying as soon as the stroller stopped moving, as he tended to do. Sephie, who’d fallen asleep the moment Laura placed her in her seat, woke at the sound of her brother’s crying and added her own higher-pitched squealing to the cacophony.
“Hello?” Laura called, her effort to use a soft and unobtrusive tone futile in the face of her screaming children. She set the brake and lifted Phin out so she could bounce him on her hip; as soon as he stopped crying, so did Sephie.
“Let’s go see Daddy,” she whispered to their son.
“Laura?” croaked an underused, raspy voice.
She drew back the curtain carefully, not sure what to expect. The sight that greeted her made her stomach drop at the thought of how close she must have come to losing him.
“Oh, Bill,” she said. Gauze bandages were wrapped around his head, and his left leg was propped up on a thick stack of pillows. His left arm, too, was splinted and wrapped up in a compression bandage. An IV access was taped to the inside of his right elbow.
“That’s a sight for sore eyes. And head, and leg,” he said. “C’mere.”
She approached him and, hitching Phin up higher on her hip, leaned over to place a gentle kiss to his lips.
“Not quite how I would have liked to greet my husband after all this time apart,” she said, smiling. She would have gotten a sitter to take the kids out to the park for an hour the moment he got home. She could count on one hand the number of times they’d made love since the babies were born, the unfortunate fact of Bill’s off-world assignments and the reality of life with two demanding infants. Now that the babies were finally a bit bigger and Laura was feeling more like herself, she’d intended to do something about it.
“Sorry about that,” he said, giving her a meaningful look. An appreciative look, if she knew her husband. She pushed her unruly hair out of her face and leaned down to kiss him again, lingering this time.
Phin’s fussing prompted her to pull herself away with a sigh. “Do I need to put you back in your seat?” she asked him rhetorically.
“Gods, he’s huge,” Bill said, looking at his son in wonder. “I think he’s doubled in size since I saw them last.”
“Ba-ba-ba!” declared Phin, reaching out an arm to his father.
“Wish I could hold you, buddy.” The joy in Bill’s eyes faded to disappointment as he shifted uncomfortably in his bed. “He has your eyes, sweetheart.”
Phin’s green eyes had still been an ambiguous hazel the last time Bill had been home. Laura held him up in a standing position at the edge of Bill’s bed so that Bill could see him better, and Bill smiled again. She slid her hand along his upper arm, bare thanks to his attire of a hospital gown. His skin felt cool and clammy; she’d have to bring him some blankets.
“Bill? Tell me what happened and where we go from here.”
He sighed. “Can I see my baby girl first?”
“Of course.” Laura hadn’t thought about how Bill wouldn’t be able to see Sephie from his reclining position. She pulled up the bars of the bed’s guard rail and propped Phin up against it. “Stay put,” she told him, glad the babies were not yet particularly mobile.
She turned around and deftly lifted a grinning Persephone from the stroller, cradling her in the crook of her arm. “Here’s Sephie,” she said softly, holding her out to Bill.
Bill placed his right hand over Phin’s little foot as he drank in the sight of his daughter. “Hey, muffin.”
Laura pulled off the girl’s knit hat and tried to tame wispy red hair with her fingers. Phin bounced his hand up and down over Bill’s excitedly as Sephie watched and wiggled in Phin’s direction. Giving in to the nonverbal cue, Laura placed Sephie next to Phin at the side of the bed, tucked in between Bill’s prone body and the guard rail.
Bill’s eyes welled with tears, and Laura wished she could crawl into the bed with the three of them and tell him everything would be all right. Instead she pulled a chair closer, and when Sephie tried to roll over onto Bill, plucked her daughter from the bed and onto her lap.
“So are you gonna tell me what happened?” she asked gently. “The Fleet liaison wouldn’t tell me anything at all.”
“I’ve got a few questions of my own,” he admitted. “I was unconscious when they recovered me after I ejected. The doctors told me they guessed that I got hit by a piece of my Viper after it exploded. Though the leg they think might have happened while I was still in the cockpit.”
“So what are your diagnoses?” she asked, wanting to get it over and know what they were dealing with.
“Head trauma-- they had to drill a hole in my skull to relieve the swelling, but that’s a lot better now, I just have these pounding headaches. Ligament damage and some deep wounds around my left knee. I can’t put any weight on it yet.” He looked down over his body, taking stock. “And something with my left arm. Burns, I guess.”
“Gods, Bill.” She reached her hand through the guardrail slats so she could hold his. “It sounds as if you are lucky to be here at all.”
He didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes as she ran her thumb back and forth over the top of his hand. Laura gently turned his arm over and began tracing the ink scripted across the inside of his forearm, markings he’d gotten as soon as they’d decided that the names Phineus and Persephone would suit their newborn children just fine. She’d been the one in a hospital bed, then.
“Bill?” Laura said after a few moments. “Why the hell did your Viper explode?”
