Dazzle camouflage
The Old Man's still got it. Despite age and weariness, pain and pills and knuckle-dragger rotgut, Bill is still able to make love with a fervor and passion that has Laura's hand fluttering against his waist, satisfies her well enough that long moments later her hands are still shaking. When she turns her back to him, hands clasped between her breasts, he realizes she's tired, overwrought, overcome by events.
When her breath evens out he slides out from behind her. He pours himself a drink and sits on the couch with a book he wants to read, but not to her. He doesn't sleep much these days, a fact which can not be attributed to alcohol. It's age. It's worry. It's the sound of Laura's uncertain breath. He's just tired, overwrought, overcome by events. He doesn't need the booze. It just smooths the edges.
***
I think we have to accept what we are. What is he? Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, lover, fighter, old man. Fighting past defeat, unwilling to accept the inevitable. His ship will be repaired, his lover will survive.
He confiscated Saul's flask years ago and now he slips it into his pocket. Just in case.
***
It's in her bones, Admiral. Her bones are rotten. At night he holds Laura, positioning himself between her and the wall, between the rot eating her body and the rot eating his ship's. His back is snuggled up to Galactica, his hands roam Laura's body. They're too old tonight, too fragile for anything much, but he needs the touch to remember he's alive.
"I'm going to resign."
"Not again."
"I'll do it right this time, Bill. I'll train a successor. But I can no longer fulfill all my duties as president. The fleet needs more. It deserves more."
He'll talk her out of it come morning. Before she wakes he'll sit at her desk, try to think like Laura, find an argument which will convince her. For now, he'll indulge her, let her carry them away on a fantasy of a carefree life. "Who? Not Baltar."
Her laugh ends in a cough. "Lee."
"You're joking."
"He's a good boy. He's come a long way."
He snorts, a habit he learned from her.
"You should be proud of him."
"I am."
In the wee hours of the morning, when Laura's sleeping well, he gets up and raises a toast to his son.
***
What's your life worth to you? His flask is empty and Laura is -- somewhere. Life Station. Colonial One. Minutes alone in their quarters are precious and rare. He heads straight to the bottle, a medicinal gulp, just to clear his head. Laura is a great fan of clear heads.
Laura will be home soon; she isn't usually out this late. He needs to clear his head, wash his face and look bright and shiny. In the mirror he sees it, the cracks invading his home, the cancer in her bones coming to the surface.
If Laura were home he would ask her how it feels. Instead he pours a glass and then another, takes pills by the mouthful, trying to feel the sickness in his bones, the desperation for a cure, for a little more life. He stares at the liquid, thinking of how Laura clutches at him at night, greedy for sensation, just a little more before she goes.
***
Can I touch it? He knows she's annoyed by his obsessive need to touch the cancer in her breast, the fuzz starting to grow on her scalp. Most nights he can cover, touching her all over, being careful not to linger longer over one breast than the other. When the alcohol's filling all the empty spaces inside him he can't help himself. He prods, he pokes, monitors, examines.
She thinks he's obsessive, irrational, but he's just methodical.
His mother and sister were killed when he wasn't looking. Zak died when he was away. Carolanne and most of humanity were annihilated when he turned his back. New Caprica happened when he ran away.
He won't let that happen to Laura. He won't let that happen to Galactica. His scrutiny will keep them safe.
She comes home late, long after the alcohol is gone. He leads her to the head, shows her the cracks.
"Can it be fixed?"
"Tyrol thinks it can."
"Fast enough?"
He shrugs.
Her hand is gentle against his chest, against his scar. "I'm sorry, Bill." She steps closer to kiss his cheek and he nuzzles against her temple, under her wig. He needs to feel her tonight, to touch all her cracks.
Later, when the sound of Galactica's moans drowns out the memory of Laura's, he slides out of bed.
"Don't."
"I was just going --"
"I know where you were 'just going'." Her voice has none of the heaviness of sleep. "You'll need a clear head in the morning to see what Tyrol's doing."
"I'll be fine."
She sits up, slides back against the bulkhead, rotten bones touching rotten bones. "I've never asked you before. Not when I moved in. Not when I was sick every night. Not when you became a mean drunk. Not when I realized that I loved you -- especially not then. But this isn't about me, or you, or the fleet. Galactica needs your attention; she needs you whole."
"You're a fine one to talk. You were going to blow the old girl up."
"She's not my ship, Bill. She's not my home."
He storms out of the sleeping area, pours himself a glass. He sits on his couch but doesn't drink, not yet. The rest of the night he sits there, glass clutched between his thighs, listening to the sound of his girls' pain.
