Felix isn't sure what makes him do it.

It's just…the schoolhouse. Something draws him to a halt, next to the doors. Something about the weakened sunlight and the weight of the Cylon occupation, the sharp memory of a meeting about the rapidly blooming Resistance; something about the cold powdery earth under his feet.

School is out for the day; at least, it should be. The sun is nearly to the horizon. The children should be home with their parents.

Felix's hand moves to the flap of the tent; untied. There might still be someone inside, and that makes him hesitate, but he pushes it away, barely sparing a glance to make sure he isn't being watched.

Of course, he can't be certain, with the New Caprica Police.

The tent is darker, inside. There aren't any lights on, but there's a kind of peace here. An innocence.

Felix touches a crayon drawing, thrown haphazardly on the teacher's desk – Laura Roslin's desk – and he doesn't smile, but he comes close. He never had an affinity with children; his niece, back home, cried when he held her, even as a baby. He was never sure who was more scared, though, the child or Felix himself…

"Lieutenant Gaeta?"

Felix spins, his heart pounding, a guilty startle, even though he hasn't been doing anything. The tone of the question registers – more surprise than accusation.

"It's not Lieutenant anymore," he corrects, with a fake half-smile.

Laura Roslin crosses her arms. "What are you doing here?" She pulls off her glasses. "Please don't tell me they've passed another sanction—"

"No," Felix cuts her off, softly. "I just," and he stops. "I'm sorry, I'll go."

She doesn't stop him, but she watches him, appraisal in her eyes. It makes Felix uncomfortable, and he ducks away, flees before he can do any more damage.

----

Felix feels obligated, somehow, and the next day during one of the Cylon arguments – not a shouting match, this time, thankfully – he speaks. Interrupts one of the Eights, arguing against using resources to give to the New Caprica police, cuts off a Cavil, arguing for it.

"You could always give more resources to the schools."

His statement silences them immediately, more thoroughly than he was expecting, and they stare at him. Baltar, especially, eyes wide with a kind of psychotic desperation that Felix envies. He wishes he could let himself go, the way Baltar does.

For a moment, he thinks they're going to order him out of the office, fire him, do something horrible – maybe take more resources away from the schools – but one of the Dorals cocks his head. "He may have a point."

The arguments for it build on their own, without any help from Felix himself – a demonstration of unity, a touching gesture after the carnage of the latest suicide bombing. Something poignant, something for the humans to consider.

Still, it shocks him deep inside when they agree. Somehow, he didn't think he'd ever improve anything from within, even with the information he passes.

----

His hand still itches from the papers he's just slipped into the dead drop.

This is the worst time – the few instants just afterwards, when he's drawn tense, ready to snap, ready to feel the explosion of a bullet in his back or the cry of a Cylon telling him to stop. He keeps his eyes to the ground, stride quick. The best way to get through this is just to—

"Gaeta."

Felix nearly jumps out of his skin, but it's only Laura Roslin again. He stops, and feels suddenly awkward, like he doesn't know how to hold himself or where to put his hands. He settles with slipping them into his jacket pockets, wondering if it makes him look as dodgy as he feels.

She approaches him, head tilted a little. "The Cylons sent us new supplies," she tells him.

"Ah, I know," says Felix, not quite meeting her gaze.

"Felix," she says. "That's your first name, isn't it?"

Felix nods.

She smiles, just a little, and it warms something inside him. "Whatever you did," says Roslin, "don't hesitate to do it again."

His words catch in his throat – I spoke up in a meeting, they're always so angry, I'm sorry – but he wasn't sure what he was sorry for, and before he could unstuck his throat, she brushed past him, a gentle touch on his arm.

Felix walks on, and he's not as afraid of getting caught, this time.

----

"Overhaul the file system," snaps Simon. "It's getting unmanageable."

I have better things to do. "I'll get to it next," says Felix.

----

There are dozens, thousands of files here. Full of paper – ship's logs, records from before the Cylon invasion. Many of them are useless, even for posterity, and Felix gathers them, intending to throw them away. It's a huge task, and he's filled up an entire bag's worth when he stops.

Most of the paper is only one-sided …

That afternoon he leaves early and stops by the schoolhouse, his feet almost faltering before he enters.

The kids are still here, this time, working on something in silence. A test, maybe.

"What are you doing here?" It's…Tory Foster, Felix thinks her name is; President Roslin's former assistant.

