Of Rings and Roses
Title: Of Rings and Roses
Characters: Laura, Billy, Lee, Dee
Rating: K
Word Count: 3,013
Summary: Post Ep for 'Sacrifice'
Disclaimer: Sadly not mine
This fic that proves I need to learn how to write a drabble...I sat down to write a quick snippet and ended up spending a couple of hours on this instead, oh well...I hope you enjoy it
Of Rings and Roses
The sound of Laura Roslin’s heels echoed across the walls as she walked through one of the many corridors on the Galactica. It had been months since she first set foot on the ship with Billy trailing behind her with his curly hair and poorly-tailored suit, but despite the amount of time passed, she still wasn’t sure which of these darn corridors was the one that would lead her back to the hanger deck. If she didn’t find her way to the shuttle soon the President was going to be late for her meeting with the Quorum on Colonial One, and Laura was beginning to wonder if she ought to have taken the Admiral up on his offer to escort her to her shuttle rather than telling him to go ahead to his shift in the CIC. She was just considering turning around to see if one of the marines she had passed could tell her the way to go when she rounded a corner and stopped short at the sight in front of her.
There a little way ahead of her in the corridor stood Captain Adama and Petty Officer Dualla, or Dee as the soft voice in the back of her mind that sounded suspiciously like the young boy she was trying hard not to think about reminded her. There was nothing particularly striking about the behavior of the pair in front of her, certainly no one else in the corridor had stopped to stare at them as she had, but merely the sight of Petty Officer Dualla had been enough to make Laura trip over her own feet.
She hadn’t been to the CIC in the last week since Billy’s….well since the incident with the terrorists on Cloud 9, and she didn’t realize until that moment exactly how much she had been dreading seeing Dualla. The last time she had seen the Petty Officer was as she was walking down a different corridor and Billy stared longingly after her.
Poor, sweet Billy. Billy who could never stay focused on what the President was saying when he caught a glimpse of Dee in a corridor. Billy who would blushingly ask permission to attend to some thing or another so that he could have a few extra minutes on the ship to spend with Petty Officer Dualla. Billy who admired the President and the work she was trying to do. And Billy who Laura thought she had been very close to loving like a son.
She remembered her conversation with him just ten or so days ago. Ten little days, but what a difference ten days could make. After all, didn’t the entire human civilization cease to exist, leaving her to deal with the future of all that remained of humanity, in less than a single day? She ought to be used to loosing everything in the blink of an eye by now, but somehow Laura knew that no matter how many times it happened she would never be fully prepared for the next time.
And so it was that just ten days ago Laura had never really considered the prospect of a future without Billy in it. She knew how incredibly grateful she was to have his help of course, and she knew that he was one of the few people that kept her feeling like Laura and not like she was nothing more than President Roslin…even if he himself had a tendency to treat her as ‘Madame President’. She hadn’t considered losing him though, she was supposed to die long before him, if not from cancer then from an assassination attempt or a cylon attack. So that day as Laura watched Billy sit in front of her desk fiddling with his class ring and failing to read the report sitting open in front of him, she never imagined that it might be the last time she would have a real conversation with him.
“Billy,” she asked without stopping the task of filling out the papers in front of her and only pausing when she received a “Hmm” in reply from the boy with his entire attention still on the ring in his hand.
“Billy.” she repeated, now setting down her pen, looking straight at him and trailing off into silence to wait as she used to do to quite a rowdy classroom full of children. After a few moments of complete silence in the cabin of Colonial One with neither speaking or the sound of a pen on paper to disturb his thoughts Billy looked up and noticed the President watching him.
“What? I’m sorry Madame President. I didn’t hear you. Did you say something? Did you need me to get you something?” Laura thought it was rather endearing how he had a tendency to ramble when he was embarrassed, but instead of telling him and probably mortifying the poor boy she simply raised her eyebrows and said, “No, no. I was just wondering you’d found the answer to our shortage of foods with vitamin c in the writing on your class ring, or if perhaps…”
“No Madame President, I’m sorry. I won’t loose focus like that again. I did have a couple of ideas on how we could use ships currently in the fleet to enrich our current food sources with more nutrients…”
Inwardly shaking her head at how much he worried about disappointing her in his work, Laura cut him off before he could get too far into his explanation. “It’s ok Billy, you’re allowed to have a moment or two with less than complete focus…it makes you human and not a machine” she said pointedly with a little smile that he returned with one of his slightly sheepish grins. “I was just wondering if you wanted to talk about it is all”
“I…um” Billy stammered as his face quickly heated to a lovely shade of pink, “I wouldn’t want to bother you Madame President, and really it’s not anything that I ought to be focusing on right now…”
Sighing as she leaned her elbow on the desk, she said “I really don’t mind you know. We’ve been through the end of the worlds, a military coup, and a ‘magical’ recovery from cancer together, but you’re still worried that you might bother me by taking the time to tell me what’s on your mind?”