When he wakes, the glass is empty, the drink sloshed against his pants. Laura is gone.
There's a perverse pleasure in turning his back on Laura while they interrogate Ellen Tigh. In pulling out his flask for everyone to see. In catching, from the corner of his eye, the shake of Laura's head when Ellen asks to see the other Cylons and in making a promise to Ellen when he wouldn't make one to Laura. It's almost worth the pain of Laura leaving him, Lee following her like a puppy.
He goes down into the bowels of his ship. He needs to touch her cancer, caress her glowing rot. Do whatever you have to do to save our girl.
***
Galactica is slipping away from you, drop by drop. You are pouring Cylon blood into her veins. Did Laura ever wonder what she was after her miracle cure? Did she ever think herself less human, somewhat Cylon? He never asked, and she never blamed him. It's one of a thousand conversations they'll never have; they're both old enough to know that there's no point in discussing things you can't change.
There's no point in discussing much at all.
He's never been a man of words, and since the mutiny he hardly talks at all. Laura likes to talk and he lets her speak for the both of them. Even at night, in their quarters, he doesn't speak.
It's not that he's angry at her for dying -- not anymore -- so much as there are no words. The few he might corral are squandered to the pills, the booze, commanding the fleet. Laura has Lee for support; let her find the words. When he answers her questions about the ship his voice is hoarse, creaking like a door on rusty hinges.
"At best that's a temporary solution," she says. "It'll just buy the ship some time."
He bought her some time with Hera's blood. He likes to think she's enjoyed the life she's lived since then. Why can't she allow Galactica the same luxury? He loves her so much, but he'll never understand her.
"Look at this. Look at me." Look at her hands, shaking not in passion or lust. Shaking with the approach of death. At least he bought her some time. "I know how much this ship means to you. But you're going to have to face the fact that you're going to lose her."
He holds her shaking hands as he stands and rounds the desk. He wants to tell her not to give up on the old girl just yet, but the words won't come, so he pulls her out of her seat, out of their home, into the corridors. He offers his arm as though this were a date, a stroll through the Delphi arboretum. He stops a passing Six and shows Laura the compound.
"Is it alive?" Laura asks.
"It'll keep Galactica alive."
"She won't know what she is anymore."
"She'll know she's alive."
"She'll know that she's suffering. It's time to let her go, Bill. Let her rest."
When they get back home she comforts him with her presence, with her body, whispering hot and low into his ear, breathless gasps he prefers to attribute to passion than to disease. Her hands flutter over his ribs, the cracks in his façade, all the bones broken by people who thought he didn't love them enough.
His girls' bones are breaking faster than he can patch them. Laura's hands shake against him as she tries to patch his broken heart. He knows he'll have to accept the end of everything he loves, but not yet. He just needs a little more time.
***
I've had it up to here with destiny, prophecy, with god or the gods. Look where it's left us. The ass end of nowhere. Nowhere, specifically, being a kidnapped child and a broken ship. Nowhere being drinking alone in front of the Tighs, Tory, and his kids. Nowhere being holding meetings while Laura is in the Life Station, because Laura is never going to leave the Life Station again. Nowhere is relics of the past and everything out of place.
What is home? Is it a place? A longing? Some kind of connection?
He'd lost a home on Caprica, lost a mother and a sister and a father, lost a wife and a son. Was what he longed for substandard steel and groaning joists? Was it a cabin by a lake on a planet overrun by death squads? Or was it Lee and Laura, Kara and Karl and Athena, the Tighs and Tyrol?
"I know you love this ship. Probably more than you love me." An old joke, one she never tires of. Once she learned to say 'I love you' she's never stopped, saying it when they are in bed, when they brush their teeth in the morning, at random intervals while she does paperwork. He never says it back, not because he doesn't feel it, but because he feels it too much. "I want you to build me a cabin, Bill. Out of metal, out of wood, out of words. Doesn't matter. What matters is a home. Letting Galactica go doesn't mean you're abandoning her. It just means you're saving everything else. Won't you give us a chance?"
He goes back to the quarters which are no longer a home, tears off the caution tape sealing the head. He runs a hand over the old girl's walls, down her flanks, feels the slowing beat of her heart. He can still save her with plaster and paint and --
And she won't be his Galactica. She'll never be home again. It's time to say aloud the decision he reached in Life Station. Time to disconnect the life support. Time to let her pick her own time.
He raises the last glass of rotgut he'll ever drink, a toast to everything past. She was a grand old lady. The grandest.