Work Text:
Title: In the Twilight Hours
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica (2004)
Characters: Doc Cottle
Prompt: 006 Hours from [info]fanfic100
Word Count: 903
Rating: G
Summary: Doc Cottle thinks about the hours and gets a message from a prophet.
Author's Notes: Not mine, don't sue!
Author: major_cottle aka deepforestowl
Dr. Jack Cottle sat in his office. This was nothing new of course. When he wasn't seeing patients, he was here in his office making notations on charts, reading charts, and doing all the doctor things that he was supposed to be doing. Actually, his assistants and nurses did most of the paperwork for him these days unless it was something that he had to sign off on. As the most senior and only general practitioner in the fleet, he was a rather busy man these days, far too busy in his estimation. The only times he actually did paperwork was when he was either too worried to sleep or too wired to sleep, either condition left him edgy and unlike the pilots that took the edge off with either sex or exercise, he did paperwork. The President had not been doing well.
Hell, she was dying so here he was doing paperwork until the wee hours of the morning surrounded by the quiet hum of his life giving machines and the even quieter gentle hum of the Galactica herself. Most people never noticed that the Galactica hummed, you only ever could hear it if you really paid attention to it. The ship did a lot of other things besides hum of course. She screamed when her hull was breeched, moaned when her metal took more stress than was good for it, and grunted under the impacts of warheads like the old war horse she was. But, when all was quiet and everything was going relatively well, at least with the ship herself, the Galactica hummed contentedly and other than the Old Man, Cottle wasn't sure if anyone else was aware of that fact.
He'd been here for hours and probably would be here for hours more until he either gave up and sought out his rack or more likely collapsed into sleep here at his desk. He'd done both more often then he cared to admit since the day the worlds ended. The hours. Those precious hours that marked the President's life. It was hours now. Not days or weeks or months or years, but hours and probably in the next few hours it was going to be minutes and then seconds until her death. These quiet hours before the death of a patient after a long illness were the ones that caught him the most off guard. He was a military doctor after all. People died around him from bullets, bombs, hull decompressions, and a whole host of other things, all of them violent, some of them quick, some of the not, but rarely did anyone die from disease while under his care.
Cottle got up from his desk, paperwork forgotten for the moment, he was almost all caught up anyway and what would his staff think if he was actually caught up and on top of the Hades damned paperwork? He walked slowly over to where President Roslin lay. Her aide, Billy, was asleep, his neck at what was probably going to be a very uncomfortable angle when he awoke. The machines told him that she was dying and would be dead soon, he paid them no mind. He stood by her bed and with all the unconscious grace and gentleness that his gruff exterior implied but never stated, he rested his hand on her cheek, his warm hand against her cool cheek. Her eyes snapped open, but he didn't jump back, something told him not too, something told him that this was important. Her gaze lucid, her voice came to him like the whisper of a butterfly's wing. "Jack, don't be afraid of the hours. He'll need you sooner than he thinks he will. You'll want to fight him, but don't. I need to die to live." Her gaze was so intense he knew that while he didn't understand what she was saying, he would heed her words. "The world ended in fire and it will be reborn in fire with a price to be paid and I will pay it, when the time is right. Now is not the time, look to the Mother." Her voice faltered and faded away, her eyes closed and once again she was asleep, if indeed she had ever been awake. Jack removed his hand, unsure of what she meant but knowing that while she had been talking to him, it might not have been her. More than once in the last months, he had seen the Chamalla take her and show her things that he was sure humans weren't supposed to see. In the beginning, she wasn't able to keep her voice silent, but she had learned quickly to freeze her voice and keep her visions to herself.
Jack wasn't a particularly religious man, but he knew that her words were true and he knew that the hours no longer stretched in front of him in an endless miasma of misery and waiting. He could sleep now even though he knew that the morning would bring a crisis that he wasn't sure how to deal with until he actually got there. "Thank you." He breathed out in a whisper. A small smile quirked her lips, "Bill" was all she whispered. Cottle shook his head, "Figures" he grumbled to himself. He left her bedside as silently as he had come and headed towards his quarters, the hour was late enough as it was.