The Things Good Adults Do Not Do
i. Please imagine finding yourself in the contradictory position of having elected to live a life from which you now plot intricate and meticulous escapes.
Three days. They have at least three days alone together, because his father and Kara are taking an extended tour of the outer perimeter defenses, and if there is a serious problem, there could be a week.
From the way Laura pounced on him, from the way Lee is already practically blue-balled from not frakking her already, it would seem like it's been an eternity since they've even spoken, not yesterday on the phone, not two days ago in person.
Of course, it has been two months since they've had sex. And that was a mistake they agreed not to speak of. A one-time mistake that was caused by too much ambrosia, a fight with Kara, Laura's birthday, and any number of other exceptional factors.
Lee half-throws Laura over the sofa and hikes up her skirt. And she moans, hot and throaty and undeniably lustful.
"Oh gods, yes, now," she says. "All I've thought about for the last week is what I was going to do to you when they left."
He opened the door to his house and when she fell on him, every thought of how wrong this is dissolved like honey into hot tea.
There must be now, and Lee thrusts hard and deep into her with one try.
He hates that she's his stepmother. People think it's perfect and right, the way the Adama-Roslin-Thrace family worked out? But Lee thinks that Laura is bad for his father, and he bad for her. Also, the word stepmother is ugly, and it seems that it collapses everything into a neat and tidy lie: once upon a time, they were always a family. Daddy and Mommy and Lee and Kara. Meant to be.
Why wasn't this meant to be? Lee cannot believe how frakking good she feels around his cock. Nor how urgent they both are.
"What you were going to do to me?" he asks. "Look at what I'm doing to you, woman."
"Oh, I bet a hundred cubits you finish first," she teases between gasps. "You're frakking me like you've been deprived."
"And you are bent over the sofa Chief Tyrol created especially for you and my father for the wedding with your smalls around your ankle," Lee pants.
The almost-certainly-facetious argument apparently has them both more and more aroused; Lee is thrusting harder, Laura is arching her back and gripping the cushioning tightly, sweat trickling down her back.
"Yes, I am, but that doesn't mean I want it more than you," Laura replies tartly.
This is the kind of argument that Lee imagined himself having with Kara while having sex, the kind that had always gotten him off. For that matter, this is the kind of sex Lee always wanted to have with Kara: hard, fast, more than a little unrepentant. His wife is a romantic, it turns out.
Not that this is bad, but when Lee persuades Kara to try something different, she rolls her eyes and smiles like she thinks he's adolescent.
"Are you sure?" Lee says, wrapping an arm around her shoulders so he can whisper things at her. "We've known for a month they were going away. I know you. You've been thinking about how many ways I can make you scream. You've been planning."
"I believe in being well-prepared," she answers, rocking her hips forward so he can thrust deeper. "But you're the one with all the youth and impetuousness. You did greet me with your tongue down my throat and your cock hard and ready. Or did you forget, Captain Apollo?"
"I'd been thinking about what I'm going to do to you on the way up the walk," Lee confesses before licking a spot behind her ear. "I want to strip you naked and taste every inch of your body."
"Is that all? An idle sexual fantasy while walking to the house had you that hard?" Laura asks. "I've spent every morning in the shower with my eyes closed, imagining that my fingers were yours and frakking myself cross-eyed. You're going to lose this bet, Captain, and spend the rest of the time making it up to me."
Never in a hundred years should they be talking like this. It's so at odds with how Lee thinks about either himself and Laura. Kara should be the adventurous one, the one who tells her man that she touches herself and dreams of him, her mouth half-open as she brings herself to release over and over.
All those missed opportunities are haunting Lee's brain. He could have had her so many places, clawing and gasping and getting closer and closer to climax.
"Every morning?" Lee says slyly. "You need me so badly that you have to give yourself a little relief every morning?"
He would say more, but he's close now, too, and his breath is coming too fast to talk or think. She's just given up talking and is moaning and writhing, braced hard against the sofa and shivering slightly.
He may well lose the bet, if she doesn't come now, because Lee can't wait anymore, has to let go and if it means he owes Laura a hundred cubits and sexual slavery for the next seventy-two hours, it will be the most pleasurable loss Lee Adama has ever experienced.
But just as he does, she shudders hard and screams. "Oh, oh my, oh Lee..." and despite Lee having never pulled it off before, it would appear that they have crossed the finish line together, so to speak.
