Dancing About Architecture
"I used to dance," the president said, eyes closed and a tiny smile on her lips. The compartment was empty except for her and Lee, and so Lee had to assume he was talking to her. "Once upon a time, when I lived in Caprica City, when I was prettier."
She was stretched out on a bunk on the Astral Queen, barefoot, glasses sitting on the floor next to her shoes. Elosha was meditating, and that left Lee and the president alone. They had been discussing some thorny issue or another, and then it had turned to a friendly discussion of how they now had free time, and possibly there could be the resumption of hobbies.
"Dancing? What kind?" Lee asked, not sure if this was the right thing to say. The smile stayed on her face, so that seemed a clue.
"The slow-dancing kind you do with a partner," she said, humming slightly. "Oh, gods, it's been years since I've...well, done much of anything, I suppose. Anything except work. Long grey days of work, after my mother died."
And now, it was a long black night with an uncertain and brief future. Lee got that. In fact, he shivered at the grimness of the thought.
"That's a shame," said Lee, still baffled at the slightly dreamy mood in the room. "Madam President, are you all right?"
"Just remembering," she replied. "I think this may be regret mixed in."
Lee could never tell when President Roslin was joking. It was all in her vocal tones, whether it was sorrow, or regret, or a stinging joke at her own expense.
"We, uh, all have regrets," he said, because Lee was certain that she wanted him to say something to make her feel better. "The Cylons made damn sure of that."
"I'm not talking about..." and her eyes snapped open. "Captain Apollo, are you trying to tell me what I want to hear?"
"You're not making it easy," Lee replied. "But yes, I am trying."
"Gods, don't be silly," the president said. "I don't need someone to soothe my regrets. And most certainly, I'm not asking you to do that."
"Are you asking me to dance?" Lee asked, trying for whimsy, as nothing else had worked so far. The president chuckled, lifting herself up on one elbow to look at Lee with the same dreamy smile.
"Captain Apollo, all we do is dance," she replied mysteriously. "Back when I still had lovers and still danced, would do my dancing before social events. In corridors, in back rooms, and often in the kitchen while the cooks were setting up, because it would be the only area where there was a wireless. He would never dance with me where people could see. And now, I do regret that, because it wouldn't have mattered in the end."
He. Lee wanted to ask who he was, and suspected that it was Adar, Adar whom Roslin knew far better than any Minister of Education, no matter how much of a loyalist, could know her president. But to ask would be to end this lifting of the curtain -- Roslin, more than any survivor Lee knew, never spoke of her past.
And the image was endearing. Laura, arms around a man, humming slightly as they swept over the dusty floor of a back room where chairs were stored, doing a three-step, or a volta. Lee liked this image of a Laura who had private desires, and just as quickly, wondered why.
Because it made her human, he decided. Though if Adar was her lover, Lee was not impressed with the way he had kept the affair out of sight, hurting both the president and his wife. Certainly, it couldn't have been that much of a scandal to let her feel loved even once in front of the world.
"My father had to ask you to dance on Colonial Day," Lee said, yet again wondering why these things were bothering him.
"It wasn't really my day -- it was Baltar's," the president replied quickly. "And I am out of practice. Your father knows all the correct responses -- he'd never let a lady sit alone, especially not an ally he respected."
"He's a good man."
"Indeed he is. I appreciated the gesture," she said, and again Lee found himself unsatisfied by the conversation, by the undertones. They were dancing, apparently, but it was to a tune Lee didn't know, and he was tripping over the steps.
"Is there a reason we're talking to each other in riddles?" Lee asked. "Metaphors about dancing, a loaded conversation about your relationship with my father, and the unanswered question of why, at this moment, we are discussing dance as though it was a serious...thing."
"Shorthand, not riddles," Laura said suddenly. "It's only a riddle if there's an answer, Captain."
"Ah, so we are now discussing an enigma," Lee replied. "For the sake of my sanity and limited dancing abilities, can you tell me what the enigma is?"
"Our relationship. We are talking about our relationship, Captain Adama," Laura said, laying back down. "I forget, sometimes, how very young you can be. And that you have inherited your father's remarkable ability to be blind to the obvious in cases of impropriety."
Lee stood there, suddenly staggered. "Madam President," he said, to buy himself a minute or two. "I don't know what to say."
"Clearly," Laura said crisply. "Perhaps you have nothing to say. Or nothing honest that you could say to me under the circumstances."
Lee didn't know what to say. She was the president, and she had just accused him of flirting with her. And maybe he had, unintentionally, but she was the frakking President of the Twelve Colonies and dying and frak.
Instincts. His father had told him to trust his damn instincts and he'd used them to commit mutiny twice. And now his instincts said to go to her, to say something, anything, to make her unhappiness go away. Lee knew that hurting Laura was never his intention, but his instincts also weren't telling him how to make her not hurt, nor why it bothered him so much to be asked what their relationship was and not know.
When you go against your whole world, Lee thought, frozen, you ought to know how you feel about the person you're doing it for and with. And why every time you make an instinctive choice, it's for the same person.
"You told me not to tell you what you wanted to hear," Lee said, cringing at his clumsiness. "It's seeing things in a new light."
"A new light?" Laura asked, laughing slightly. "You don't have the slightest clue about yourself, do you, Lee?"
"I suppose I don't," Lee said, thinking about his father's advice, about how he kept making such a frak-up of his relationships. "Do you?"
"You're a dangerous man to have around," she said in a growl of a voice. "You are young and idealistic and honest, but it's all a front. You don't know what you really want besides to be loved and approved of, and you'll chase any path to fill that hole inside of you."
"Not when it counts," Lee countered, the words flying out of his mouth. "When it comes right down to it, Laura Roslin, every time I have made a sacrifice, followed a path, done the hard thing, it has been for you. And speaking of dangerous, what about you? Why have I abandoned my duty, broken the law, and betrayed my father's trust for you? Why do I follow you?"
Another laugh as Laura sat up, eyes flashing. "That's a question I've asked myself regularly," she said. "Of all the men in the fleet, why is the one I trust most implicitly the dashing young hero, Commander Adama's son? Why do you follow me? Even Billy left me. But you, you're still here, and when you look at me, you keep asking me to be something for you and I don't have anything to offer..."
Her voice broke, but there were no tears in Laura's eyes. She was looking at him steadily, and Lee realized that she had laid herself bare for him. As bare as she could tolerate, anyway, and that was quite a bit more than Lee could expect of Laura.
"I want to believe in you," Lee said, taking two steps forward. "I do believe in you. Whether or not I believe in the Arrow of Apollo, I believe in you."
"I'm not a concept, Lee," the president says. "You realize that, right? I'm not going to make you a man, or stop you from being the dutiful son, or save your soul. I am dying, and I am terrified, and I have the future of the entire human race resting on my shoulders. Don't make me responsible for your salvation, too."
"I don't need you to save me," Lee said, knowing that was the right thing to say, sitting down on the bunk next to her. "I want to help you. I want..."
She leaned over then and kissed him. Gently.
"You can't save me, either," Laura warned him. "Do you think that you can handle it? In the end, you can't save me, I can't save you, and there's no future. This is not what you want."
"I do want you," Lee replied, kissing her back, slowly. Her eyes were so sad, and he wanted to make the sadness go away. "I'm following my gut here."
A delicate, tentative touch, her hand resting on his face. Lee took it between his two hands, lifted it to his mouth and placed a kiss in the palm, watching her.
They could save each other. He believed in her and she in him.
And this was, after all, what they both wanted.