Archive of Our Own ^beta

Fic: Uncertain Hours (BSG/The West Wing)
Title: Uncertain Hours
Author: miabicicletta 
Summary: "President Roslin, it would un-American in the most fundamental of ways to deny shelter and safe haven to the last remnants of your undoubtedly great civilization, the size of which, I might add, wouldn't fill the visitor seats at Giants Stadium."
Rating: T+
Pairings: Adama/Roslin, Jed/Abbey
Wordcount: 6200+
Disclaimer: All characters belong to their respective creators. 
Notes: This is my entry for the holiday fic exchange at the rememberlaura community. For zaleti, who wanted A/R and no cancer! (I took some leaps from there; hope you don't mind :) This goes AU after the beginning of "Six of One." Takes place in The West Wing-verse around Season 4. Also, I know TPWB retconned Fitzwallace's wife's name from Laura to Gail, but I'm overlooking that. Endless thanks to claraon, meryl_edan, and whatever_lj for their generous beta efforts. Title comes from the song American Tune by Simon and Garfunkel. 

***

But I'm alright, I'm alright
I'm just weary to my bones
Still you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant
So far away from home.

***

"We're going the wrong way," Kara implored. "Why can't you trust me?"

For an eternal moment, Laura met Kara's pleading gaze over the barrel of the gun shaking in her hand. She saw a little girl's fear and desperation, saw her grief and confusion. And there, just there, the tiniest spark of hope that someone might listen.

"Okay," she whispered, reaching up slowly to grip Kara's hand. As she did, Starbuck's resolve crumpled a little, relief pouring into her features. Kara slumped to her knees, the gun clattering from her hand, exhausted by her thousand conflicting emotions. Laura knelt and wrapped her arms around the girl, making shushing sounds of comfort.

"I believe you, Kara." The gun lay beside them on the floor, forgotten. "I believe you."

It changed everything.

***

The invitation arrives at her office mid-afternoon in the able hands of a military courier. A pair of broad, stoic young men in Colonial military garb greet her assistant before procuring the thin white envelope with the seal of the President and delivering it safely into the hands of the Stanford University administrative pool.

No, Laura corrects herself, American uniforms. Not Colonial. There are no more Colonial members of the military anymore. Well, none actively serving, anyway. She turns the envelope over in her hands once, feeling its fine, heavy weight and knowing exactly what is inside. Knowing, also, what it represents. She tucks it away in her briefcase, and leaves it there, out of sight, for the remainder of her work day.

What Laura Roslin likes best about her new job is taking her shoes off after she's left the office, favoring a barefoot stroll across the university quads and plazas, all manicured lawns and pink stones that warm the soles of her feet. She suspects people stare – the students, faculty, staff. She's certain of it, actually, but it is just as true that they would stare even with her shoes on, and at the end of the day, she's past caring anymore. Let them think her eccentric. Laura knows that history will remember so much of what she's done in her life. Among her multitude of sins and virtues -- for she has brought good and bad alike into this universe, it is true -- it seems of little consequence that the last and former President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, space refugee that she is, likes to walk barefooted whenever she pleases.

She's borne the burdens of her people and delivered them to safety even as the cold of space sank into her bones during all those years among the stars. Whatever history says of Laura Roslin, she rather hopes it will also say that she earned every toe dipped idly in a fountain, every footprint in the sand.

Heading home from campus, Laura takes a full breath, inhaling the warm, salty wind. Better than every memory of sunshine.

***

In the end, Starbuck was right.

Except that it wasn't the end. Not completely. The journey had ended, perhaps, but where their wandering found its terminus rose the fresh peril of reaching an accord with the inhabitants of a pale, blue dot already home to six billion of their cousins. As the communiques began to pass, the greatest of dangers seemed plain to Laura: politics. It was an arena, she had once observed, in which one could meet her undoing time and time again. She imagined Prometheus in chains, the benevolent Titan, condemned to an eternity of dying without death. She found herself wary and pessimistic through the initial weeks of contact, always waiting for the sky to fall again. She was quite surprised when it never did.

