Disclaimer: everything in Battlestar Galactica (re-imagined series) belongs to Ronald D. Moore, David Eick and the Sci Fi Channel, I'm just borrowing some of it. Not making any money. Don't sue.
Rendezvous
By chimère
The last jump to the rendezvous point plunges her into a different vision. Elosha is gone. She is neither on the Galactica nor on the Basestar. Instead, her surroundings are so alien and so familiar at once that for a moment, she cannot breathe.
She is standing on the top of a flight of stairs. Not made of metal like all the companionways on starships or of marble like the stairs in the Opera House of her dreams, but of rich wood.
Sunlight - real sunlight - is pouring through windows on her left. One of them is open and she can smell the air blowing in, not stale and recycled, but fresh, alive.
She has almost forgotten what it's like to be on a planet. New Caprica she cannot remember without bitterness, but this... this is like being home.
Stunned, she starts to descend slowly. The skirt of her long dress brushes against her legs. The material is soft, luxurious, and of a rich red colour.
As she moves, she discovers with a dizzying jolt that her body feels light, comfortable, no longer weighing her down with the wasting illness that had slowly stolen all of her strength and hope. Hair flows past her shoulders, her own again, the same colour and waves.
And as if all of this was not miracle enough...
He is standing at the bottom of the stairs, wearing his dress uniform. He looks... younger, or as though a heavy burden has been lifted from him.
Fleeting images of the landscape glimpsed through the windows crowd her peripheral vision, but she cannot look away from him. His eyes look straight into hers, and they are a startling blue, and crinkled at the corners with a hidden smile.
She descends another few steps.
He smiles fully now, and holds out his hand.
Is this Earth?
She doesn't know whether she has asked that aloud. But as she takes his hand, she knows that it doesn't matter. The warmth of his palm against hers, of his smile, his presence envelopes her, and they step into the sunlight together.
Soon after she wakes, they come to tell her that the Fleet is gone, but there is a single Raptor waiting for them.
He is not reading, just looking at familiar words on a familiar page.
I wasn't afraid to die. I was afraid of the emptiness that I felt inside. I couldn't feel anything, and that was what scared me. You came into my thoughts. You filled them. I felt good.
A flash of light and the beeping of the contact alarm, and adrenalin floods his body in a second, his heart thumping painfully against his ribcage. He scrambles back to the front of the Raptor and sees it.
He would never have thought he could be so happy to see a Cylon Basestar. But no, this isn't happiness - this is anxiety and longing held barely in check.
Are you there, Laura?
He scans the space around him out of a soldier's habit, but then his gaze is drawn back to the Basestar as if by a magnet. He can't take his eyes off it as he straps himself in and begins his approach. Afraid that if he looks away, she might disappear again.
The most important vessel in the galaxy right now, to him, this Basestar. Carrying hope and dread in equal measure. He pays almost no heed to the strange combination of metal and biological constructions he sees around him as he begins to land.
The landing proceeds without any wireless contact, which is unaccustomed for him. He almost starts to search for a frequency to contact the Basestar, not to ask for landing instructions, but to yell into his headset, "Is Laura Roslin here? Is she alive?" He stops himself with an effort. He'll know the truth soon enough, and the dread in him whispers, Better to prolong not knowing.
The Basestar silently swallows his Raptor and he looks upon an unfamiliar sight of black and white and red and flickering lights. And then he sees her, standing there, waiting for him.
And he knows that he's home. Here, on an enemy ship, in the middle of dark, cold space and a war and a long journey with an uncertain end, he is home.