"You owe me a hundred cubits," he reminds her as she releases the death grip on the sofa and sits down, covered in sweat and flushed, hair an absolute mess and her lips half bitten through.
Laura raises her hand. "Take it out of me in trade," she gasps. "By the way, you owe me a hundred yourself."
Lee sits down next to her and kisses her cheek. "I like the trade idea," he says. "Very practical."
"I am a genius when it comes to people, remember?" Laura says, her head slumping against his shoulder. "Even if I'm having an affair with my married stepson who I was too dumb to realize I was in love with until I married his father."
"Now, now. We're having an affair," Lee says. "Let's not leave me out of the blame and the guilt."
"True," she says. "At least I'm not a motherfrakker. Or a stepmotherfrakker."
"Hey," Lee says. "I love you. That has to count for something."
Laura looks at her feet. "It does," she says. "It makes things worse."
ii. //We're not talking about "arrangements" with either self or spouse, or when it's "just sex" or no big thing. We will be talking about what feels like a big thing: the love affair.//
"We should have run away together," Laura whispers into his ear, Lee's arms folded around her as they sit on the beach together, watching the fire burn down and the stars of their lost colonies together. "It would have been better that way. Not so much hiding."
It's the very end of a harvest celebration, and everyone else has gone, left, supposed that the responsible half of the Adama family clearly went with someone else back to the settlement. Lee and Laura are both responsible and a little bit anal, or so the story goes, and everyone has work early tomorrow to get the kelp processed. Certainly they wouldn't linger to look at the full moon and spoon together on a blanket Laura brought for that express purpose, hidden in one of her rucksacks.
"I know," Lee agrees, marveling at how real he feels when he's with Laura. It's like he's been renewed somehow. Like they've both been given this incredible gift, for the second time, and this time Lee thinks he gets it. "I think I loved you, even back then, but with everything the way it was..."
"It's okay," she says, her head resting on his shoulder. "Back then, I was going to die and we didn't know up from down. We had responsibilities to consider."
This is the person who fits him best. Laura has always fit him best, even in the days of Madam President and Captain Apollo. When Kara tries to snuggle with him, there's always jabbing and muscle cramps and fidgeting and it's usually a wash.
With Laura, Lee can just put his arms around her and watch the stars, the sea, and the dying warmth and light of a driftwood fire. Earth is so beautiful, and to be able to sit and quietly enjoy it (the sounds of the waves washing over the sand, the crackle of the fire, the light breeze) with someone is a miracle.
"I love you more every time I see you," he says. "Don't know how it's possible, but."
"But then you see me, and things are convenient and it's like the gods want this to happen," she murmurs, twisting her head around to place a butterfly kiss on the tip of his nose. "I know exactly how you feel."
He crushes her mouth to his, his hand sweaty and warm as it rests in her hair, and Laura makes a tiny little moan as she turns, her legs straddling his, rising up like the tide against his body.
They are madly, deeply in love. If nothing else is true or right (he is having an affair, and his wife is pregnant with twins, and Lee is not so great a fool that he can say that he is not scum for doing this), Lee can at least say that he is in love with the woman in his arms, that he loves every inch of her, is in love with the way she can know him inside and out. He is not betraying his wife and his father for someone who doesn't mean anything to him.
Lee is risking everything because there is nothing and no one who means more to his happiness.
"You'll get sandy," Lee warns, lowering Laura to the enormous blanket they've been sitting on. While the light from the fire is a low, red glow now, it's warm enough that he doesn't mind stripping them both bare right here and now. She gets cold so easily; he and the fire will keep Laura warm. "It'll be uncomfortable."
She runs her foot up the side of his leg, the hemline of her linen skirt falling to her knee, and laughs. "But if you don't make love to me right now, I'll be sad," Laura says. "Risk the sand and kiss me."
"Was that a dare?" Lee asks, sinking down to her. "You know how I feel about being dared."
Her breasts surge up in the moonlight, her body begging to be touched. And Lee does touch, puts aside the woes of having sand everywhere for the sweetness of being able to touch her out here by the seaside.
It's worth the risk.
iii. //You didn't plan it, yet...somehow here you are, buffeted by conflicting emotions, and the domesticity you once so earnestly pledged to uphold now a tailor-made straitjacket...//
"I think we should consider turning the barn into a small press, now that we've sold the cattle to Quintus," Bill tells his wife, who is sitting in his lap as they consider what to do with their modest homestead. "It would give us both something to occupy ourselves with."