Sensing his hesitation as he looked to the ring between his fingers, to her, and then back to the ring again she added with a mischievous grin, “After all you’ve already abandoned me to trudge through the rain by myself as I headed down to a planet full of cylons to help the fleet find our way to earth, what could you possibly say to bother me now?”
Billy chuckled a little bit in response to her statement, but Laura could tell that it was still that nervous laugh that he used in response to all of her off-color statements…the one that said he wasn’t quite sure how to respond to her when she wasn’t acting 100% like President Roslin, so instead of pressing him to talk she leaned back in her chair and waited.
After a minute of contemplation, Billy looked up at her with that sincere manner of his and sighed, “Have you ever you wanted to do something and known that there just wasn’t a right time? That there might never be a right time?” He stood up without seeming to realize it and began to pace in front of her desk, “I mean, you’re the President and all so you probably don’t find yourself worrying about this sort of thing, but” she chuckled at his inability to see her as anything other than a President, thinking of all the incidents in her life she could tell him that were just full of bad timing, but instead as he stopped his pacing facing the window she chose to remind him wryly, “Well you are talking to the only President of the Colonies who was ever thrown in jail for choosing to steal a military asset hours before it was needed for a vital mission, so I may know a thing or two about needing to get something done without having ‘the right time’ for it.”
Turning back to face her desk Billy looked at her with a sad smile and the sweetest expression she’d ever seen from him in their time together. “What?” she asked with a little smile as he continued to simply look at her, “It’s just” he replied shaking his head a bit “sometimes when you say little sarcastic things like that you remind me of…”
He trailed off, clearly caught in some memory that she had no knowledge of, and Laura didn’t want to push him and make him revert back to ‘business only’ Billy, but she really wanted to know…who did she remind him of…his mother? His sister? His annoying high school teacher whose class he couldn’t wait to leave? Before she had a chance to try and coax the story out of him, Billy grasped the ring in his clenched fist, sat back down and said “It’s silly anyways.”
Shoving the ring in his pocket he continued, “It’s not like it makes a difference if there’s a right time. I mean there aren’t any restaurants anymore, I’d have no idea how to get roses, and forget that fountain in the park outside the art gallery on Picon that I always thought was the perfect place, because that doesn’t exist anymore.”
Laura had no doubt by this point that Billy was pretty much talking to himself and not her, but she didn’t like seeing him so disappointed and while he may not have told her exactly what they were talking about, from the moment she’d seen him fiddling with the ring she’d had a pretty good idea. She got up and rounded her desk to where she could lean against the front and look directly at Billy before telling him, “You know I’ve been meaning to do an inventory of the food supplies on Cloud 9 and I could use someone to go over there and take a look.”
Billy looked momentarily confused by the change of topic and she could see him shifting back into Presidential aide mode so she quickly finished, “and I’m fairly certain they have some fountains in the garden…maybe even a rose bush or two if my memory from Colonial Day is correct.”
Billy smiled radiantly up at her and had just opened his mouth to reply, she was fairly certain he was actually going to tell her what he was thinking about now, when another aide entered to inform them that her shuttle had arrived and that Admiral Adama had requested a meeting as soon as they arrived on Galactica to discuss the rumors in the press of the cylon held prisoner aboard the ship. Cursing the missed opportunity to hear the news out loud from Billy and make him squirm while announcing his intentions, Laura promised herself that she would find the time to congratulate him soon.
She turned back to her desk and put on her matching suit jacket that had been hanging from the back of her chair. Then she arranged the papers that she had been working on and started heading for the curtain that led away from her office and towards the lower decks of the Colonial One. She was already thinking about Admiral Adama, their meeting, and everything that she needed to make clear about the cylon Sharon sitting in his brig, but she stopped herself at the curtain of the office long enough to turn to Billy and mention, “Oh by the way, don’t forget to talk to the pilot about arranging a shuttle for you over to Cloud 9 so you can check their food stores.”
She had already turned away and was back in President Roslin mode before he had a chance to respond. That had been the last personal conversation they had before he looked at her in the corridor of Galactica, smiled, and mentioned something about big questions to her as he took off after Dualla.
