A/N: This is shorter than I usually write, but I felt this was the best place to end it. Happy reading!

She's lost among cluttered thoughts and half-truths and an unfulfilled destiny she never understood. An avenging angel with broken wings; all sense of direction splintered to the winds.

Her father speaks of purpose, but Kara doesn't listen. There is too much hope in listening. She's been buried under that tombstone before, the weight of her own hope crushing down on her, reminding her that the path to love and happiness is not hers.

Kara Thrace stopped wishing a long time ago, stopped trying to escape her own shadow or love above herself. Instead, she thrives there in the dark, lashing back at things she cannot have, pushing them into recesses and corners and cracks so they twist and pinch and learn to stay the frak away.

Sometimes it works but when she fails to fail, the world shines so bright and open that she's blinded by it. She battles that back too, condemning it as treachery and reaffirming for herself that she's unworthy.

It comes at her from all sides and much too quickly, her brand of redemption so painful it's resplendent and she finally understands what meaning is.

Wings unfurl, no longer cracked and useless, and twine with the splintered shards of purpose. She is far from healed, but she is no longer broken.

It's her fate, she supposes, fate being unlike destiny in its lack of glory and ring of finality. There's nothing divine in this, despite the Divinity it serves. And she's angry in a way that makes her doubtful. And Kara hates being doubtful.

She still prays sometimes when she can think of no other way to lose herself in something, but the words taste like ash on her tongue and feel like ants under her skin. She mourns for the peace she used to find at the temple of the gods and sees the ugly, dark thing that writhes about in the foundations. She used to have faith, but now she believes. It is far less reassuring.

Always, there is something lurking just beyond her reach, something teasing her senses and playing some kind of game she doesn't have the rules to. And she knows. Her gods have made use of her; a devout woman who prayed for a path, who asked for guidance and forgiveness and chances beyond her deserving. She was rewarded with pain and heartache and death, but there is no fault in that. She never could accept hope beyond its direness anyway. It all feels fitting.

So when that moment comes, she's born again into violence and salvation and it all makes a certain kind of illogical sense. They needed a path, a heading, but not a reason; they are ripe with reason and intent and righteousness, so gorged with it they almost can't see beyond it. But she's their map and it doesn't matter all the sudden that they almost sacrificed salvation on the altar of purpose because now they see. Now they accept that which they ignored and refused.

It is only when the dust has settled and the ash is cleared and she stands in a field with a man she's always needed and rarely accepted, that she lets go. It's her fate and she knows it and in one gleaming moment she watches him smile and hope and laugh and she weeps for him. But in that moment he's gone, or maybe she's gone, it's too hard to tell what is what anymore. Reality is subjective anyway, she thinks, and looks to where Lee was standing only to see sky and grass and Earth.

She offers the unhearing universe an apology, a you're welcome and a goodbye before turning and stepping away from everything and into something much more. Something so much more.