"We have three grandchildren and another on the way," Laura points out. "We can play doting grandparents and help Lee and Kara out. That is what retirement means, Bill. Not working all the time."
He worries that sometimes, they rely too much on the kids. Laura and Lee have been close for years, and she's closer than he is to his son, but once Bill realized that his wife is the best mentor his son could have, the sting went away.
Lee is an able politician, and a good father, the kind Bill wanted to be to his sons. Laura helps to make that possible, by being a good wife, a good stepmother, and a loving grandmother.
"Still, I hate to waste the building," Bill says. "It's got some of our best ceramics in it. We could lease it as lab or learning space, after Lee and I mucked it out."
She takes the glasses off his face and presses a rueful kiss to his forehead. "We've been discussing the barn for forty-five minutes, Bill," Laura says. "We just sold the cattle two hours ago. The barn can sit idle for a whole twenty-four hours before we are officially wasting precious resources."
This from the woman who tells the settlers that it is their duty to submit their personal papers to the archive, so that they can have a real and true history of the thirteenth colony, and has confiscated, on occasion, Bill's to-do lists for that purpose.
"I never want to see a wadded up paper with writing on it in Landing," Laura had told her counselors. "If we forget history, we've lost it forever, and that is a hurt worse than any we can imagine for our grandchildren."
"It's just a few thoughts," Bill says. Sometimes, he wonders how everything worked out so nicely. Complete cancer remission. Kara and Lee being married and happy. A thriving settlement safe from Cylons. "Never hurts."
And he loves Laura, and she loves him back. Bill is well-aware that they didn't start out fond of each other, and she possibly didn't love him when she agreed to marry him. But Laura is a good woman, and he's done his best to make her love him.
He's done a good job, he thinks. The smile on her face tells Bill that he hasn't failed Laura completely. She's happy, and he has contributed, in some small way, to that. It can't be enough -- it's because of her that he has anything and that they all have Earth -- but it's something.
"Would you ever have thought you would have an argument over the disposal of a spare barn?" Laura asks whimsically, pulling herself up. "Back on Caprica, I mean."
"Never," Bill says easily, standing up and wishing his hip ached less. It'll make it harder for him to help Lee clean the barn tomorrow.
Laura seems to notice his distress, and puts her arm around him, giving him support so the walking is less of a chore.
"Of course, I never really planned to get married," Laura says with the tiniest sigh. "I don't know why, but I never thought I could do everything I wanted in life with a family to take care of. And now, here we are. Domestic felicity."
"Which you do with grace and class, Madam President," Bill says. "You should have had daughters. Little girls with your smile."
A quaver of uneasiness crosses Laura's face. "I have Kara and Lara for daughters. I'm content to have our family as it is, Bill."
"I know you are," Bill says, patting her hand. "But you should have had your own."
iv. //This turn of events may raise fundamental questions about what sort of emotional world you want to inhabit, or what fulfillments you're entitled to, or -- for a daring few -- even the nerve-rattling possibility of actually changing your life.//
Lara is going to be ten in a week.
Her grandmother and namesake (well, she's actually named Lara because it's the best smoosh between Laura and Kara, the two best women in the world, or so says her father and grandfather whenever anyone asks about the spelling) is sobbing, because she is sixty-six years old and her stepson has asked her to run away with him.
Again.
"You had a fight with Kara again?" Laura asks dully, laying on her stomach on the couch in the former barn. She and Bill ended up going with the small press idea. Specialist Cally's husband, a pale-blond man named Boris Semenov, is the one who runs it, though he is always so terribly respectful of the mother and father of the colony.
Asks for their editorial advice constantly, in fact, and to Laura's immense surprise, Bill is actually a very good one. Has better literary taste than she does.
Then again, Laura seems to have a taste of melodrama and domestic tragedy to go with her adoration of mysteries, and those are hardly worth bragging over.
"If I have a fight with Kara, it doesn't mean it's not a good idea," Lee argues. "I should have never married Kara."
"You've been married to Kara for fifteen years," Laura replies. "It seems that you have this realization regularly, but only when you've fought with your wife."
"Do you think I don't love you?" Lee asks. "My gods, are we really going to do this again? You are the center of my life."
"No, I'm the dirty little secret you live for," Laura corrects him. "There's a difference. And I am nearly seventy, Lee. Running away from your problems to take care of my arthritis is gross stupidity at best."