Which brought her back to the thing that had made her stop short in the middle of the corridor, as her brain finally processed what felt off about the scene in front of her. Laura watched as Captain Apollo and Dee walked side by side down the corridor, just close enough that there hands were brushing every couple of steps.
Laura’s breath caught in her throat as she took in everything that was happening in front of her, the touching, the softness in their voices as they spoke to one another, and then the playful gleam in Dualla’s eyes as she reached up and stole the clipboard that Galactica’s CAG had been carrying. As she stared on Laura’s brain quickly connected the dots she had failed to see before. Oh Billy. Poor Billy.
“I don’t know about this rotation schedule Lee” Dualla teased as she darted sideways across the corridor and flipped through the pages on his clipboard, “I mean, I know you’ve only been out of sick bay for a couple of days, but I don’t see your name anywhere on this flight list. Pretty pathetic for a studly viper jock.”
The light in her eyes as she joked with Apollo made Laura’s chest tighten… and so few days after Billy…after everything that had happened.
“Studly, huh. Is that even a word?” Lee joked as he reached for his clipboard. “Of course it’s a word” Dee replied as she jerked the clipboard behind her “And I said studly is what you were before, now though, you’re just a wimpy, injured CAG.”
“Aw come on Dee, way to wound a man’s pride. Now give me the rotation schedule before I’m late to my meeting with Colonel Tigh.”
“I don’t know…” Dee replied teasingly, “what are you gonna give me for it?” “Hmm” Lee replied as he tapped his chin and pretended to think about it, “I don’t know,” he said leaning closer, “How about a kiss?”
He closed the distance between them to softly press his lips against Dualla’s, and suddenly Laura wondered how she had ever thought it was no big deal for her to be with Richard Adar. If it could hurt this much just to watch someone else be unfaithful to the idea of a person she cared about, how could it ever be ok to actually be the person causing that pain? Never mind that Adar’s wife had been a bitch, and never mind that she had probably known about the affair and simply not cared, at that moment all Laura could think about was what Billy must have been forced to realize shortly before his death. Poor, sweet Billy.
As Lee continued to kiss Dee he reached slowly around her back to grab the clipboard, and at the last second she pulled away and darted further down the hall. “Uh-uh” she giggled, “I never said that a kiss would buy you back your rotation schedule. I want roses, and a bubble bath, and maybe some of those yummy Caprican chocolates they used to sell at the port on shore leave…”
“Roses, huh?” Lee laughed as he caught up with Dualla and grabbed her as they began to playfully struggle for the chart. “I don’t know where I could go about finding those Caprican chocolates, but I bet they still have a couple of roses in the gardens of one of the ships around here.” Laura felt like his words had delivered a blow straight to her sternum and knocked the wind out of her. Though honestly, at this point not being able to breathe might be preferable to the pain of watching the encounter in front of her.
“Well you better get on that soon if you want your clipboard before your meeting” Dee continued as she wriggled out of his grasp. “Or…” Lee joked in a superior voice as he turned around and yanked the chart out of her hands, “I could just use my ‘studly-ness’ and overpower you.”
Upon turning, Lee caught a glimpse of the President at the end of the hall and froze mid-motion, like a kid with his hand caught halfway to the lid of the cookie jar. Laura had no idea if he’d frozen because he was surprised to see her, or because he felt like he shouldn’t have been joking around while on duty…she doubted it was because he was thinking about how betrayed she was feeling. No matter the reason, Captain Apollo remained staring at her as Dee forcefully pulled the chart back and accidentally hit him in the shoulder.
Their very brief staring contest was broken as Lee grasped his shoulder due to the pain from his bullet wound that Dualla had accidentally smacked and Dee began to profusely apologize and worry over him, picking up his clipboard and telling him she’d walk him to his meeting.
Laura watched them walk away and thought back to the last time she had watched Dualla walk down a corridor…and about the curly haired boy who had chased after her. The boy who had worried over where to find her roses, and whom Laura had once had to tell he knew nothing about women. The boy who, Laura was now realizing, had likely gotten his heart broken moments after she had seen him for the final time. The boy who she would never see again.
She knew that she ought to feel bad about Lee’s pain, or at least mildly empathetic, but as she turned around to attempt to find her way back to the hanger deck, all that Laura felt was hollow. President Roslin would be on time to her meeting with the Quorum. Laura, however, might never leave that corridor where she finally realized that she truly was the only one mourning that sweet, curly haired boy who spent his first day on Galactica getting hopelessly lost in the corridors.
