Chapter Text
While the joy over the newly found planet was still erupting among the crew, Bill could not take his eyes from Laura. Frail and exhausted, she had no strength to partake in the celebrations, opting instead to recline on a makeshift bed of blankets and pillows that Bill had ordered to be brought to the CIC for her comfort. It was a compromise he had been forced to make, knowing that while leaving the CIC at the moment was not an option for him, he simply could not let her out of his sight. Not now when she looked so weak that any minute could be her last.
"You really love her, don't you?"
Bill was startled out of his gloomy thoughts by the voice of one of the cylons addressing him. A Six model - Caprica, Bill supposed, though they all still looked identical to him.
Not even slightly in the mood for this particular conversation, he only grunted a noncommittal response. How he felt about Laura was probably obvious enough by now for everyone to see, but he had no wish to talk about it now. Least of all with a cylon. The Six's next words, however, took him by surprise, piquing his interest.
"We have technology that might be able to save her."
Bill's eyes shot up to meet the cylon’s, a surge of mad hope quickening his pulse for a moment until reason again caught up with him.
"I thought you all were done with resurrection," he gnarled. "And besides, Laura is not a cylon and never will be." Gods knew that allowing cylon technology to take over Galactica had been difficult enough, but he could never allow the same happen to Laura. It would kill him as surely as this cancer was now killing her.
"I am not talking about resurrection," the blonde replied calmly, eyeing Bill as if considering whether her offer was worth pursuing further or not. Eventually she decided to continue: "I'm talking about what we call a reboot."
Bill was not sure he had heard the cylon correctly. “A what?” he asked, incredulous. Computers could be rebooted, he knew, and cylons probably too, but Laura...
"A reboot," the cylon repeated matter-of-factly, the ease with which she was throwing the word around only managing to rile Bill up further.
"And how do you propose to do that?" he nearly spat out. "Laura is not a machine you can just shut down and restart."
"No, she is not," the Six agreed calmly, not rising to Bill's ire. "And my intention is not to give you false hope, because the procedure is far more complicated and risky if performed on a human. We have made some tests, and…"
"I don't want to hear about those tests," Bill quickly shut her down before she could finish, remembering with a shudder Kara's reports of the human test farms on Caprica after the cylon occupation.
"All I am saying is that this procedure can be successfully performed on humans," the cylon continued, undeterred. "It is risky and there is a possibility that your president will not survive the procedure, but if she does survive, she will be cancer-free. She will still be every bit as human as she is now, only…." She trailed off, glancing at Bill with an unreadable expression. He thought he saw something akin to compassion in the Six's eyes.
"What?" he asked warily, calmed somewhat by the cylon's assurances but still suspicious.
"She may survive, but it is likely that she will lose some part of her memory."
Bill opened his mouth to speak, to protest, but the cylon continued before he could get a word in: "She will not stop being the person she is. We have enough test data to support that. But it is likely she will not remember anything from the recent past. That is the one downside of the reboot we have not been able to master yet when performing the procedure on human subjects. The reboot requires the subject to be, as you said, shut down for a short while, with all functions of the body and brain halted. For cylons this presents no issue, but for humans this is the part where access to recent memories seems to be lost."
"Are we talking...months or years here?" Bill asked hesitantly, no longer able to dismiss the idea outright. Perhaps it was his desire to grasp at any straws thrown at him, just to keep Laura with him a little longer. He should have hated himself for it.
Perhaps he did.
"It depends on the subject and the length of the operation," the cylon explained, seemingly unaware or simply not interested in Bill's inner turmoil. "But because president Roslin's cancer is so far advanced, and we will have to remove all of the cancer cells while her body is shut down, the procedure is likely not to be one of the shortest ones. I would say she is likely to lose years rather than months of her memory."
Years. It would be as if they had never met. Bill glanced at Laura across the room, her eyes closed as she was attempting to rest among the bustle of the CIC.
"But this operation…", he forced his attention back on the Six. "It would not be adding any cylon technology into her body or brain?"
"None," the cylon assured him. "Our technology would merely be used to shut her body down, to remove the cancer cells while she is down, and then bring her back to life, if possible. Nothing we do would remain inside her after the operation….whether she lives or not," she added quietly.
Bill remained silent for a long while. His eyes found Laura again across the CIC just as she opened her own. Her tremulous smile at him was all it took to make Bill's heart contract in his chest, love and the fear of losing her fighting for dominance.
"She would not remember me," he said at last, his eyes still on Laura.
"Or anything of what happened. It could be a terrible to shock to her," the cylon agreed. "But at least she might live."
Bill turned to look at the cylon again. "And what are the odds of her surviving, if she undertakes this operation?"
"Normally the survival rate has been 60-70%, but given her long illness and frail condition, I would not promise above a 40% chance for her."
Bill sighed. The odds were not great.
But they were still infinitely better than the 0% chance she was presently facing.