"Ah, I'm looking for Laura Roslin," he says, trying to keep his voice down.

"She's busy." It's curt, dismissive.

"It's all right, Tory," and Roslin emerges from behind shelves. "What is it?"

Felix unhooks the bag from his shoulder and holds it out. "I know there's a paper shortage," he says, hesitantly, "and I thought – well, this would have just been thrown away."

He shifts, nervous, as Roslin opens the bag, realizes what's inside.

Her mouth twists, and her eyes light. "Thank you, Felix," and she smiles at him.

It makes him go a little weak, and he's not sure why.

Before he leaves, he catches Tory, looking at him with a kind of grudging respect. It's a victory; a small one, but a victory all the same.

----

Sometimes Felix wonders why he bothered to ask for a tent, a place outside the Cylon compound, a hefty walk away from Colonial One. A lot of Baltar's employees just stay close; they hardly ever venture out anymore. They've lost touch. But Felix hasn't.

But, during the night, he's alone, painfully alone. The settling dusk brings noises, the sounds of families, of couples. Quiet, just inaudible conversation. The clank of a centurion patrolling the streets, enforcing curfew. And through it all, Felix Gaeta, curled on his bed, wishing so hard that he were anywhere but here that it almost seems real sometimes.

The service pistol in the drawer, at the foot of his bed, feels like it's glowing, day and night, like Felix can see it from a mile away. If only he could – if only –

"Gaeta?" calls a voice, from outside the tent.

Felix uncurls, steps to the entrance. It's Tory, her scarf wrapped tightly around her neck, holding a letter in her hand.

"What is it?" he asks.

"This is from Laura," says Tory. "And from the children." She slips him the piece of paper, and he holds it, not sure whether to open it now, or not. "Curfew's soon," she cuts into his indecision, "I should be going." She moves away quickly, hunched as though from the cold.

Felix opens the piece of paper – a hand-drawn thank you note, signed by every student in the class. It's just perfect, suddenly, the moment drawn to a poignancy that almost hurts.

The next morning, without even thinking about it, Felix tucks the paper into an inside pocket and heads off to another day.

----

The next time, it's in the middle of some kind of demonstration. All Felix is doing is trying to get through the crowd, trying to slip away before Centurions start overreacting, but he can't – the people are too thick, too close together. He's irritated, his vision clouded with it, jaw clenched, and he's this close to panicking—

He doesn't know when precisely Roslin slips to his side, but when he sees her, she smiles briefly and slips her arm through his.

Felix breathes.

"Do you believe in the gods, Felix?" she asks.

His first name, and it jars something inside him. "I don't know what to believe," he tells her, honestly.

She smiles, wider this time, and it stays. "It's a start."

Felix calms, and he sees now, that the demonstration centers around three priestesses in the center of the square, how a simple gesture from them sends a ripple of feeling through the crowd, something pure and shared.

He turns, and Roslin is watching him, examining something in his bearing. It doesn't make him as uncomfortable as he's expecting, somehow, and he feels the unity flood through him, and he wishes, with all he is, that he were truly part of this crowd.

She rests her head against his shoulder, and Felix is disappointed when the demonstration ends, and she slips away, without another word.

His legs ache when he gets back to his tent, and he falls asleep as soon as he crawls under the covers.

----

In dreams, there's long hair in between his fingers, smooth and bold, and when he inhales, it reminds him of something long-lost.

----

"…not teaching by sanction-approved standards."

Felix's steps falter, automatically, and he pretends to need to tie his shoe, in case there are cameras watching this segment of the hallway. He listens, very carefully, to the Cylons – their meeting room is open, just a crack –

"I agree. We'll have to begin inspections immediately."

"Later today?"

"Yes."

"Don't bring an excess amount of Centurions. This is friendly, remember."

"Of course."

Felix darts to his feet, his heart racing, and he moves away as deliberately as he can.

----

He's going to get caught, he's going to get caught – this might be the most dangerous information pass he's ever done, and it's not even for the resistance. There's no reason for him to be here, he doesn't have a cover story prepared, definitely not one that anyone inside could back up.

But Felix steps inside the school tent anyway.

Tory is reading a story, out loud, to the younger children in the back of the room. Roslin, at the front, seems to be going through math problems. Simple ones, maybe intermediate algebra.

At his entrance, a silence spreads through the tent, and Felix's pulse pounds at the eyes on him.