Later, there were medical examinations and interrogations that ran through days and nights. There were temporary quarters and unfamiliar clothing. There was sunshine and fresh air. Eventually.

She was given a security detail (much larger than what the Colonial forces had been able to spare), and a motorcade; the trappings of an office she never aspired to and now found herself nearly suffocated by. The mere thought of photo-ops, press briefings, and an entire planet full of new political machinations was enough to make her long for the days of the good old-fashioned Quorum headache. There were also actual meetings, meetings with serious issues and long, bullet-pointed agendas. Congressional and Colonial committees, appointments, and liasons.

Then a day came when she was escorted into a circular room, so bright and spacious after years in wardrooms on Galactica and the cramped cabin of Colonial One that her head nearly spun as her attention was sent everywhere at once.

"President Roslin, I'm Jed Bartlet, and you might be the most interesting person I've ever met. You'll have to trust me when I insist: that's saying something."

***

California. The word has a good weight on Laura's tongue. It feels familiar; feels like Caprica.

But it is not Caprica, and she does not pretend otherwise.

Still, it is a refuge, the last home she will ever have, and it is full of sunshine and green spaces and words that dress this new life they've made in rich, rhythmic syllables that roll off her tongue with the cadence of a foreign dance.

Petaluma, Chula Vista. She finds her dreams of home -- both the real and adopted homes throughout her life -- scattered clearly across the map. Pleasant Hill, Mountain View.

She makes a point of reading the signs along the way home, regarding each recitation as part of some new and growing mantra to the gods of this new world. Joyfully, Laura tosses them into the night, speeding along the winding coastal roads. She sometimes drives for hours just to watch the gradient change of colors across the sky. Sometimes she can't believe it. Other times, so content with the rightness of their home, it is hard to imagine she ever could have doubted.

Clear Lake, Half Moon Bay. Given voice, the names taste like the words to a prayer. Larkspur, Yorba Linda.

This is the only way she prays, now. Laura Roslin threw out the scriptures the day she came ashore to find herself alive and untouched by a prophecy spoken across the light of years on a planet of the gods. By now she has learned to embrace spirituality in spirit, with conviction enough to make room for improvisation.

So too has her leadership evolved. The throne relinquished, her crown destroyed. In the end, Laura was surprised by the difficulty of it. For never having wanted the kind of power she tripped into, she had grown remarkable in the occasion and even if she hadn't originally wanted the responsibility, it no longer necessarily followed that she trusted anyone else to wield it.

Still. It isn't her job anymore.

She turns into the long driveway, lined with its Pacific silvers and sugar pine. The porch light is already on. Thinking briefly of the envelope in her bag, she lingers a few moments longer than usual, wondering how to broach the subject, then turns the key and goes inside.

***

"Madame President."

Laura is repeatedly surprised by the sincerity of Jed Bartlet's attention. Its how he listens; how he looks her in the eye, remembers names and faces. Oh, he can politick -- she's seen that from him too. Has the sore wrist to prove it from all the hand-shaking she's done at his side in the last week.

But now, after the treaty has been signed, her Earthly counterpart is somber and sincere - though his kind eyes are a little merrier than perhaps should be, given their situation. He called to mind the rare, unquenchable students she had taught over the years. Full of endless questions.

"The United States of America has come to the aide of millions of Earth's citizens in times of war, times of pestilence; during moments of economic strife, civil unrest, environmental crisis. We have aided men of faith and men of hatred alike, spared room and resource for those fleeing ethnic, religious, political upheaval -- every brand of persecution our history has ever known. Yet this is a nation of many people, and many of them are going to have some opinions about the decision I make today. Some will support me, and some will take to the streets in protest -- I'm not sure how the Colonial electorate usually responds to your mandates, Madame President, but on a good day mine will only call for my head seven or eight times before breakfast."

