Chapter Text
Scene From The Agency Sequel
His grip was bruising on Laura’s ankle as he caught her foot and yanked before releasing her. Had she not been sweating, panting, and running on adrenaline, she would have rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. She should have anticipated the movement and had no one to blame bar herself when her back hit the mat hard enough to knock the wind out of her.
With a cough and a gasp, she looked up. Her attacker was smirking as he moved into the kill. Aching, but certainly not beaten, Laura made a believable effort to escape and allowed him to get in just close enough before she kicked him in the head.
She was on her feet before he’d finished reeling, jabbing a sharp elbow into the side of his face. He recovered quicker than she thought he would, wiping away the blood from his split eyebrow and suddenly charging.
Laura didn’t dodge, as she knew he thought she would, simply stood her ground and waited until he was in range before throwing a fist towards his face. He looked surprised, but was able to duck under her arm, laughing as he swatted her arse and danced behind her.
Her foot slamming against his face wiped the amusement from it and he stumbled a bit as she moved closer to take him down. He grabbed her around the midsection, but Laura reacted quickly, kneeing him in the stomach, and then following him to the floor with a sucker punch.
They wrestled for a long minute, him struggling to get the upper hand and Laura fighting to keep it, but after a moment she was able to pin him to the floor and straddle his chest.
“You got me,” he panted. “I surrender.”
Surprised, as she certainly had never expected him to give up while he was still conscious, Laura was momentarily distracted. He struck, using his heavier body weight and reversing their positions, sprawling himself atop her and pinning her down.
“Or not,” he smirked.
She smirked right back, brought up her knee and watched, half amused, half guilty, as his eyes rolled back in his head and he groaned painfully. A slight shove to his shoulder and he was off her and curling into a ball on the ground.
“Low blow, Red,” he grunted, his voice muffled from the mat. “Frakkin’ low blow.”
Laura laughed, but before she could open her mouth to tell him that he was the one who taught her to take every advantage she could get, a shadow filled the doorway. John Borders smirked at the sight of the younger man on the ground.
His smile was almost unnoticeable when he turned his gaze to Laura. “Help the boy up, will you, Pistol-Whip? You’ve got work to do.”
She held out her hand and he used it to pull himself to his feet, wincing as he did so, but enquiring evenly, “Something come up?”
Borders’ face lost all sign of amusement. “Doctor Rivaldi has been sighted. You two are headed to Aerilon. With any luck, our mad scientist friend will be dead by tomorrow.”
~~~~~
“The file, Billy?” Laura asked as she headed for her office.
“I sent Dee to get it,” he told her. “What do you need me to do, Director?”
“Contact all the section Chiefs. Conference call in an hour. And I want to see Starbuck and Apollo in fifteen.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Billy nodded and then slid in behind his desk.
Laura stepped into her office, knowing Bill was right behind her. She practically slumped into a couch, removing her glasses and rubbing her eyes. She did not need this right now. Hell, she did not need this ever.
As if her dreams - nightmares that were actually memories - had been prophetic, somehow that bastard had gotten out and he brought along a tidal wave of things Laura had thought she was past. Guilt and pain and regrets that ran deeper than her own blood.
Bill was sitting across from her, his eyes taking in her reaction to the news, but he did not break the silence. Laura didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to explain, because even if she gave him the basics, he’d keep asking, keep probing. She’d worked so hard to put that time - the worst of her life - behind her.
Finally, with a resigned sigh, she met Bill’s inquisitive gaze. And for the first time since she’d told him that she did not want to pursue a romantic relationship with him - though she did, desperately, she just couldn’t - tension did not build.
He just sat there, patiently waiting, giving her all the time and the space she needed. Gods, she wanted to hate him for that. Why couldn’t he be angry at her, start a fight so that she could get good and properly pissed with him and use it to push all of her fanciful notions away?
But no, he had to be caring and understanding. The bastard.
“Old friend from home is the code we use for rogue agents.”
He frowned. “I don’t remember it from the list you gave me to learn all of the phrases.”
“It wasn’t on it. I didn’t think it would be important for you to know, not as immediately as the others were, anyway. I’d always intended to teach you everything, but I didn’t think it was necessary at the current time.”
“Obviously you were wrong.”
“Yes, thank you, I know that,” she snapped. Then stopped herself and took a deep breath. “The Agency has had a long history. A lot of people have been trained by us, worked for us. It’s inevitable that a few of those people would turn out to be different than what we thought of them. But usually, we’ve been able to contain them quickly.”
“Like Tory Foster.”
“Yes,” Laura agreed, thinking of the young woman she’d ordered executed. “Like Tory. Thus, that particular code phrase was only ever needed as a precaution. Because in all of the Agency’s history, there’s only ever been one agent gone rogue that was not dealt with swiftly. He was eventually contained, but due to measures he’d put in place, we weren’t able to kill him.”
“And now he’s no longer contained,” Bill presumed.
Laura nodded, then tilted her head and permitted entrance when there was a knock on the door. Dee entered, a file in her hand, walking hesitantly towards the Director. She’d been with the Agency for two months and she was still uncomfortable around Laura.
“I think you intimidate her,” Billy had confided when she’d questioned him as they’d shared dinner one night. “You’re a confidant, powerful woman, who’s also able to kill her with your bare hands. You intimidate me, sometimes.”
Good, Laura had thought at the time. It was her job to scare the life out of the rest of the world, if only to keep them in line. But now she was tiring of it, so she accepted the file from the younger woman with a warm smile.
“Thank you, Dee.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am,” she replied, backing out again.
Once the door was closed behind the younger woman, Laura traced the name on the front of the unblemished red file, the only one in their records. Any other red file had a heavy black printed ‘Eradicated’ on the front.
It was a name she’d desperately hoped to never hear or see or even think of again. Because, in the grand scheme of things, if Laura Roslin had an arch nemesis, he was it.
“Can you kill me, Laura?”
She should have, she knew that. Should have put a bullet between his eyes when she’d had the chance, when he was broken and bleeding on the ground in front of her, unarmed, but still so frakking smug.
“Can you kill me, Laura?”
“If I have to.”
“Then do it.”
She hadn’t. For twenty years she’d known it would come back and bite her in the ass one day, but as the years had slipped by, she’d thought that maybe it really was over. She should’ve known better, the Gods had never given her a break before.
And that bastard had just been biding his time.
“It can only end this way between us, Laura. One of us dead. I’ll never stop fighting for what I believe in and you won’t either. It can only end this way.”
He haunted her like a ghost, slithering in and out of her memories and dreams and thoughts like the snake that he was. Making her question everything she’d ever known was true. Making her question herself.
“Can you kill me, Laura?”
“Laura?”
She blinked at Bill and cleared her throat and her mind. “He has to be stopped, Bill. He’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever met. Persuasive and charming, he’ll talk you into doing things, betraying everything that’s most important to you, and he’ll make you believe that it’s perfectly reasonable. Then when you’ve done what he wants, he’ll smile at you while you’re stabbed in the back. And he’ll keep smiling at you while he watches you die.”
When she met her Chief’s face again, she knew she was worrying him. The lines around his eyes and on his forehead were deeper and the glint in his iris’ told her exactly what he was thinking. She was scaring him.
With a sigh, feeling as if the weight of the worlds were on her back even more than she usually did, Laura passed over the file and asked him, “What do you know about Tom Zarek?”