"I wish," and Lee rests his head next to her, "I wish they had been your children. I wish you could have been the mother of my children."
Lee does not expect what comes next, which is that Laura slaps him in the face. Hard.
"I don't care what you fought about, but don't do that to me to get back at her," she snarls. "They're your children. They're Kara's children. Not mine."
"You never wanted to have children?" Lee asks, looking up at her strangely. "Not even once?"
For almost the first decade of their relationship, Laura Roslin wished she had been five years younger and not dying when she'd met Lee. When she'd first seen the twins, and the way Kara and Lee had smiled at each other over the babies, Laura had had to excuse herself suddenly.
She had bitten down on her hand so hard she'd drawn blood, and then started crying for how bad of a person she really was. It was so easy to maintain deniability.
They weren't hurting anyone. Sometimes, Lee and Laura went as long as two months without those old lustful gazes starting to crackle between them. They loved their spouses and their families. They weren't trying to hurt anyone. No one had the least idea. She burns all of his letters to her -- twice a month for fourteen years and eight months, which makes for three hundred and fifty-two letters.
Three hundred and fifty-two letters, and she's kept two of them. The ones that tell her how much he hates her for taking him away from Kara and his children and how she's betrayed his father.
To remind herself how this has to end.
If things had been only slightly different, though, those could have been her twins. Except that was selfish and cruel all on its own. So selfish, and Laura put her bleeding hand over her stomach and pressed down so hard she could have fainted from pain.
That pain doesn't hurt any worse than having Lee ask her, now, if she never wanted his children.
"I have this family," Laura says, staring at her arms. "We have each other. It's no use discussing what never could have happened."
"I would have liked..." and Lee stops in mid-sentence. "I love you."
"I love you, too," she says, tiredly. Fifteen years. Even Kara is over forty now, and Lee looks as old as she was when they met, the day the world ended. "I think I would like to be alone now, Lee."
He kisses her hand, right where the scar is. "You know where to find me," he says.
v. //In other words, we will be talking about contradictions, large, festering contradictions at the epicenter of love in our time.//
"Oh, gods, he's HUGE!" Laura cries, picking up Michael and bouncing him on her hip. "How did you get so big, huh? Huh?"
"I swear, he cheats," Kara replies, shaking her head at her youngest. "Either that, or Lee is feeding him growth hormone when I've got my back turned. Hell, I wouldn't put it past your husband to try to bulk him up, at that."
Lara sees her beloved grandmother bouncing the despised Michael and runs up at top speed. Her nose is running -- it's always running, Kara thinks -- but she throws her arms around Laura's legs and whines loudly.
"Up!" she commands.
"I'm saying hello to your brother right now, young lady," Laura says, and it's funny how fast Laura can go from ogling-baby voice to that funny, respectful tone she takes with the older children. Lara likes that her grandma talks to her like a real person. So does Kara. "After that, I can pick you up."
"Up!" Lara repeats with the stubbornness only toddlers and Adamas can get away with.
"Nobody is going to listen to you when you talk like that," Laura says in teacher-voice, grinning brightly at Michael. "They're not, are they? Oh, no, Grandma is not going to listen."
Lara pouts and sits down, but she waits without the whine that any other visitor would get for paying that much attention to Michael and not her.
"Someone is always less of a brat when you're around," Kara says with a significant glance at Lara. "I swear, you should have had a batch of your own. Mine all like you better than me. It's probably because I'm a pilot, not a child-wrangler."
"That's the prerogative of grandparents and crazy aunties. I think you do just fine as a mother, Kara," Laura says. "Where are the twins?"
"Probably frakking around with something in the shed," Kara sighs. "They go further and further every day, and if you try to follow them, they get craftier."
Laura chuckles and hands Michael back to Kara, holding out her arms for Lara, who giggles happily and climbs into Laura's lap.
"Green!" she announces proudly, showing off her new words. Laura smiles. "Lellow."
"Very good. Can you point to something yellow?" Laura says. Lara giggles again and pokes her finger into Laura's eye. "No, that's blue. Blue. Point to something yellow."
"Don't poke your grandma, Lara Adama," Kara says. "That's not nice. I'm sorry, she probably needs a nap."
"She's fine, Kara," Laura replies, putting a protective arm around her namesake and ruffling her reddish curls. "Honestly, it's okay that she's a little girl. I'll tell you when she's being an unbearable monster."
Kara sighs. "Toddlers are not my favorite," she says with a groan.
