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me:

[4x09] Roslin and love.

The thing is, Laura has only ever known a particular type of love. In my headcanon, she was the Eldest Daughter who moved back in to care for her dying mother, while her father was distracted with grief. She became a surrogate mother to her sisters after they lost their mother, and she was a teacher to countless students, and then a political advocate for countless teachers. She was Everybody’s Mom long before she became the President of a lost race in desperate need of her firm but compassionate leadership. For Laura, love is duty. For Laura, love is hard work.

She even says as much to Bill when she confesses, on her deathbed, that she never had a home before. Laura spent her life facilitating everyone else’s ability to feel at home, to feel relaxed and safe, to such an extent that she was never able to feel that way herself. Every relationship in her life was one-sided: Laura gives, provides, helps, comforts, cares.

If we’re lucky, we are afforded the blessing of letting some lessons take a lifetime to learn. But Laura died in her prime, and in our prime we’re always too busy doing everything to stop and see the lessons that are crystallizing all around us. If we’re granted the opportunity to get old, to slow down, to stop acting and start being, then everything we did, and saw, and were, slowly begins to settle, and those sediments form the foundation of wisdom.

When Elosha told Laura “just love someone,” I think she knew that Laura would love Bill the same way she loved all those others - dutifully. Actively. Intentionally. And yes, Laura was vulnerable with Bill when she told him she loved him - and yes, she was vulnerable when she moved in with him, and let herself be at home. But these lessons aren’t learned in a single, lightning-bolt epiphany. Laura’s redemption arc in the series is beautiful, and I buy it, but in real life, unlearning the lesson that Love Equals Duty takes longer than a single vision on a single Cylon Baseship. I think Elosha probably knew that.

I think love has three faces. There’s Love the noun - that’s the love you feel. There’s Love the action - that’s the love you give. And then there’s a Love that you surrender to - the love you receive. Mothers, and all those who love by providing care, don’t always have the luxury of receiving.

As a thought experiment, imagine that Laura’s and Bill’s roles were reversed, and Bill was on the Baseship with the Hybrid when it jumped away. Do you think Laura would have abandoned the fleet and waited in a raptor for Bill to return? I don’t. I think when Laura can’t live without someone, and yet she’s called to live without them, she finds a way. She’s done it before. She simply puts her heart on the line and lets herself break on behalf of everyone else, in service of her singular purpose, which is to care for her family, her children, her fleet.

Bill waiting for Laura was an act of faith, and faith is something Laura has never had. Laura’s world is concrete, and there is always an option to act and effect change. She believes in the gods because of direct personal experience with her visions, but that’s not faith. The ultimate tragedy of Laura’s story is that she got partway there - she understood that she needed to open herself, to find a home, and she found one. But she never got to live in it. She gave her love to Bill, but she never really got a chance to learn what it means to let him love her in return. She lived with him briefly in his quarters, in her headscarf, in her bathrobe, but she didn’t get to stay. Her work was never done, her mothering never finished, and that’s why my headcanon won’t grant that she truly understood Elosha’s assignment. Only opening herself consistently, over time, will erode the armor she’s wearing and effect a real metamorphosis.