He ducks to Roslin, down next to her ear, and whispers: "Cylon inspection later today. Be ready."

Roslin's eyes widen, and she takes off her glasses.

"I have to," begins Felix.

"Go, do whatever you need to." She gestures for him to go, and his heart sinks, somehow.

But just before he ducks out –

"Felix."

He turns back.

"Thank you," she says, firmly, and everything's okay.

He nods, once, and slips away.

----

That night, in his dreams, a viper – a snake – slides in between his arm and his body. It seems to look at him, deliberately, and then it strikes, sinks its teeth into the flesh on the inside of his wrist.

Felix twists awake, sweating, and he can't seem to go back to sleep.

By the time the morning comes, the skin on his wrist is worn red from the rubbing, constant rubbing and scratching, as though that would make the dream fade away.

----

"These are for you."

This time it was Roslin herself, showing up outside his tent, and the package she hands to him is unidentifiable – small enough to hold with one hand, but lumpy.

"Ah, will you," he starts, stepping aside.

She ducks past him, inside the tent.

Felix is embarrassed, suddenly – he doesn't know how well she lives, how well most of the people in Caprica City live. He has the feeling that he's better off, working in the office of the President, but he doesn't know for sure.

When he opens the package, he can smell it – a half-crumbled slice of cane cake, like he hasn't had since he was a child.

"Sugar is rationed," says Roslin, "and we had a piece left over. One of the students baked it."

We had a piece left over – no, of course they didn't. In a school, especially one as hungry as this one, the cake would have disappeared in an instant. No, this piece she saved for him specifically. Either that, or she just gave him hers.

When he offers her half, she holds up a hand. "I couldn't."

"In the spirit of a gift, freely given," he echoes, something from the Scriptures.

Roslin lets herself smile. "You know," she says, the words a little drawn-out, "it's been a long time since I've had cane cake."

This time, when Felix offers, she doesn't turn him down.

Later, she asks, "What makes you keep your job?"

Felix hesitates.

"Don't tell me it's the chance to give school-children spare paper," she continues, "because it's not."

He drops his gaze. He wants to be honest with her, not just tell her the usual 'I believed I could make a difference' or just implying that he still has loyalty for Gaius Baltar. He doesn't want to lie, and it feels almost foreign to him, like he doesn't quite remember what honesty feels like. "Don't ask me," he says softly, "please."

"You're very unique, aren't you?"

And he doesn't respond.

Before she leaves, he manages to work up the courage to ask if she'll come back sometime – because the evenings just get so very lonely sometimes.

----

And she does. But the conversation devolves, as conversations sometimes do, and then they're speaking of the election, of Gaius Baltar and New Caprica.

"The people who voted for Gaius Baltar made a mistake, and that's all right. Mistakes happen."

It doesn't help, not at all. Felix ducks his head. "Everyone assumes that," he says.

"I'm sorry?" Roslin asks.

"They assume," he repeats. "That I voted for Gaius Baltar. From the voting fraud and, everything that came before." His throat feels oddly tight, but there's something clean about coming out and saying it, finally. "No one ever asked."

Roslin cocks her head to the side. "Who did you vote for, Felix?"

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" asks Felix. "I knew you, I knew Gaius Baltar." He takes a breath. "He'd offered me a job, but I wasn't so sure that I wanted to take it. And I didn't know that I wanted to settle down on a planet. It felt like giving up." Felix realizes, distantly, that he's biting his lip, and hard. He consciously unclenches his jaw. "Of course I voted for you."

There, he said it.

But she's still watching him, and it makes him sit further back on his bed, his back against the headboard, and fight the urge to draw his knees to his chest. "You voted for me," she says, evenly. "With your belief in President Baltar, forgive me if I find that hard to believe."

He looks away. "Even Dee thought I voted for him," he says, miserably. "No one ever bothered to ask," closing his eyes. "They all made it clear that I wasn't welcome, after I uncovered the fraud," and now the words spill out of him. They've been building for so long and it feels like an explosion, a horrible break inside that he'll never be able to heal. "And I took the job," he chokes, the touch of a cool hand on his cheek, "and I was happy, for a while, and then the Cylons—"

Roslin pulls him into her arms, his face into her neck, and it feels so nice, so warm and melting and okay, in a way that Felix hasn't been in a very long time.