One eye cracked open and looked around the room, scanning where the ceiling met the wall.
Not here, he mouthed.
“When can I take you home?” she asked instead.
* * *
It was a week later when Bill finally left the hospital, his wheelchair keeping him on a level with the twins in their stroller as Laura pushed the latter and an orderly the former into the bright afternoon.
The orderly handed Bill a pair of crutches and hovered closely as he made his way a few painstaking steps toward their transport. Once Bill was settled, Laura took care of getting the babies strapped into their seats and efficiently snapped closed the double stroller for storing in the back.
“You’re amazing,” he said as she finally sat down next to him and nodded at the driver that they were ready to go.
She gave him a tired smile. “You’re amazing,” she said. “You’ve made so much progress so quickly. We’ll be able to go home before long.”
They would be staying in family housing on the Tauron military base until Bill was cleared for space travel. In the meantime, they had some pretty major decisions to make.
Bill’s knee, shredded during his ejection, would never withstand the demands of piloting a Viper again. There’d been some talk of the possibility of a desk job on Picon, but those jobs had diminished in both number and importance in the years since the war’s end. The occupational counselor had encouraged Bill to start considering alternative careers in the face of his increasingly likely medical discharge from the Fleet.
Privately, Laura was relieved about this possibility. While she’d always supported Bill’s career-- it was such a huge part of who he was-- the thought of having him at home, around to help her raise their children, was incredibly appealing. She placed her hand on top of his.
“Home,” Bill said, the word sounding foreign, as if it were a difficult concept to grasp. Laura supposed that it must be, for him. Here on his ancestral world, a place he barely knew. And home for him had been a Viper for longer than it had been with her.
“We’ll figure it out, Bill.” She hoped she sounded more reassuring than she felt.
“I want to be with them, Laura,” he said slowly, nodding his head toward the babies behind them. “I need to be with you. You know how much harder it’s gotten to leave you each and every time I go off-world?”
She shook her head slightly, her eyes full of compassion.
“When I was out there, floating in space, losing air because my suit was damaged, all I could think about before I lost consciousness was that I’d never get to really know my children. And how much I love you,” he said. “You’ve given me this gift, and I’ve just--”
His voice was emotionally charged, broke slightly. Laura shushed him.
“Never mind that. You’re here, and that’s all that matters.”
The driver pulled up to the square gray box where Laura and the babies had been staying while Bill was in the hospital and the four of them would be calling home for the next week or two. It was identical to the hundreds of others they’d driven past.
“Here we are,” said the driver cheerfully. “Can I give you a hand with that stroller, ma’am?”
“That would be wonderful,” said Laura, flashing a grateful smile. She unhooked the car seats from their restraints and passed Sephie’s seat up next to Bill while she picked up Phin’s and carried him out of the van.
“Thank you so much,” she said, locking Phin’s seat into place. She returned a moment later with Sephie and did the same.
Bill had gotten his crutches, and with the driver’s help, made his way to the front door, Laura pushing the stroller patiently behind him.
“Home sweet home,” Bill said, collapsing into an ugly plaid couch and stretching his injured leg out and onto a battered-looking coffee table.
Laura waved goodbye at the driver after he’d helped her move the stroller into the house and sat down beside Bill, letting his good arm fall over her shoulders.
“It is,” she agreed, snuggling into his side. The dingy curtains and worn linoleum didn’t matter; they were safe, and together.
He placed a kiss to her hair and sighed as Laura slipped her hand under his shirt and tanks, her palm sliding up and over his pecs and coming to rest on his breastbone. Sephie started to cry quietly and squirmed in her seat.
Laura withdrew her hand slowly and looked at her wristwatch. “I need to put them down for a nap,” she said regretfully, not wanting to move.
“I wish I could help you,” he said, giving her a gentle nudge. “As soon as I can walk without crutches--”
“--you’ll be the nap enforcer,” Laura finished for him, smiling as she pushed herself up off the couch. “And you owe me more than a few diaper changes, too.” Picking up Sephie first, she turned back to him. “Why don’t you get settled in the bedroom while I put them down?”
Bill picked up his crutches and took several awkward hobbles out of the little living room, poking his head into the adjoining kitchenette briefly before following Laura as she carried Phin into the smaller of two bedrooms. It had one crib, the babies still small enough to comfortably share one and the room really too diminutive to hold more than the single crib, chair, and changing table anyway. Bill watched from the doorway as Phin instinctually wriggled closer to his sister and reached out his hand to hers.
“Do they always do that?” he whispered. “Hold hands?”
“They like to be touching when they sleep, yeah,” she answered. “Sometimes he’ll grab her foot instead.” She patted Sephie’s belly in soothing circles and stroked Phin’s chubby cheek as they obediently closed their eyes and drifted off.
Bill would have been content just to watch the picture before him indefinitely, but the pressure of the crutches under his arms was starting to add to the pain he was already experiencing in his head and leg. Suddenly dizzy, he faltered a bit as he tried to maneuver himself out of the doorway and toward the second bedroom. Laura was at his side in an instant.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her hushed tone full of worry.
