Title: Bella
Author: by A.j.
Rating: General audiences
Spoilers: Before “Colonial Day”.
Disclaimer: Ain’t mine.
Notes: I have no idea. All mistakes are mine.

Summary: He realizes she’s beautiful. Of course she’s beautiful.

***

Three weeks after the first bomb, Willam Adama looks over at Laura Roslin and 
realizes that she is a beautiful woman.

It’d be funny if it weren’t so futile.

They are finishing up their bi-weekly supply meeting. She has her papers 
bunched under an arm and is pulling off her glasses when he looks up. Her 
hair is loose around her face and he watches as her arm curls downward, her 
wrist turned just so to close the sides of her reading glasses. It is a 
natural movement, one almost unconscious due to long repetition.

It is Laura Roslin vulnerable and human in her details.

He doesn’t notice that he’s smiling until she looks up and, startled, smiles 
back.

“Something funny, Commander?”

He just shakes his head, unable to do anything other than mentally laugh at 
himself. Of course she’s beautiful. |Of course.|

“Just an old man with too many thoughts.”

She nods like she knows what he means. Hell, it’d be just his luck that she 
does know.

“Well, this old woman will leave this old man with a pile of paper. I think 
Billy’s probably finished with his evening constitutional.” They both smile a 
little, and Bill’s glad he can still feel something other than weariness over 
young love. Laura finishes picking up, throwing him a little wave on her way 
to his hatch.

Something like regret shines brightly in his mind, and he wonders if it’s the 
constant diet of reconstituted food that’s making him so... melancholy 
tonight. Probably.

“Goodnight, Madame President.” He says it softly, a thousand what if’s 
streaming through his tired mind. He sounds sad.

She turns and looks back over her shoulder at him, the light of the hall 
throwing her profile into stark definition. She is an enigma to him. A 
teacher. A politician. A woman. Everything he is not.

He wonders if he is as much a mystery to her as she is to him.

The way she’s watching him, still beautiful despite the age and the stress 
and a thousand other things, he thinks no.

“Goodnight, Commander.”

And then she’s gone.

-fin-