Characters: Laura, Billy, Lee, Dee
Rating: K
Word Count: 3,013
Summary: Post Ep for 'Sacrifice'
Disclaimer: Sadly not mine
This fic that proves I need to learn how to write a drabble...I sat down to write a quick snippet and ended up spending a couple of hours on this instead, oh well...I hope you enjoy it
Of Rings and Roses
The sound of Laura Roslin’s heels echoed across the walls as she walked through one of the many corridors on the Galactica. It had been months since she first set foot on the ship with Billy trailing behind her with his curly hair and poorly-tailored suit, but despite the amount of time passed, she still wasn’t sure which of these darn corridors was the one that would lead her back to the hanger deck. If she didn’t find her way to the shuttle soon the President was going to be late for her meeting with the Quorum on Colonial One, and Laura was beginning to wonder if she ought to have taken the Admiral up on his offer to escort her to her shuttle rather than telling him to go ahead to his shift in the CIC. She was just considering turning around to see if one of the marines she had passed could tell her the way to go when she rounded a corner and stopped short at the sight in front of her.
There a little way ahead of her in the corridor stood Captain Adama and Petty Officer Dualla, or Dee as the soft voice in the back of her mind that sounded suspiciously like the young boy she was trying hard not to think about reminded her. There was nothing particularly striking about the behavior of the pair in front of her, certainly no one else in the corridor had stopped to stare at them as she had, but merely the sight of Petty Officer Dualla had been enough to make Laura trip over her own feet.
She hadn’t been to the CIC in the last week since Billy’s….well since the incident with the terrorists on Cloud 9, and she didn’t realize until that moment exactly how much she had been dreading seeing Dualla. The last time she had seen the Petty Officer was as she was walking down a different corridor and Billy stared longingly after her.
Poor, sweet Billy. Billy who could never stay focused on what the President was saying when he caught a glimpse of Dee in a corridor. Billy who would blushingly ask permission to attend to some thing or another so that he could have a few extra minutes on the ship to spend with Petty Officer Dualla. Billy who admired the President and the work she was trying to do. And Billy who Laura thought she had been very close to loving like a son.
She remembered her conversation with him just ten or so days ago. Ten little days, but what a difference ten days could make. After all, didn’t the entire human civilization cease to exist, leaving her to deal with the future of all that remained of humanity, in less than a single day? She ought to be used to loosing everything in the blink of an eye by now, but somehow Laura knew that no matter how many times it happened she would never be fully prepared for the next time.
And so it was that just ten days ago Laura had never really considered the prospect of a future without Billy in it. She knew how incredibly grateful she was to have his help of course, and she knew that he was one of the few people that kept her feeling like Laura and not like she was nothing more than President Roslin…even if he himself had a tendency to treat her as ‘Madame President’. She hadn’t considered losing him though, she was supposed to die long before him, if not from cancer then from an assassination attempt or a cylon attack. So that day as Laura watched Billy sit in front of her desk fiddling with his class ring and failing to read the report sitting open in front of him, she never imagined that it might be the last time she would have a real conversation with him.
“Billy,” she asked without stopping the task of filling out the papers in front of her and only pausing when she received a “Hmm” in reply from the boy with his entire attention still on the ring in his hand.
“Billy.” she repeated, now setting down her pen, looking straight at him and trailing off into silence to wait as she used to do to quite a rowdy classroom full of children. After a few moments of complete silence in the cabin of Colonial One with neither speaking or the sound of a pen on paper to disturb his thoughts Billy looked up and noticed the President watching him.
“What? I’m sorry Madame President. I didn’t hear you. Did you say something? Did you need me to get you something?” Laura thought it was rather endearing how he had a tendency to ramble when he was embarrassed, but instead of telling him and probably mortifying the poor boy she simply raised her eyebrows and said, “No, no. I was just wondering you’d found the answer to our shortage of foods with vitamin c in the writing on your class ring, or if perhaps…”
“No Madame President, I’m sorry. I won’t loose focus like that again. I did have a couple of ideas on how we could use ships currently in the fleet to enrich our current food sources with more nutrients…”
Inwardly shaking her head at how much he worried about disappointing her in his work, Laura cut him off before he could get too far into his explanation. “It’s ok Billy, you’re allowed to have a moment or two with less than complete focus…it makes you human and not a machine” she said pointedly with a little smile that he returned with one of his slightly sheepish grins. “I was just wondering if you wanted to talk about it is all”
“I…um” Billy stammered as his face quickly heated to a lovely shade of pink, “I wouldn’t want to bother you Madame President, and really it’s not anything that I ought to be focusing on right now…”
Sighing as she leaned her elbow on the desk, she said “I really don’t mind you know. We’ve been through the end of the worlds, a military coup, and a ‘magical’ recovery from cancer together, but you’re still worried that you might bother me by taking the time to tell me what’s on your mind?”
