A big plate of brownies to adama-roslinlove, for both the idea for this chapter and the continuing enthusiasm for this story.

Chapter Four

Laura was cold.

He'd only left her for a few hours, just long enough to split another batch of logs for their cabin, and then haul them up to the site.

Usually, Laura came with him, and they worked together. But today, she'd wanted to stay; there were weeds coming up in the garden, she'd said, and she wanted to pull them before they grew too tall, before the roots had a chance to thicken and take hold. He wanted to keep working on their cabin; after four months on this planet, and nearly that long at construction, they were finally starting to see something emerge from their labor, something that looked like it could be a home someday.

He couldn't wait for Laura to live there.

He'd offered to stay with her, anyway, to put off the work until tomorrow.

She'd laughed at him, gently, and asked him how he intended to miss her if he never let her out of his sight.

He said it would only be for a few hours.

She said she would be fine.

But when he came back to their tent that night and crawled into their sleeping bag beside her…it wasn't Laura anymore.

She was cold.

His shaking fingers fumbled for her wrist, as he prayed desperately to find a pulse, to see any signs of life left in her body.

There was nothing.

She was dead.

He was alone.

"Are you planning to stay in bed all day?"

Bill Adama's eyes flew open.

Laura was kneeling beside him, wrapped in his bathrobe, short wisps of red hair clinging damply to her scalp. She must have sneaked out of their sleeping bag and gone for an early-morning swim in the lake.

Without thinking, he pulled her down on top of him, droplets of water from her hair dripping down his face, her chest pressed to his, her steady heartbeat a comforting counterpoint to the pounding of his own.

"Good morning to you, too," Laura said, her dry voice muffled.

He kissed the top of her head, tasting lake water. "Morning," he whispered, tightening his arms around her.

"You okay?" Laura murmured against his neck.

Bill closed his eyes. He wouldn't tell her. What would be the point? It had just been a dream, after all, only a stupid frakking dream…

But Laura put such stock in dreams.

"Just happy to see you," he managed.

"You see me every day," Laura pointed out.

And it makes me happy every day.

"How was the lake?" he said instead.

Laura propped herself up on his chest and pressed a finger against his lips. "Don't start."

"Don't start what?" Bill asked, honestly confused.

"You don't mean, 'How was the lake,'" Laura informed him. "You mean, 'It makes me uncomfortable when you go swimming alone because I'm afraid you'll drown or be eaten by crocodiles.'"

Bill couldn't remember phrasing it quite that way, but he couldn't deny that the sentiment sounded familiar.

"And it was lovely," Laura said, flashing him a smile. "Thanks for asking."

He was never letting her out of his sight ever again.

"Maybe I'll get up and go with you tomorrow morning, then," he offered.

"You hate early-morning swimming," Laura reminded him. "You said if you wanted to immerse yourself in tepid water that smelled funny you would have gone to the pool back on Galactica."

That, Bill could remember saying.

"And it's high time I got over it," Bill replied. "So don't leave without me tomorrow, okay?"

Laura smoothed the creases in his forehead with her thumb. "Are you sure you're okay?" she asked, her voice quiet.

"Positive," Bill said, more strongly than he felt.

From the arch to Laura's eyebrows, he knew she didn't believe him. "Are you ready to head out, then?" she asked. "We were going to cut some more logs, and work in the garden…"

"I thought we could stay here today," Bill said, trying to keep his tone casual, not panicked. "I can't remember the last time we read together."

"It was when we finished Searider Falcon," Laura reminded him, a line appearing between her brows. "I know you remember that."

Of course he remembered.

They'd read the ending on the last rainy day here, Bill reading aloud, his head nestled in Laura's lap, her fingers moving through his hair, beginning to grow out of its military cut. When he'd reached the very last sentence, a droplet had appeared on the page, and he'd looked up to see that Laura was crying.

He'd cried, then, too.

Neither of them had ever thought they'd make it this far.

"Maybe we should read it over again," he said.

The crease between Laura's brows deepened. "What happened to 'A day that goes by without us working on the cabin is another day until we move in'?"

He could remember saying that, too,

"One day won't make a difference," he said instead.

Slowly, Laura pulled away from him to sit up. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong, or are you going to keep making me guess?"

He could not tell Laura Roslin, former President of the Twelve Colonies, Dying Leader, and one-time prophet, that he was scared of a bad dream.

"I have all day," Laura reminded him.

He wasn't sure how he was going to get out of telling her, either.

"It's nothing," he said, pulling himself up so that they were level. "Let's start in the garden today."

Laura Roslin, former President of the Twelve Colonies, Dying Leader, and one-time prophet, slid her glasses onto her face, looked at him over the rims, and waited.

He'd seen her use this stare on terrorists, Quorum delegates, and unruly four-year-olds alike. But Bill Adama was not so easily intimidated. He waited, too.

Laura didn't move, her commanding gaze in no way diminished by the fact that she was sitting cross-legged in a bathrobe with wet hair.

Actually, Bill was fairly certain she'd given him this look, too, the day they'd met, the day of the attacks…sitting across the table from him, a pencil playing between her fingers, a superior smirk on her face.

We need to get the hell out of here and we need start having babies.

A rueful smile tugged at his lips. She'd been right then, too.