He paused, considering his words.

"There are those who look unfavorably on you, and your people."

He met her level gaze.

"But I'm here to tell you, President Roslin, that you will not stand alone."

Laura closed her eyes, feeling the tears that welled unbidden.

"We're going to help you, because we are brothers and sisters; because we are all human; because in the infinite and unfathomable expanse of the universe, we share so much more than can be attributed to chance alone. President Roslin, it would un-American in the most fundamental of ways to deny shelter and safe haven to the last remnants of your undoubtedly great civilization, the size of which, might I add, wouldn't fill the visitor seats at Giants Stadium."

She swallowed, stifling the waves of jubilation that threatened to erupt out of her.

"You did good, Laura," he said, taking hold of her shaking hands.

"Thank you, Jed."

***

Of all the promises Earth has fulfilled, this is her favorite.

"You're leaving tomorrow?" She asks, eyes closed, swaying lazily in his arms.

"Yeah, but I'll be back in a day or two. Meeting with Leo and Fitzwallace. You're going over the speech with the Communications office?"

"Yeah, just in the morning. Then to the hospital and lunch with Abbey." At his dark look, she counters, "Just a checkup, Bill. And I've wanted to see Millie and thank her for the lovely welcome gift."

Upon her faculty appointment, Millicent Griffiths, being both the country's chief medical practitioner and administrator in the refugee settlement process, had presented Laura with a beautiful watercolor of the university campus. Which, naturally, had the virtue of being the good Doctor Griffiths' alma mater.

"Good. Say hello to Abbey for me."

"I will. Oh, I meant to tell you: Lee is doing well."

"He called?"

"He checks in."

There are hazy implications between the words, but she finds that she doesn't mind them anymore. Lee is Lee, no more flawed than she is, and it was always going to be a package deal.

"What is this?"

"Something Admiral Fitzwallace recommended to me." From the next room, a woman croons sadly about lovers with clouded vision, all hearts set afire and reason gone up in smoke. "He told me his wife fell in love with him to this song. Given the competition I have now, thought I could do with all the help I can get. Admirals never lie, you know."

Laura chuckles against the hollow of his neck. "Admirals lie frequently, and with great relish."

"You're thinking of politicians."

Laura smiles against Bill's shoulder as his arms close tighter around her. "Strange, then, that I have this memory of someone who looked a lot like you doing an impassioned bit of speechifying about a lost little planet called Earth and this Thirteenth Tribe..."

"You're a very annoying woman to have such a long memory."

She leans back and appreciates him with a smirk, fingers of one hand toying with the hair at the back of his neck. "How unfortunate for you to have to put up with me. Must have been smoke in your eyes."

He leans in close, stroking the underside of her jaw. "Maybe, but not the kind of smoke Miss Billie is singing about," he quips, and Laura tips her head back with a half-hummed laugh and a "No, you're probably right about that."

They sway a little longer, and even if she doesn't yet want the moment to end, there won't be an easier way to tell him.

"I got the invitation today."

"Yeah. Got one too."

"You too?"

"Saul. And Felix. Couple of the old Fleet engineers at Ames." The NASA research center where they've been testing prototypes of US-made FTL engines has become a kind of Colonial Fleet clubhouse. Not everyone is there -- Lee is in Washington, and Kara. They'll never all be together again, maybe, but the lab and the hangar feel something like the flight deck on Galactica, and it makes the homesickness they both feel for their grand lady that much easier to bear.

Bill nuzzles into her hair, giving a deep sigh. "Part of me never really thought it would come to this."

"Me too. It's hard to believe."

"You ready for this, Madame Former President?"

"I think the better question is: are you, Admiral Emeritus?"

He snorts at her erstwhile sobriquet. "Cute." Then another sigh. "As I'll ever be, I suppose."