Sensing his hesitation as he looked to the ring between his fingers, to her, and then back to the ring again she added with a mischievous grin, “After all you’ve already abandoned me to trudge through the rain by myself as I headed down to a planet full of cylons to help the fleet find our way to earth, what could you possibly say to bother me now?”
Billy chuckled a little bit in response to her statement, but Laura could tell that it was still that nervous laugh that he used in response to all of her off-color statements…the one that said he wasn’t quite sure how to respond to her when she wasn’t acting 100% like President Roslin, so instead of pressing him to talk she leaned back in her chair and waited.
After a minute of contemplation, Billy looked up at her with that sincere manner of his and sighed, “Have you ever you wanted to do something and known that there just wasn’t a right time? That there might never be a right time?” He stood up without seeming to realize it and began to pace in front of her desk, “I mean, you’re the President and all so you probably don’t find yourself worrying about this sort of thing, but” she chuckled at his inability to see her as anything other than a President, thinking of all the incidents in her life she could tell him that were just full of bad timing, but instead as he stopped his pacing facing the window she chose to remind him wryly, “Well you are talking to the only President of the Colonies who was ever thrown in jail for choosing to steal a military asset hours before it was needed for a vital mission, so I may know a thing or two about needing to get something done without having ‘the right time’ for it.”
Turning back to face her desk Billy looked at her with a sad smile and the sweetest expression she’d ever seen from him in their time together. “What?” she asked with a little smile as he continued to simply look at her, “It’s just” he replied shaking his head a bit “sometimes when you say little sarcastic things like that you remind me of…”
He trailed off, clearly caught in some memory that she had no knowledge of, and Laura didn’t want to push him and make him revert back to ‘business only’ Billy, but she really wanted to know…who did she remind him of…his mother? His sister? His annoying high school teacher whose class he couldn’t wait to leave? Before she had a chance to try and coax the story out of him, Billy grasped the ring in his clenched fist, sat back down and said “It’s silly anyways.”
Shoving the ring in his pocket he continued, “It’s not like it makes a difference if there’s a right time. I mean there aren’t any restaurants anymore, I’d have no idea how to get roses, and forget that fountain in the park outside the art gallery on Picon that I always thought was the perfect place, because that doesn’t exist anymore.”
Laura had no doubt by this point that Billy was pretty much talking to himself and not her, but she didn’t like seeing him so disappointed and while he may not have told her exactly what they were talking about, from the moment she’d seen him fiddling with the ring she’d had a pretty good idea. She got up and rounded her desk to where she could lean against the front and look directly at Billy before telling him, “You know I’ve been meaning to do an inventory of the food supplies on Cloud 9 and I could use someone to go over there and take a look.”
Billy looked momentarily confused by the change of topic and she could see him shifting back into Presidential aide mode so she quickly finished, “and I’m fairly certain they have some fountains in the garden…maybe even a rose bush or two if my memory from Colonial Day is correct.”
Billy smiled radiantly up at her and had just opened his mouth to reply, she was fairly certain he was actually going to tell her what he was thinking about now, when another aide entered to inform them that her shuttle had arrived and that Admiral Adama had requested a meeting as soon as they arrived on Galactica to discuss the rumors in the press of the cylon held prisoner aboard the ship. Cursing the missed opportunity to hear the news out loud from Billy and make him squirm while announcing his intentions, Laura promised herself that she would find the time to congratulate him soon.
She turned back to her desk and put on her matching suit jacket that had been hanging from the back of her chair. Then she arranged the papers that she had been working on and started heading for the curtain that led away from her office and towards the lower decks of the Colonial One. She was already thinking about Admiral Adama, their meeting, and everything that she needed to make clear about the cylon Sharon sitting in his brig, but she stopped herself at the curtain of the office long enough to turn to Billy and mention, “Oh by the way, don’t forget to talk to the pilot about arranging a shuttle for you over to Cloud 9 so you can check their food stores.”
She had already turned away and was back in President Roslin mode before he had a chance to respond. That had been the last personal conversation they had before he looked at her in the corridor of Galactica, smiled, and mentioned something about big questions to her as he took off after Dualla.