“Yeah, just need to--”
“Right.” Laura took the left crutch from him and propped it against the wall, wrapping his arm over her shoulders so she could support him for the several steps it took them to reach the bed.
“Thanks.” He eased himself down and lay back, taking in the room. Fleet-blue walls, military-issue metal chests of drawers. A small desk, littered with equal parts baby paraphernalia--pieces of bottles, a rattle, a little book made of heavy cardboard pages--and stacks of books and journals, colored pens and sticky tabs Laura used for her research.
His field of vision was suddenly crowded by the concerned face of his wife. “Do you need anything? Meds, water?”
He shook his head. “Just need to lie down for a bit.”
Laura joined him on the bed, stretching out alongside him as they hadn’t been able to do in far too long.
“Missed you,” he said softly.
She propped herself up on her elbow and bent her head down to nuzzle his ear. “I love you,” she breathed.
“About time we were able to do this,” he said. “Gods, Laura--”
“Shhh,” she interrupted. “Let’s just enjoy it, hmm?”
Bill drifted off into the soundest sleep he’d had since the medically-induced coma they’d put him in when he first arrived at the hospital.
* * *
Bill sat on the couch, trying his best to keep Sephie interested in drinking from her bottle. “C’mon, muffin,” he pleaded as she squirmed against his burned arm. “Just a little bit more?”
“Aaaaah!” The redhead pushed the bottle away indignantly.
“Laura, I think she’s done,” Bill called.
She appeared a moment later, sporting a large green stain on her white t-shirt. “She barely drank a third of it.”
“She really didn’t seem into it,” he observed. “And it looks like the Great Pea Experiment isn’t going too well in there.”
“There are more mashed peas on me and the floor than in Phin, that’s for sure,” she sighed. “I’ll go get him and they can switch meals.”
Soon a contented Phin was sucking away at a bottle, nestled in Bill’s arms, while Laura seemed to be having success in feeding Sephie the peas if her frequent congratulatory encouragement was any indication.
“Someday you’re going to have to start eating real food, you know,” Bill said to his son. Phineus just gurgled happily and returned to vigorously sucking.
A few minutes later Laura came into the living room with a cleaned-up Sephie. “We did it,” she said, settling next to Bill on the couch.
“Until they’re hungry again in three hours,” he pointed out.
She laughed and bounced Sephie. “One meal at a time, Bill.” She looked around the living room, strewn with toys. “Time to start packing up. I can’t believe how much crap we accumulated in two weeks.”
Their neighbors, military families with young children of their own, had proved both friendly and generous, and the twins had quickly become recipients of many a well-loved hand-me-down. Laura was impressed and grateful to have experienced the support network before Bill’s time in the military ended, even if both were necessitated by the same unfortunate event. And even if the stream of curious but considerate strangers had pretty much ensured that she’d gotten no work done since she’d been here.
“It’ll be good to be home,” Bill said, stating her next turn of thought as he gave his left knee a tentative stretch.
“You excited about going back to school?” she asked with a smile.
“Been a while since I hit the books,” he said with a grin. “I guess your scholarly tendencies have rubbed off on me, Dr. Roslin.”
“It’s almost-Doctor, Roslin-Adama,” she corrected him playfully, leaning in for a kiss. “And you’ll be great.”
“With the three of you around to keep me in line? I better be making straight As.”
“I feel like we should get tattoos to celebrate your decision to study military history.” Laura pushed up his sleeve and examined his bicep, which already held a tribute to the end of the war: a viper facing a dove, positioned over a list of the callsigns of departed friends returned to the soil.
He shook his head. “Nope. Next tattoos are for when you finish and defend your dissertation. Doctor.”
She ran her hand down his arm, trailing her fingers over the names of their children fortuitously inked into the arm that had suffered no damage in the accident. “Bill, I’m so glad you’re coming home with us, without another immediate departure hanging over everything.”
He shifted Phin to his other arm and tilted her chin up with his fingers. “Hey. It was time. I was an idiot not to realize it sooner.” He sighed. “The work just...seemed so important, you know? And it was what I knew how to do.”
“I still don’t understand what the hell happened to you out there,” Laura grumbled.
“And as we discussed, I’ll be better able to figure that out from the University of Caprica than from some administrative job on Picon.”
“Thank the gods,” Laura said, smiling her gratitude at the choice he’d made--they’d made-- once his concussed brain was capable of considering such things.
“Ga!” shouted Sephie, bringing her hands together contentedly.
“But, Bill?” Laura asked, a sheepish blush creeping across her cheeks. “You’ll keep at least one uniform around...right?” The uniform held so many memories of reuniting, of her tearing that blue jacket off him...
He met her eyes and saw the passion there, his own blue gaze darkening in response. “Yeah, sweetheart.”
Next story: Tauron Tykes