"You'll survive," Laura says sympathetically. "I can watch the brood or make dinner if you'd like tonight. Your choice."
"And they say mother-in-laws are supposed to suck," Kara says appreciatively, resting her head on Laura's shoulder. "Thank you so much for helping out. Lee's been so busy helping President Billy with the irrigation crisis in the outlands that he's been useless in the house when he's even home."
Laura rolls her eyes expressively. "Boys," she says. "Lara, always remember boys cheat when it comes to real work. Okay?"
"Lara, don't listen to your grandma," Bill says, shaking his head. "She is telling you stories."
Lara giggles, and Laura smiles at her husband. "Oh, so that wasn't you who didn't do the breakfast dishes?" she asks guilelessly. "Do you know how hard it is to unstick oatmeal?"
"Dad, sir," Kara says, bouncing off the couch with Michael still attached to her hip and grinning like an idiot. "I didn't know you were coming!"
"We thought it would be a nice surprise," Laura says. "I'm not joking about the oatmeal, though. It would have been easier to scrub if you'd just glued the bowls together."
"See, young man?" Bill said, touching Michael on the nose. "Your grandmother is a stern taskmaster. She doesn't let you forget anything. She'll keep you honest."
"Or she'll teach you how to look honest while telling tales," Lee says, leaning in the doorway. "Hey Dad. Hey, Laura."
"They're making us dinner and watching our pack of wild animals," Kara says, smiling brightly. "Isn't that nice?"
"It's great," Lee says. "Am I in trouble?"
"Not unless you keep being a jerk-bag," Kara says, handing Michael to Bill and seizing Lee by the hands. "Come prove to your parents that you're capable of being an adult."
Lee still winces when someone calls Laura his mother. Kara doesn't know why. It's not like he has a problem with Laura; they're always off together, talking about things and with their heads together cozily. Maybe he still misses his mom -- his wasn't an abusive bitch.
But Laura's a good mother-in-law, and a better grandmother, and Kara hates when he accidentally puts her outside the family.
She'll talk to him later about it. Right now, they both are taking a bath while they still can. Together. Immediately.
vi. //Apparently, taking an occasional walk on the wild side while still wholeheartedly pledged to a monogamous relationship isn't an earthshaking contradiction.//
Patricia and Vitaly couldn't be more different. At the most and very most basic, Vitaly has a penis and Patricia has a vagina. Vitaly is blonde and short and has his mother's open and honest smile. Patricia is curvy and tall and a gorgeous cream-and-coffee color and is a silversmith. She actually made the wedding ring that Lara is twisting around and around on her finger as she fingers papers that belong in the archive.
"I love you I love you a thousand times I love you. Didn't I tell you enough last week? I love you. I feel a little guilty, but you are MY Captain Apollo, and I love being loved by you. I love that we say it -- I love you, if you were unsure, lover -- to each other. I love the way you look at me when we're making love. I love that I can use the word love and love using it, four and five times a sentence. And yes, I do think you should burn this letter, my best-loved Captain Apollo, no matter what declaration I made about preserving papers of the settlement. I love you, but I do not love what it would mean if we were discovered."
She's thought of that letter as Patricia nestles between Lara's legs and licks long, rough stripes until Lara's head snaps back and she cries out in delight. She puts her hands over the bump that is going to be Vitaly and Lara's baby. Their fifth baby, and Lara has just discovered she likes girls.
She's also still struggling with the part where her father had a decades-long affair with her grandmother. A full-fledged, sex and betrayal and forbidden love kind of affair. There are dozens of letters. A hundred and forty-four. Twelve squared. There should be more. Possibly thousands more. At least double that number. A letter a month for twenty-eight years. A letter a month for forty years. And there are only one hundred and forty-four.
They'd burnt the letters -- an incredible sin in this community, and one that Laura had spoken against so loudly that it shocks Lara to the core that they'd done it. But Lara knows her grandmother: if any of her father's letters survive, they are well-hidden. No one will find them. If it hadn't been for the way that her father had behaved at the funeral, she wouldn't have even thought to look for Laura's.
But Lee had broken down at the funeral, had fallen to his knees (not an insubstantial feat for a man of two days before seventy) while his stepmother was laid to rest next to his father. And the entire community had looked away, stunned. Laura's death was not a surprise -- she had been fading for a year, and she had after all been ninety-two when she died.
Not bad for a woman with less than a year on the day the world ended forty-two years ago.