"I couldn't imagine you not being the President," he says, so softly, and it reminds him of Gaius Baltar, arms around Felix this very same way, because now Felix has that blind faith in her that he had for Baltar, only now he thinks that maybe it won't hurt him, won't burn him as badly this time.

"You may have been closer to Baltar than any man or woman in the entire fleet," she considers, aloud. He twists his face a little into her neck. "And if you still didn't vote for him –" She pulls back, studies his face. "If you're lying, you're doing a very good job, and if you're not, I think that might be one of the highest compliments I've ever received."

Felix hesitates, because it seems if she thinks he's lying, then it's all over, then the last good thing he has here is gone, and he doesn't know why it hurts so much.

When he hitches forward and kisses her, he's not really thinking. Just acting, feeling, in the tiniest span of a moment, because he wants more than he ever thought possible. Her lips are soft, her hands are rougher as they cup his neck, dry from the New Caprican air, and she—she kisses back—

She has firm grip, and she pushes him back against the bed, sliding a thigh in between his legs. No hesitation, but she isn't rough, just certain, and it takes Felix's breath away. Her tongue slides past his lips, just so easy, and Felix wonders why he never thought of this before.

Laura pulls away, and braces herself on an arm, next to his head, and she half-laughs. "I wasn't expecting that from you."

Neither was I, Felix doesn't say.

Her thumb strokes along the curve of his cheek, and he closes his eyes, because somehow it just seems too much to take. But she sits back, away from him.

"Curfew is soon," she explains, her mouth fighting against a grin, and Felix sees a glimpse, then, of the teenage girl Laura Roslin must once have been.

He echoes her smile, and props himself on his elbows. "Yeah," though there's much more, much, much more, inside him.

She kisses him, once more – lingering, with a want that makes him ache, and then she's gone.

----

Back from Baltar's office the next day, it feels as though his lungs are collapsing in, his chest caving, the world spinning with a riot of blue-and-grey noise, too loud and too quiet all at the same time.

Felix drops to the ground before he makes it to a chair, a hint of earthen floor he can feel through the carpet.

Seven.

Seven people. A woman with dark eyes and a man with long-fingered hands, and a child that waited, wide-eyed, behind her mother's skirts. All of them dead, in one stroke, from a disease –

Could have been stopped.

Felix curls, his head in his hands, and he can't explain the violence of his reaction. People have died before, in the occupation. The Temple Massacre. The first few rounds of arrests, some of which resulted in executions. Those really were the Cylon's fault, but this, this is so many magnitudes worse.

He slides his palm flat on the ground, and his breath shakes. He wants to be steady, unchanging as the ground beneath him, but he has to live above, in the boundary between earth and sky.

Seven, seven, seven…

"What are you doing on the floor?" And Laura's hands are on his shoulders, waking him up, from a sleep that took Felix by surprise, short-circuits his senses. The world doesn't quite fit right, he thinks, and his shoulder is sore from where he was on the ground.

"Are you all right?" she asks.

"No," he murmurs, and she slides the jacket off his shoulders, leading him towards the bed. She lets him rest on her, his head on her shoulder, and she doesn't try to speak – not even when the dampness from his eyes falls to her blouse. She's so strong, and Felix knows he has strength too, but sometimes it's too much to bear alone.

Finally, he sits up, wipes away the last of the salt tracks on his face. "Curfew is soon," he says, expecting her to go.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asks him.

He breathes. "No," he says, too soft.

"Then I'll stay."

He lets her wrap her arm around him again, and the light in the room grows dim, sunset draining the life away from the city.

"Did you share Gaius Baltar's bed?" Her question breaks the silence, and Felix tenses, but the question isn't accusing, it's…it's…

"People assume that too," he rasps.

"But, did you?" she persists.

"No," says Felix, "no, I didn't. But, if he'd asked," and the truth burns, so Felix just holds on to her, and hopes that redemption will come.

"Oh, is asking all it takes?"

It's a moment before Felix realizes she's jesting, but she's also serious. And she's asking, she's asking for him.

Felix tilts his head and kisses her, giving her the chance drag his answer out through tongue and fingertips – and she does, so very thoroughly, and leaving him empty and refreshed all at once. Enough that he lets the fire build, the instinct and need, until it's all he can taste.

Her hands slide along his skin, and when he falls from rationality into white heat underneath her, it's her lips that muffle it, capture the sound and cage it, away from the cold world outside.

In the darkness they're entangled; and in the night, he dreams of walking through a thunderstorm with a hand clasped in his.