Which brought her back to the thing that had made her stop short in the middle of the corridor, as her brain finally processed what felt off about the scene in front of her. Laura watched as Captain Apollo and Dee walked side by side down the corridor, just close enough that there hands were brushing every couple of steps.
Laura’s breath caught in her throat as she took in everything that was happening in front of her, the touching, the softness in their voices as they spoke to one another, and then the playful gleam in Dualla’s eyes as she reached up and stole the clipboard that Galactica’s CAG had been carrying. As she stared on Laura’s brain quickly connected the dots she had failed to see before. Oh Billy. Poor Billy.
“I don’t know about this rotation schedule Lee” Dualla teased as she darted sideways across the corridor and flipped through the pages on his clipboard, “I mean, I know you’ve only been out of sick bay for a couple of days, but I don’t see your name anywhere on this flight list. Pretty pathetic for a studly viper jock.”
The light in her eyes as she joked with Apollo made Laura’s chest tighten… and so few days after Billy…after everything that had happened.
“Studly, huh. Is that even a word?” Lee joked as he reached for his clipboard. “Of course it’s a word” Dee replied as she jerked the clipboard behind her “And I said studly is what you were before, now though, you’re just a wimpy, injured CAG.”
“Aw come on Dee, way to wound a man’s pride. Now give me the rotation schedule before I’m late to my meeting with Colonel Tigh.”
“I don’t know…” Dee replied teasingly, “what are you gonna give me for it?” “Hmm” Lee replied as he tapped his chin and pretended to think about it, “I don’t know,” he said leaning closer, “How about a kiss?”
He closed the distance between them to softly press his lips against Dualla’s, and suddenly Laura wondered how she had ever thought it was no big deal for her to be with Richard Adar. If it could hurt this much just to watch someone else be unfaithful to the idea of a person she cared about, how could it ever be ok to actually be the person causing that pain? Never mind that Adar’s wife had been a bitch, and never mind that she had probably known about the affair and simply not cared, at that moment all Laura could think about was what Billy must have been forced to realize shortly before his death. Poor, sweet Billy.
As Lee continued to kiss Dee he reached slowly around her back to grab the clipboard, and at the last second she pulled away and darted further down the hall. “Uh-uh” she giggled, “I never said that a kiss would buy you back your rotation schedule. I want roses, and a bubble bath, and maybe some of those yummy Caprican chocolates they used to sell at the port on shore leave…”
“Roses, huh?” Lee laughed as he caught up with Dualla and grabbed her as they began to playfully struggle for the chart. “I don’t know where I could go about finding those Caprican chocolates, but I bet they still have a couple of roses in the gardens of one of the ships around here.” Laura felt like his words had delivered a blow straight to her sternum and knocked the wind out of her. Though honestly, at this point not being able to breathe might be preferable to the pain of watching the encounter in front of her.
“Well you better get on that soon if you want your clipboard before your meeting” Dee continued as she wriggled out of his grasp. “Or…” Lee joked in a superior voice as he turned around and yanked the chart out of her hands, “I could just use my ‘studly-ness’ and overpower you.”
Upon turning, Lee caught a glimpse of the President at the end of the hall and froze mid-motion, like a kid with his hand caught halfway to the lid of the cookie jar. Laura had no idea if he’d frozen because he was surprised to see her, or because he felt like he shouldn’t have been joking around while on duty…she doubted it was because he was thinking about how betrayed she was feeling. No matter the reason, Captain Apollo remained staring at her as Dee forcefully pulled the chart back and accidentally hit him in the shoulder.
Their very brief staring contest was broken as Lee grasped his shoulder due to the pain from his bullet wound that Dualla had accidentally smacked and Dee began to profusely apologize and worry over him, picking up his clipboard and telling him she’d walk him to his meeting.
Laura watched them walk away and thought back to the last time she had watched Dualla walk down a corridor…and about the curly haired boy who had chased after her. The boy who had worried over where to find her roses, and whom Laura had once had to tell he knew nothing about women. The boy who, Laura was now realizing, had likely gotten his heart broken moments after she had seen him for the final time. The boy who she would never see again.
She knew that she ought to feel bad about Lee’s pain, or at least mildly empathetic, but as she turned around to attempt to find her way back to the hanger deck, all that Laura felt was hollow. President Roslin would be on time to her meeting with the Quorum. Laura, however, might never leave that corridor where she finally realized that she truly was the only one mourning that sweet, curly haired boy who spent his first day on Galactica getting hopelessly lost in the corridors.