Lara, who had also been very close to her grandmother, was the one to go to her father to help him up, and he'd given the game away.
"I should have told you every day," he was repeating quietly. "I love you. I'm sorry."
"Dad?" Lara said, eyes wide.
It was the way he looked at Lara that made her stomach twist. When Granddad Bill had died, Dad had been sad and all, but Mom was the heartbroken one. She'd spent two days in bed crying, with Dad and Grandma taking care of her. And sure, it made a kind of sense for Dad to be the broken one now, because Grandma was always closer to Dad.
But Lara knew. Her father was not weeping the way one did for a beloved parent.
"Dad, talk to me," Lara said urgently when he didn't answer. "Dad, what was going on between you two?"
He jumped. Oh, gods, he jumped, and Lara didn't know what to do, because what do you do when your father inadvertently admits to frakking your grandma, his own frakking stepmother, and everyone was always so happy because they were so close, like a real family, being strong for each other, and they were having an affair.
And now, Lara is having an affair with another woman.
Apparently adultery runs in the family.
"Every so often, yes, I miss being lovers," the last of the letters started, the one that dates to weeks before Granddad Bill died. "Eighty years old, and confessing to lusting in my heart: see what you do to me? Clearly, I remain as in love with you as I ever was, Captain. Clearly. Always have, always will, always did love you, so let's not have that argument again. Married adulterers don't get to have the luxury of jealousy. Don't tell me how much you don't love your wife, and I won't bore you by telling you how much I've come to love my husband because lies do not become liars.
Oh, gods, that sounded better in my head. Anyhow, your father wants to see you. Come visit. If I can't make love to you, old age being what it is, I can at least make you those oatmeal cookies you love. All right? Don't be stubborn. Your Laura."
Vitaly massages her feet when they swell. He brings her dried fruit when she craves it out-of-season. He is a good man, and Lara hopes their children take after him than the treacherous Adama strain. The perfect family on the surface, the first family of Earth. Brilliant and brave and strong, except that's all a frakking lie.
Lara is like her father. More than that, Lara is like and truly loved being like her grandmother. Laura was special (so special, in fact, that she could take her secret to the grave with her), and Lara took pride in growing up like her.
She loves Vitaly. Really and truly. She can't remember when he wasn't there, hanging around the press, peering at Lara. He's solid, and Lara couldn't live without him.
But Patricia is life itself, the things Lara missed so much she didn't know she was missing them, and when she suggests things like going down to the seaside for a private tryst, Lara shivers with anticipation and says yes.
"Why do you always ask me if I'm happy? If I were unhappy, do you think that watching you abandoning Kara and the children would make me any happier, Captain? Do you think that running away (our own cabin, away from everyone, was my favorite fantasy for a decade. I'll thank you not to remind me) would solve any problems?
We are not good people, Lee. And I love you anyway. I love you and I want you TERRIBLY. Your father's going fishing with Tigh on Saturday. We can be unhappy together."
Lara does not want Vitaly to read these letters. As the settlement's official archivist, he should be the one to make these decisions on how public the private letters of Laura Roslin to Lee Adama should be? But somehow, the idea of Vitaly touching these letters makes Lara squirm.
They were in love, she wants to protest to Vitaly. They made sure never to hurt my mom or Granddad. Please don't hate them. Please let them have this. Don't turn it into something as simple as a lie.
But she also knows that's her own guilt speaking. I love you, Vitaly, Lara thinks, I love you and I love our children, and yet I love her. I love making love to her, and I hate myself for loving it, but gods help me, I love it.
And Lara remembers one of the shorter letters, one written ten days after her own birth.
"I think it's inappropriate. It's a clever way to play on both of our names, but it's cruel, Lee. I'm glad that you have a daughter. I think Lara is a beautiful baby and I love her AND I love Kara. But it's so cruel to all three of us. Don't you think I wanted to have your children? Don't you think I wish she was ours? What were you thinking?"
Lara closes her eyes. "Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer," she whispers, hands twisting together. "Please, God, make me a stone."
Footsteps loom up behind her -- Vitaly is small and Patricia is solid, so she has no idea who it is just from the sound of footfall. Lara breathes in, thinking of the letters that are still hidden in her father's false-bottomed desk drawer.
Where they're going to stay for now, because the decision not to choose is also a choice.
"Lara?"
She turns, blinks away tears, and smiles. "Hi," she says. "I love you."