Whatever the odds, though, the decision was not his to make.
He would have to talk to Laura first.
When Bill recounted his conversation with the Six to Laura, she listened to him in silence that stretched on long after he had finished talking.
"This Six...Caprica...do you trust her?" she finally asked, just when Bill had begun to think she had no intention of even discussing the proposal. They had returned to their shared quarters and Laura was lying in the rack, with Bill perched on the edge, holding her hand in his.
The question she had asked was the same he had been asking himself ever since his conversation with the cylon.
"I have thought about it," he said at last, giving it one more round of consideration before continuing: "No matter which way I look at it, I can't see what motivation she could possibly have to lie or to deceive. Not anymore when we have all agreed to start over and settle peacefully on this new planet." He paused and, with a sad smile, ran a hand down Laura's cheek. "It's the risks she talked about that I'm more worried about."
Laura quietly nodded her head, leaning in to his touch.
"I likely only have days to live," she said then. A simple observation that Bill was not sure how to interpret. It pained him to hear nonetheless.
"You could have years if this works," he pointed out.
"Maybe," she mused, taking in a labored breath. It also pained Bill to see that while there probably was a great deal she could have said on the subject – in fact, he could almost see the wheels turning in her head – even a single word now appeared to be difficult for her to produce.
"Laura," he whispered gently, lifting his legs and moving to lie down on the rack beside her, enveloping her in his arms. "I want you to know I would never force this on you." He pressed his lips against her neck. "We don't even need to have this conversation if you don't want to."
She hummed at his words but did not immediately speak, the silence broken only by her wheezing breaths.
"What would you do if the choice was yours?" she finally asked, shifting so that they were now fully facing each other.
"But it's not my choice," Bill replied without hesitation.
"What if I was unconscious and you had to make the call?"
She didn't say the words "like last time" but Bill could sense them in her question nevertheless.
He also knew exactly what he would do. What he did then and what he would always do.
"I would ask them to do whatever they could to save you," he replied, his voice nearly breaking. It was the truth and he couldn't deny it, no matter how much he would like to have been less selfish.
To his surprise, Laura only smiled at him in return, resting a hand on his chest.
"I might wake up and not even remember you," she said, and through the melancholy in her voice Bill could almost swear he detected a hint of mischief. Maybe even a challenge.
"But you would be alive," he stated simply.
"And what if this time I fall in love with Saul Tigh instead of you?" Now she was definitely teasing him.
Bill smiled even as he could feel his heart contracting again at the thought of losing her. Of losing this - the smiles, the banter, the sharing of everything they were or ever could be.
"Ellen might not be very happy about that," he replied as soon as he was able to speak again, attempting to reach Laura's level of levity but not quite managing it.
"Hmm…maybe not," she replied at last, scooting a little closer to Bill, growing serious again.
She did not bring up what it might feel like to wake up to a strange world with no memory of how she got there, surrounded only by strangers, but Bill knew it must have been on her mind as she silently sought the comfort of his embrace.
Apart from the possibility that the operation itself might kill her, it was the thought of how traumatic the recovery would be for her that caused Bill the greatest apprehension. As much as it would pain him to be wiped away from her memories, he could only imagine how utterly terrifying the experience would be for her. It was almost enough to make him abandon the whole idea.
Almost.
When Laura finally spoke again, Bill knew their minds had been on the same track.
"You might learn some new things about me," she said, thoughtfully. "Of who I was…where I was in my life some years ago."
"I know you were the Secretary of Education," Bill replied with a smile. How could he ever forget the first time she boarded his battlestar. Then his smile faded as he recalled that it was another thing that Laura probably would forget.
"Did you know I was frakking the president?"
Laura's next words took Bill by surprise and his hand that had been drawing lazy circles on her arm came to a sudden halt.
"Adar?" was all he managed to say out loud.
"I thought you should know….in case I wake up thinking he's still…part of my life," Laura replied, carefully studying Bill's face as she spoke.
He had no reason to be jealous, but the thought of Laura in a heated embrace with Richard Adar was an image Bill could not conjure up in his mind without a sense of unease. He also could not stop himself from asking one question:
"Did you love him?" It shouldn't matter, but for some odd reason it did.
Laura smiled, tracing the suddenly stern line of his jaw with the tips of her fingers.
"I was infatuated once," she replied, and Bill could feel the soft hum of her words on his skin before it was followed by the touch of her lips. "He was a charismatic man…" Another peck, this time on his mouth. "But towards the end I think it was more just a habit than anything else. Whatever it was, it was not love."
Bill accepted her explanation silently, thinking briefly of his own marriage to Carolanne.
"Anything else I should know?" he asked then, pulling her a little closer. He couldn't help but note that the way the conversation was going seemed to indicate that Laura had already made up her mind.
She only smiled at his question then – one of her enigmatic smiles. "I suppose you'll find out," she said before closing her eyes.