"It's nothing," he said again. "A dream, that was all."

Laura's gaze didn't waver. "What kind of dream?"

He really, really didn't want to tell Laura about his dream. "Not your kind of dream," he answered. "Just the regular kind of dream. The kind that doesn't mean anything."

Laura's face softened. "How did I die this time, Bill?"

"That's not—" Bill cleared his throat. "It was just a dream," he repeated.

Laura reached out to brush his arm. "Of course it was," she agreed.

Except what if it wasn't.

His hand fumbling for hers, her body cold and silent in their tent.

What if he lost her now, after all they'd been through? What if her cancer came back? What if her cancer was back now, and they just didn't know it? What if she was dying right now?

"Bill?"

And it wasn't just her cancer. There were a thousand things that could kill Laura on this planet. What if she drowned in that lake she loved? What if she were caught in a lightning storm? What if their cabin caught fire? What if—

Laura moved closer, cupped his face in her hands. "Bill. I'm right here."

And she was, he knew that, but what if she wasn't tomorrow? What if he lost her the next day, or the next week, or the next month?

He could not live in her cabin alone.

A deep shudder ran through him.

He couldn't imagine anything worse than that.

He could picture it so clearly: a lonely old man on a hill, building a home for a dead woman, talking to a grave—

Then Laura leaned forward and pressed her lips against his, and he could feel the pressure on his lungs easing, the weight lifting off his chest.

If he could just hold onto this moment, protect it, live in it forever…

Too soon, she pulled back, her hands still holding his face.

"I'm right here," she repeated. "I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me anymore."

His hands covered hers. "Who's worried?"

Her lips quirked. "I am," she informed him, releasing him to settle back down onto his chest. "I'm worried I've been working you too hard, if you're willing to take any pathetic excuse for a day off."

"It's true," he said, pulling her closer. "You're a slave driver."

Laura sighed contentedly. "I've been called worse."

"I know," Bill reminded her. "I've called you worse myself."

Her laughter was rich, soothing, and he closed his eyes, letting himself get lost in in the sound of her voice and the feel of her body in his arms, trying to forget the images that still lurked in his mind.

It was only a dream, he told himself, bringing one hand up, running his fingers through the short tufts of hair at the back of her neck. Laura was fine. She was safe. They were together.

Some days, that seemed like a dream, their life together here too lovely, too perfect, to be true.

He was sharing a tent with Laura Roslin on Earth.

They were building a cabin.

I don't think I've ever felt truly at home until these last few months, here with you.

He'd known what she meant then, as he sat by her bed in sickbay, forcing a smile for her, trying to ignore the beeping of the machines that counted down her heartbeats. Having her in his quarters, her bare feet on the rug, her glasses strewn haphazardly on his desk, her bare head beside his on the pillow every night…it had been the best time of his life, even as the fleet fell apart around them, even as he was losing everything, even as she was fading from the world, from life, from him.

This, now, is better.

Laura shifted in his grip, her head settling onto his shoulder, her hand coming up to smooth his chest. "You know," she said, "I'm not sure I remember the end of Love and Bullets."

He knew that she did. They'd finished it together, one night, in what was by then their quarters in all but name, with him sitting beside her as she lay curled up in what used to be his rack, what was now her rack, what would soon be their rack.

He kissed her forehead. "You know, I'm not sure I remember, either."

Of course he did.

He reached for the box that held their books, safeguarded from rain and dirt and dust, but always within reach, and found that particular dog-eared volume, carefully nestled among the rest.

"Maybe you should start at the beginning," Laura suggested, her hand still tracing soothing circles on his chest, above his heart.

"Maybe we should," Bill agreed, settling his glasses onto his nose and cracking open the spine.

"We have time," Laura reminded him.

His smile turned crooked.

Yes. They did.

He had to remember that.

"It started the way it always did, with a body," he read aloud. "This one was in the river, and I could tell that she had once been beautiful, but this bullet and a fast current had taken that away from her."

He remembered the first time he'd read those words to her, as an apology, an encouragement, a confession, back when everything in their world was dying and he couldn't face the fact that she was, too, when every moment seemed to be slipping away from him so fast, when the thought that she might not know what she meant to him was as terrifying as the thought that she might.

"All that we are, or that we think we are, all that we are certain of, is taken away from us," he continued.

That was exactly what he was afraid of.

Laura pressed a kiss to his neck, and he knew that she knew it, too.

"When you've worked the streets and seen what I've seen, you become more and more convinced of it every day."

Laura reached a hand up, pulled the blanket down over both of them.

"Caprica City had been my teacher, my mistress. From the moment I open my eyes, she is in my blood, like cheap wine," he said, his eyes no longer on the page, on the words he knew by heart, but on Laura, curled up on top of him. "Bitter and sweet, tinged with regret. I'll never be free of her, nor do I want to be, for she is what I am—"

Gently, Laura took the book from his hands, and propped herself up on one elbow so that she could see him…and he could see her.

"—all that is, should always be," she finished, a half-smile on her lips, her pale green eyes deadly serious.

Without taking his eyes off hers, he removed his glasses, removed hers, set them, side by side, on top of Love and Bullets.

Maybe rereading this book could wait another day, too.