Laura reaches in for a kiss, brushing her lips against his as she whispers a fond, "So say we all."

***

The First Lady asked her once what it was like.

Laura found a kindred spirit in Abbey Bartlet: an equally passionate, commanding woman with a sparkling wit and remarkable grace. Abbey was generous and sensible, and had a wicked humor that made Laura incredibly grateful for the first real friend she's had in years. Even if Abbey did -- quite literally so -- make her take her vitamins.

"It was...It was ten kinds of lonely. Cold all the time. When I wasn't worrying about the mistakes I had made, I was worrying about the ones I didn't know I had made. I worried about fuel and Raptors and pilots and schools. Food. Water. Morale. Babies. That part was just second nature, I suppose. I was a teacher, before all this."

Abbey nodded, grim, squeezing her hand across the table, watching her with a tight, sympathetic smile.

"There were pilots dying every day; civilians dying every day. Not enough water; not enough food; not enough fuel. Books, medicine, hope..." She trailed off, putting a chin in hand, running her finger along the rim of her wine glass. "Also, when I was leaving Caprica, I had managed to pack the worst suit..."

And they laughed, not because it was particularly funny, but because sometimes it was all you could do.

***

A day later and she still hasn't been able to bring herself to open the envelope. This, despite knowing exactly what the frakkin' thing said.

With one finger, she traces the linen paper and can't help but admire the finery of it. Such an ordinary thing, and yet, after years of making do with recycled this and repurposed that, it is small luxuries such as this that catch her off guard with something akin to guilt.

Footsteps echo on the far side of the curtain, and Laura tucks the letter away again and continues dressing.

"The hell...Are you -- you're smoking? In a hospital?" A female voice admonishes the unseen perpetrator, whose ubiquitous trace of nicotine would give him away anywhere.

"Hands off -- hey!"

"Give me that."

"Get your own, if you want one so bad."

"Oh God, you're one of those doctors, aren't you? Who the hell are you?"

"Cottle. Who in Hades are you?"

"Griffiths."

"Doctor," they acknowledge simultaneously, if begrudgingly.

"You know those things'll kill you, right? Didn't they teach you anything in medical school in the Colonies?"

"Learned a helluva a lot more than you did in American charm school, I guess."

"Nice personality. What'd you specialize in, pathology?"

"Uppity women," Cottled grumbles, already aggravated from their earlier conversation. "Believe me, young lady, I'm well acquainted with all manner of things that'll kill me in this life, and up until about two months ago a frakkin' cigarette was the least of my problems."

Laura grins at the long pause before Millicent Griffiths' tart reply. "You might have a point there."

Before she can step into the conversation, another voice chimes in. "Are you harassing my Surgeon General again, Sherman?"

"Quite the opposite, Ma'am."

"Millie, play nice..." Abbey says with cheerful warning.

"That might be a waste of effort. I'm not sure 'Sherman' wouldn't know nice if it bit him on the ass."

"What are we looking at?" Abbey pulls out the chart and begins flipping through results. Cottle leans back, crossing his arms over his chest, then waving a hand down the length of the pages as the pair confirm his results. "X-rays clear, bloodwork confirms it. All clear."

With that Laura pushes back the curtain. "I'm curious as to how it is that, throughout the whole of the universe, doctors learn to talk about their patients as if they aren't even in the room?"

"Good news, sugar plum," Abbey says gleefully over her glasses. "You're still in remission. This calls for celebrating."

"Get out," Cottle agrees, jerking his head to the doorway. "You're still a miracle of science."

"Damn straight. Come on, hon. Let's leave these two to their bickering. It's the first step to true love, you know?"

As Abbey takes her arm, Laura can't help but flash on her own tumultuous beginnings with Bill, thinking, That's not far off, actually...

***

"I taught at Dartmouth College, Madame President, and don't let those fools on the hill in Ithaca or pansy-ass crimson legacies in Cambridge sneer at their proud northern cousins..."

