The Will of the Gods

Disclaimer: All Battlestar Galactica characters and places belong to Moore, Larson and Universal and are used without permission.
Pairing: Laura/Adama
Rating: Teen
Archive: FFN and Colonial One. Elsewhere not without permission.
Spoilers: KLG2. This takes place immediately after the episode. This is the final story of the "Interludes and Encounters" series.

They had made love in the shower.

It had been slow and intense; sexy and sweet. The slickness of skin sliding on water had burned its way onto her memory and the sound of his soft cries of passion still echoed in her ears.

Laura thought back upon the last fifty-one days. They had danced and not just on Colonial Day. Part of her had known it was inevitable and she had suspected Adama had known it, too. It had probably started that day in his cabin, after his speech to his crew and the rest of the fleet, where he'd made the deleterious mistake of promising Earth and she had made the equally ruinous miscalculation of relinquishing control of the military. They had both been thinking short-term on that day. He hadn't thought much past giving enough hope to the fleet to get them through the immediate crisis and she hadn't considered much past establishing some type of balance of power with him.

It had been error compounded by error and because neither of them had known how steep a price they would have to pay, they had danced.

The attraction would have been something to easily ignore, Laura knew. She had done it before with other would-be lovers. One simply pretended not to be drawn, refused to imagine the possibilities and controlled the incessant pounding of the heart. She knew that. But that was not what she did with William Adama.

When he seemed to share the attraction, instead of wisely disregarding it, she had indulged in it. She flirted and teased and followed him to the brink and backed away. And then she'd talked herself into ignoring not the attraction but the consequences and followed him over a cliff of disaster.

And it had been good. She had felt deep, diffusive passion in Adama's arms. It went beyond the diminishing confines of her body. Moreso than her visions, in his arms, she had felt close to the Gods. She had felt powerful.

But it had been transitory. And after the lust had faded, she remembered her place and his place and the fate that she guarded so closely that she could not – would not – share it with him even as she allowed him into her body.

Sex had been an easy intimacy; it was death that she found too personal and because of it, she had not allowed herself to love him when she knew that she could have.

After that last indulgence in the cramped shower, they'd dressed and she made her way discreetly back to her ship at 0500.

That was just this morning.

Every inch of her still ached and tingled from his hands, his tongue, and his body inside hers. The mark from his mouth was still livid upon her skin. It was at her left breast, just above the tumor that was ending her life, stealing her choice to step cautiously and persuasively. She thought it was somehow fitting that he had unwittingly chosen that spot to brand her as temporarily his.

His mark. Her lover.

And now, her jailer.

Laura stood in her cell in Galactica's brig, his footsteps fading away like the sound of heartbeats, but could not bring herself to regret.

She was long past the point of excuses. Her choices had been her own and she had known the possible – probable - outcome. If her visions were to be believed and trusted, she had known how this could end.

Her choices had been her own, up to and including following William Adama to his bed. She had known it was probably a mistake. She had known the consequences would be severe. She had known that at the end of the day, they were just too different to make anything work between them, even for the very short amount of time she had left.

But still, she could not regret.

Laura wondered dimly if that was because she was determined not to believe that she had pushed perhaps too far. Was it easier to accept that going to his bed had been a part of the Cycle … that she was fulfilling destiny with her body and not just with her death? Was it just that she did not want to believe that she had welcomed him into her arms because she felt something for him; that she knew what he felt for her and had grasped at the chance to be wanted and loved just one last time?

Earlier, she had told Billy that the Gods seemed to have a plan. Her conviction to believe in that plan had led her to this cell. She knew it was a delusion of denial that her indiscretion/affair/mistake with William Adama had been part of divine calculation, but she found herself embracing it anyway because it was the only thing that absolved her of guilt and shielded her from the regret.

Except, if she had not gone to his bed last night, she might not be standing in his jail today.

But that was also part of the plan of the Lords of Kobol, if her visions were to be believed.

Laura stopped herself. There was no sense second-guessing herself now. It was done. Now she would deal with the consequences.

And accept the will of the Gods.

The dream had come back to her almost immediately after he'd ordered the cell door closed between them. She'd fought not to flinch at the flash of him across her inner sight. He was lying in light; he was lying in blood.

That other night in his bed, days and days ago, she'd dreamed of this. But then, when she'd awoken sweating and shaken, he had been there in front of her in the dimly lit room. He had been blessedly whole. He had been fine.

She had wanted to warn him about the faceless danger. She wanted to tell him what was coming. No matter what had happened between them, she had never wished him harm. She did not love him, but she would never hate him. She wanted to warn him.

Didn't she?

She felt it vaguely; a whisper of pain in her abdomen that quickly melted into warmth and faded. Seconds later, she felt another low in her chest. She strained to hold onto the memory, to the vision, but it was faded and muted like the sound of a conversation through a wall that was too thick.

Laura closed her eyes as the alarms reverberated throughout the ship. No one needed to tell the president what had happened. It was destiny.

And she had wanted to warn him.

She bowed her head so that the Gods could not see her doubts or her tears.

The End.

A/N: 4/21/05 – My intention with this series was to write plausible "filler" to complement my vision of what was happening on-screen, as seen through shippy-glasses. From episode to episode, I wanted what was happening on-screen to still be plausible in the context of my stories, so I wrote around the canon, framing and re-framing as I went to keep the series as tied closely to the episodes as possible. What I didn't want was to create events in the stories that would immediately be blown to hell in the next on-screen episode. For instance, I couldn't have Laura too trusting of Adama after "Flesh and Bone," when "TMUTMD" comes around and she's still suspecting him. It didn't make sense for this series of stories. I wanted to follow canon (and my digestion is just fine).

The likelihood of me writing more A/R fan fiction is small. That is for two reasons: first, I did NOT like KLG and I make no secret that I have fallen out of love with the Adama character. It's kind of hard to write shippy fanfiction about a character that you find disappointing, so unless something happens on the show to redeem him in my eyes, I probably won't be featuring him as leading man in my stories; and second, I'm mom to a toddler; I have a house, a husband, and a full-time job that is becoming increasingly demanding. I had a brief time where I dedicated probably too much time to this fandom but real life has firmly re-asserted itself as priority. That's the truth of it and if you've heard otherwise, someone didn't have their facts correct.

I've been holding this fic back for about 2 weeks trying to figure out if I liked it or not and if it was the right tone for a semi-satisfying, if not bittersweet, end to this series. I had setup back in "Till the Summer Brings Us Back" the fact that she may have foreseen his shooting but I became intrigued with the idea that she could have warned him but chose not to based on faith. Just how deep is her conviction? Just how far would she or could she go and who and how much would she sacrifice in her quest to guide the Fleet to salvation? In the end, are Laura and Adama really the same person (see his actions in "You Can't Go Home Again"), except she has a bigger and broader vision? Or are they both just nuts? That's for you to decide.

I sincerely hope you have enjoyed this brief journey and many thanks to those of you who have told me you liked it in reviews. I will probably write a Roslin story here and there (because she's my girl!), as life permits but until then, it's been a pleasure.

Monica