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tellitslantIf I'd been in a different place, this could've become my ficathon entry. As it is, it's five hundred words exactly of Roslin in the moments between "No, I've never read the Scrolls of Pythia" and "Well of course I must be a prophet, how obvious." Spoilers for 1.10, obviously.
**
For someone who hasn't read the scriptures in years, not since she taught them or before, Laura leaps for the idea of her gods-shaped destiny quickly. The strange thing is, that's the explanation that makes sense to her.
Every treatment for cancer carries its own unique side effects. Kill or cure: it's not just a saying. Laura knows hallucinations. Intimately.
Her mother had initially been diagnosed and treated in one of the biggest hospitals in Caprica City; she hadn't been there long before Laura found her a private room, but by the time she left, the entire oncology department knew her name.
"Elizabeth Roslin? Oh yes. Bad reactions... happens to some patients... no reflection on the efficacy of the treatments..." The doctors always smiled briefly but kindly, patted Laura on the shoulder, whisked themselves off to other, less troublesome patients. And Laura stiffened her back and stepped into her mother's room, never sure what she would find there.
It wasn't always bad, of course. Usually her mother was there and functioning, if a little fuzzy. But the weird got weirder as the days passed. It weighed on Laura that finding her mother arguing with the curtains was the least worrisome of the episodes.
She never did understand, for example, the time Elizabeth started watching a pyramid game in the mirror across the room. Her mother had never been a pyramid fan a day in her life, but she was halfway out of bed, clinging to the bar above her, when Laura walked in; their conversation that day had consisted mainly of Elizabeth wondering whether the ref was being bribed.
And everyone on the floor knew her name because... well. She wasn't an easy patient at any time, stubborn and wilful and annoyed at her body's failings. But the sarcastic comments she made when she was rational were nothing compared to the abuse she hurled on certain days in her treatment cycle.
More than once, Laura had almost been bowled over by a nurse or an aide rushing out of her mother's room. Eventually, she could judge her mother's level of medication by the mood pervading the floor. Eventually, Adar told her he'd heard of a pleasant dedicated care facility on the outskirts of the city. Eventually, Elizabeth died.
So Laura knows hallucinations for what they are, and she convinces herself that she remains lucid and aware, and maybe that's why she's so willing to accept the machinations of fate. If she has visions and not hallucinations, then she is not losing her mind, and someone, anyone, is still in control.
She's not going to die like her mother did, fading in and out of reality and wasting mentally as well as physically. She will stay sharp and coherent, she tells herself. She never tries to convince herself that she's not dying. She thinks that proves her grip on reality.
She never realizes that hallucinations are always real to the person having them. But she doesn't think about hallucinations any more.
**
For someone who hasn't read the scriptures in years, not since she taught them or before, Laura leaps for the idea of her gods-shaped destiny quickly. The strange thing is, that's the explanation that makes sense to her.
Every treatment for cancer carries its own unique side effects. Kill or cure: it's not just a saying. Laura knows hallucinations. Intimately.
Her mother had initially been diagnosed and treated in one of the biggest hospitals in Caprica City; she hadn't been there long before Laura found her a private room, but by the time she left, the entire oncology department knew her name.
"Elizabeth Roslin? Oh yes. Bad reactions... happens to some patients... no reflection on the efficacy of the treatments..." The doctors always smiled briefly but kindly, patted Laura on the shoulder, whisked themselves off to other, less troublesome patients. And Laura stiffened her back and stepped into her mother's room, never sure what she would find there.
It wasn't always bad, of course. Usually her mother was there and functioning, if a little fuzzy. But the weird got weirder as the days passed. It weighed on Laura that finding her mother arguing with the curtains was the least worrisome of the episodes.
She never did understand, for example, the time Elizabeth started watching a pyramid game in the mirror across the room. Her mother had never been a pyramid fan a day in her life, but she was halfway out of bed, clinging to the bar above her, when Laura walked in; their conversation that day had consisted mainly of Elizabeth wondering whether the ref was being bribed.
And everyone on the floor knew her name because... well. She wasn't an easy patient at any time, stubborn and wilful and annoyed at her body's failings. But the sarcastic comments she made when she was rational were nothing compared to the abuse she hurled on certain days in her treatment cycle.
More than once, Laura had almost been bowled over by a nurse or an aide rushing out of her mother's room. Eventually, she could judge her mother's level of medication by the mood pervading the floor. Eventually, Adar told her he'd heard of a pleasant dedicated care facility on the outskirts of the city. Eventually, Elizabeth died.
So Laura knows hallucinations for what they are, and she convinces herself that she remains lucid and aware, and maybe that's why she's so willing to accept the machinations of fate. If she has visions and not hallucinations, then she is not losing her mind, and someone, anyone, is still in control.
She's not going to die like her mother did, fading in and out of reality and wasting mentally as well as physically. She will stay sharp and coherent, she tells herself. She never tries to convince herself that she's not dying. She thinks that proves her grip on reality.
She never realizes that hallucinations are always real to the person having them. But she doesn't think about hallucinations any more.