In the course of her political career, Laura had known men in love with the sound of their own voice. Men who'd wax philosophical for no other reason than to gift the worlds with their self-important and authoritative diatribes. Gaius Baltar, for one. But before she met Jed Bartlet, Laura had never met someone so in love with his own breadth of knowledge.

Jed Bartlet was a good man. Laura made a mental note to ask him someday why in hell he'd gone in to politics.

Despite his encyclopedic knowledge, and verbose tendencies that threatened to monopolize the better half of any conversation (particularly the more arcane), the sheer size of his affection rivaled only one man she had ever known. The fathomless depths of Jed's love for his family, his friends, and his country echoed those of Bill Adama, and for not the first time, Laura wondered what might have become of her Admiral had it not been for the first Cylon War.

But then, he would not have been her Bill. And that was all there was to it.

***

"Have out with it, Toby. How did it go?"

"I love her," Toby breathes, looking shell-shocked at the thought of yesterday's (his first) meeting with the former Colonial leader. "I love her. I love her mind. I love her shoes. I'm scared to death of her, but I love her."

"Josh?"

"I agree with Toby sir -- she's fabulous."

"Sam?"

"She's a PhD, incredibly smart, articulate, hot..."

"Completely hot, sir. And powerful. And maybe a little crazy. In a good way. She's like Joan of Arc meets Cleopatra," Josh reasons.

"Who was, by the way, also hot," Sam points out.

"Supernova hot," Josh agrees.

"Toby, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you not, at the moment, attempting to coerce your ex-wife, who is also carrying your children, to remarry you? And you're bewitched by a woman who is, for all intents and purposes, an alien?"

"I have a thing for redheads, sir. Especially the ones who yell at me."

Jed sighs. "Well, my wife seems to like her, and I'm reasonably certain that can only mean trouble. Usually just for me, but why not international diplomacy every now and again..."

"She's got this librarian-slash-vixen thing going on," Josh continues, staring off into space. "Makes you feel like you're fourteen again and Mrs. McGillivray has you in detention, all alone..."

The President holds up a hand. "I'm going to stop right there before I hear more than I ever cared to know about your freshman year of high school, Josh."

"I love her. Sir, I might very well end up voting for her come the next election."

"You know she wasn't even born on this planet, let alone in this country?" Jed points out.

"That makes little to no difference to me," Toby admits. "Plus, those legs."

Sam looks up, amazement on his face. "Oh my god. We should sell pin-up calendars. Six months tops, we'd end national debt. Also am I the only one who would feel lot better if she were in charge of this brave new thing we've gotten into rather than, I don't know, that Zarek schmuck we got?"

"Seriously," Josh agrees. "Like the Lord of the Sith right over on Massachusetts Avenue..."

"Roslin's hot, Zarek's creepy...Well, I'm glad you're all in agreement," Jed summarizes facetiously. "You know how much I like to enact policy based on the fact that my staff is all getting on like good boys and girls."

"By the way," he turns to gesture to a stoic figure trailing silently behind them all. "This is Admiral Adama, head of the Colonial Fleet." He pauses, eyes dancing with mischief, "President Roslin's second-in-command. Among other things."

The three senior advisors seem to collectively shrink. Josh holds out a hand in greeting. "Admiral. Sir. Very good to meet you. I hear excellent things."

"What things would those be?"

"Well, you...managed to get a battlestar and forty thousand people across the universe. It's not a Fulbright, but it deserves some applause." 

Adama stares him down. "Yes."

"Sam Seaborn," Sam quickly interjects, before Josh finds himself on a trajectory into the sun. "Welcome to the White House."

"Toby Zeigler."

"You're in charge of communications?" Adama asks, his gaze never wavering.

"Yes, Admiral. Yes, I am."

"I'm not sure I agree with your earlier characterization of my President," he says very, very slowly.

"No?" Toby squeaks.

