Disclaimer: I don't own BSG.
Read on, oh faithful ones...
Notes: Spoilers for Season 3, Exodus pt. 1 and 2.
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The hangar deck was full of clapping, cheering, excessive amounts of happiness for everyone being together again. Only a few weren't joining in the celebrations.
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Kara Thrace watched as that woman took her daughter away... No, not hers, not anymore and hadn't been to start with. She'd promised herself at a young age that she would never have children. She had kept that promise to herself all through her life so far, and before Sam, she hadn't even had a lasting relationship to have to make a decision about pregnancy. She had always been careful, no matter how drunk she got, and there was never a desire to put a child through what she'd been through, didn't want to leave her beloved piloting job and didn't want to raise a child without being there for the kid, piloting shifts could take anything from hours to entire months away from home...
None of this was right, the whole time on New Caprica had been pretty frakked from the moment the Cylons flew overhead, and Leoben had only used Kacey to frak with her head. Not her daughter, not her child, not hers. Kara knows this, but she can't help but feel she's losing something as the woman walks away with Kacey, instead of the little girl being with her. She looks away from the waving child and surrounded by all of these people, wonders how she's never felt more alone.
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Saul Tigh released Adama as the Admiral was lifted up onto the shoulders of the returned crew and civilians from New Caprica. He turned away, his mind filled with Ellen. She might have been manipulative but she loved him; she loved him as much as he lived her, as it turned out. Can't say that he wouldn't have done the same thing, but she had risked the whole of humanity for him. He doesn't think he's worth all that, and there's a sudden bitterness on his tongue that makes his stomach turn. Doesn't think even a bottle of ambrosia would wash that away.
He makes his way past people without noticing them or hearing their words and cheers. As he leaves the hangar deck, Saul wonders how he'll manage putting the frakking cover over his eye in the morning without Ellen to help him. Rethinks his earlier judgement on the ambrosia and decides that maybe two bottles will be enough. He needs a drink.
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Felix Gaeta doesn't think he can join in the celebrations. Doesn't know whether to stand or sit, and ends up half-on and half-off the edge of the Raptor behind him. Saul pushes past but doesn't seem to hear his half-hearted call to him. He thinks it's better that way, and watches as Admiral Adama is taken out of the hangar deck towards the galley, still on the shoulders of the people he saved. A small smile as he wonders if anyone will show up for work in the morning. Work reminds him of Gaius, of Sara. He prays to the gods that they stopped D'Anna from setting off the nuke. Starts to feel sick in his stomach; the time wasted on Baltar, the loyalty and all-but betrayal he'd committed in the name of New Caprica, in what he thought it promised and everything it offered. He'd believed in the potential of the place and the President rather than seeing both for what they truly were.
Gaeta finally sits on the Raptor, oblivious to the now-departed crowd and the almost-empty hangar. Wonders if it might have been better if he had shot Gaius after all. But then, it went back further than that, back to the presidential election, didn't it really? Everything was his fault, all of it. Every death, every disappearance in the night, every tortured soul, every orphaned child, every childless parent. Gaius Baltar might have signed the papers but it was Felix Gaeta who had condemned them all...
He hurries from the hangar deck and is sick for the rest of the night. He doesn't feel better in the morning, even when he's only one of two who show up for work replacement. Gaeta doesn't feel better for a long, long time.
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The end.
Thanks for reading, hope you liked it.