"No," Adama's eyes glitter as one corner of his mouth turns up. "Her legs are great, but I've always been partial to her ass."

***

From the first, there was a deep rift between those who accepted their rag-tag refugee fleet, and those who, very clearly, did not.

There were op-eds against them, full of barely disguised racism and religious debate. Scientific miracles and mysteries that went deep, deep into both of their histories. Nightmares of international diplomacy immediately, and not one former colonial citizen had yet been issued a passport.

There were also many who embraced them, were curious about their worlds, their customs, history and technology. More supporters than adversaries, really, (they are something of a miracle, she has been told) but it is all deeply unsettling.

There are a thousand problems that she routinely bats at, like an unending horde of mosquitoes. Except now she doesn't have to do it alone Blessedly, she won't have to do it at all for much longer
.

***

"NO! No, no, no, no!"

"CJ--"

"No! You listen to me on this one, space cadet!"

"--Gods, it was a twenty-minute conversation, not redacted files in a dark alley--"

"Listen to me, buddy-boy. You come in here like some poor man's Tom Cruise, acting all Top Gun with the uniform and the sash thing and the 'look-at-me-I'm-Apollo-I-can-do-no-wrong' attitude."

"What'd you do to you piss her off this time, Leland?" Kara Thrace ducks her head through the doorway, falling out of step next to Kate Harper, who appears a second later.

"CJ doesn't like when I talk to the press."

"This is my show here, skippy! I run that press room, and I am in charge of controlling the news cycle on this interplanetary circus. You don't go off having casual lunches with Danny Concannon like you're long-lost best pals. He's not your college roommate. He's not your friendly next door neighbor who comes over for Sunday picnic: he is a reporter and he will use whatever you say to him for his Next. Damn. Book."

Lee throws his hands out, gesturing. "I know he's writing a book, CJ. You know how I know it? He walked up to me and said, 'Hi, I'm Danny Concannon; I'm writing a book about Laura Roslin. Can I buy you lunch?' He's also a decent guy who let's me finish a damn sentence--"

"Be that as it may, Captain Hammer, you okay things by me beforehand for the time being. When Tom Zarek gets his Department of Outer Space Annoyances --"

"Extraterrestrial Immigration."

"Whatever! When his department is, at long last, assembled to the bare minimum of functionality, you will no longer be my problem. But until then, Mr. Adama, and you too, Seattle's Best, or whatever the hell your name is. You both" she growls, gesturing sharply from Lee to Kara with a pencil, "will refrain from non-sanctioned sit-downs with my least favorite creation on God's green Earth: reporters. Am. I. Clear?"

Kara looks up at CJ, her expression a mixture of curiosity and disbelief. "You're kind of freakish, you know that?"

"You're kind of a pain in my ass, you know that?"

"It's been pointed out before, ma'am. Several hundred times."

"Out of my office!"

Kara and Kate leap away from the doorframe as Lee huffs off.

Appraising him as he stomps down the hall, Kate comments, "Now I see what CJ calls him Princess Lee-a."

"Is she always like this?" Kara whispers to Kate.

Kate leans in. "Usually. Especially after reading the morning blogs. People on the internet really get on her nerves."

"Good to know." A beat. "Seattle's Best?"

"The coffee place? Oh, I get it. Like Starbuck's," Kate realizes.

"Ah."

***

"Your family?" Bill inquired, gesturing to the photo of two grown boys and a smiling dark-haired woman beside a much-younger Admiral Percy Fitzwallace.

"Yep. Boys Stephen and Michael, both Navy men like their Dad. My wife, Laura."

The corner of Bill's mouth twitched a little.

"You know what's funny?"

"What's that?" The American inquired, handing him a tumbler.

"My wife's name is Laura, too."

Fitzwallace gave him a look of incredulity, then errupted in laughter. "Oh, boy. Why do I think that's gonna cause some problems?"

"Should it?"

"Might complicate things.

"She does rather excel at creating complications. Maybe I should start spreading around the story of how I threw her in the brig. I'd earn the sympathies of husbands everywhere."

Fitzwallace howled in laughter again. "You sure ain't wrong, Bill. You sure ain't wrong."

***

Rescheduled meetings and office hours and missed flights later, they agree to meet on the day of the event. As human extinction and either the one or other's certain death has been the dominant issue for the better part of their relationship, the little domestic hiccups are far easier to cope with by comparison.

The car rolls up outside the event grounds. The President isn't due to speak for another hour yet and already the marina is packed, the grounds of the newly established National Historic Park veritably flooded with people. A familiar face catches her eye as she makes her way toward the steps, and she calls out to him. "Toby!"

"Madame President," he smiles bashfully, and falls into step with her. "A pleasure to see you, as always."

"You know I'm not President anymore, Toby," Laura teases.

"As I am sure has been explained to you before, ma'am, it is our tradition to bestow that title for life upon those who hold the highest office possible. It's an...honorific. It's a sign of respect for the office, for the man -- or woman -- and all the weight of his or her decisions--" Toby scratches at his head, trying to reach for the height of his considerable eloquence. It is precious, really. She has the strong urge to pet him.

"I know that, Toby," she replies fondly. "I just like getting you all flustered."

"Ah. Well, you are uncommonly good at it, Madame President."

At that, she finds herself recalling a conversation with Bill earlier in the week. "Oh, that reminds me, Toby. Admiral Adama said I should run some interesting ideas by you."

"Of course Madame President. I live to serve."

"Well, it was something about a calendar and ending national debt..." Seeing Toby's face freeze, she flashes him a wicked grin. "My husband, for all his grim authority, does have a sense of humor, Toby." With a wink, she leaves him standing by the security check, flummoxed.

"I love you!" He calls plaintively after her retreating figure.

"Did I miss Laura?" Andy emerges from the crowd, one hand on the swell of her stomach.

"I love her," Toby says, voice heavy with misery, punctuated by a long-suffering sigh.

"Yes, honeybunch, but she won't have you. It's all very sad."

"Position, longing...Like an outer-space Wharton novel, my life."

"Let's get you some pie, Mr. Frome."

"Okay."

***

Zarek, of course, had no hesitations when he stepped in to take her place, and did so with such triumph that Laura quickly found herself reviewing the eligibility clause in the US Constitution. She was certain Tom would soon be doing the same, if he hadn't done so already.

But, in the end, he did what no one else -- save Baltar, briefly -- had ever done for her. He took the weight from her shoulders and gladly accepted the burden of governing, leaving her free to start a new chapter, whatever it might hold. Here on Earth, she was able to make her own destiny.

"Laura, I hear you accepted a position." Jed inquired, taking a seat across from her. She'd been staring out the high, half-moon window onto the lawns below. The White House residence, while more informal than the West Wing, was still quite auspicious. "Congratulations," he offered.

"Thank you, I'm looking forward to it. I'll be teaching Colonial History at Stanford next semester, and designing curriculum for a number of forthcoming courses."

"That sounds fantastic," Jed said eagerly. "But why couldn't you have taught here in Washington? We have some top-notch schools, its the center of government. I'll kick one of my kids out and you can even have the bedroom down the hall."

"Dad!" Zoe Bartlet protested.

"Oh, like you even use it, darling daughter of mine."

"Oh no -- far too close to my esteemed former colleagues. The last thing I want is Tom calling me up to settle his latest problem. Now that we don't have to be sharing a ship the size of the Roosevelt Room, I find I'd like to keep as much distance between us as possible. Like, a continent or so. Maybe two, if the time difference isn't enough to discourage him."

"Well I'm sorry to hear that,"Jed agreed genially. "I'd have been the first person to register for your course."

Abbey, perched on the side of his chair, slung an arm around her husband's shoulder affectionately. "He would, too. He'd have put Sam in charge for an hour or so a day in order to be early and stay late for your lectures."

"Sam would make a good President," Jed remarked, slightly put-off. "And I would have been your best student. But, as it is, you'll have all those tow-headed punks out in Palo Alto who surf to school. New England! Now that's where scholars are made!"

Jed went off onto a long-winded treatise on the legacy of Northeast-born Presidents as Laura and Lee politely nodded. Zoe Bartlet rolled her eyes and gently chastised her father for 'boring the guests.' In the corner, Abbey chatted with Bill about the progress they'd made in Mountain View and through the door, Kara seemed to be challenging Charlie Young to a game of kitchen pyramid.

Someday, a voice inside said, someday she would pay for the secrets they had kept, and at a far greater cost than these friendships, which she would certainly lose.

But Hera Agathon was safe. Her mother was safe, regarded no differently than her human husband, friends, coworkers. An anonymous family, beginning a new life on Earth.

Laura caught her husband's gentle smile across the room. Almost like her own.

***

She finds him inside already, staring out at the growing crowds. His shoulders hunch in a posture of slight despondence. Entirely warranted, she thinks, given this is essentially the wake for his Old Girl.

The invitation describes today as a kind of Colonial Day. A commemoration: five years after that fateful decommissioning ceremony and Galactica had finally been set down in dry dock, as per the terms of the Colonial settlement. FTL and space folding technology in return for freedom, for their lives. The ship would become something of a living memorial -- everything save the weapons lockers and nuclear arsenal left as is, preserved for the posterity Bill had once told her mattered above all else. A remembrance for all that had been lost; all that had been fought for; all that had been won.

Laura still feels like she's at a funeral.

Running her hand across his back, she tucks against his side, closer than a President and her military commander should. She doesn't care. Danny's book will make that last public revelation apparent soon enough. Today they are losing a part of their family, and to see her great bulk so broken, so lifeless, takes a strength that comes from numbers.

"We had a ship, too." Jed says quietly, coming to their side.

"I'm sorry?" Laura asks, tearing her eyes away from the vista.

"Among the first settlers of this land were pilgrim men and women, persecuted by their government, possessing great and revolutionary beliefs that cast them apart from the society they knew. They stood with their backs straight, and in the face of emotional grief and physical hardship the likes of which I cannot begin to fathom --and which you both surely must know with intimate heartache -- they set out across a vast ocean whose end held no promise of ease or comfort. There was no guarantee of survival. They could only imagine, could only hope, that the New World was better than the one they were leaving behind.

"Their journey, like every exodus, was long and arduous, and many did not survive to see the hopes they longed for realized. But when they arrived on this nation's shores, they turned and gave thanks for their ship, the Mayflower, which bore them safe passage."

He pauses in his soliloquy, and gives her a wry look.

"Revisionist history is a hell of a thing, Madame President, and I'd ask, one scholar to another, for you to keep that in mind as you study our histories, which are given as much to crime and ugliness as they are to triumphs of quality and virtue. Were they steadfast and resolute? Yes, but the Pilgrims were also uptight prisses with a tendency toward to pettiness, fear-mongering and zealotry...and it's all a part of our history.

The doors open as the military band begins a stirring introductory anthem. Faintly, Laura recognizes the refrain to the Colonial anthem.

"Our lives here began back there, and if we have that much in common, Laura, Bill, then I have faith in our future." With that, he nods, making his way through the entranceway to the podium where he'll introduce the Admiral and the President, giving Bill and Laura a moment more.

"We really made it," Laura whispers.

"We did."

He touches his brow to hers, as intimate a gesture as they have either the time or opportunity for. "I love you."

"I love you. Now, let's get this over with so we can go home."

"Okay."

Jed's announcement follows. As they step out onto the stage, the crowds thunder around them.

***

We come on the ship they call Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
and sing an American tune.

***

Laura and Bill are dancing to "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," by Miss Billie Holiday.