Title : Long Way Home
Author : Helen C.
Rating : PG
Summary : A series of four unrelated, AU ficlets, exploring possible ways for the Fleet to find Earth (with unfortunate results, most times). In other words, four ways the show won't deal with that particular storyline.
Spoilers : Everything aired so far is fair game.
Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
AN. Many thanks to mick1997 for beta'ing this! As usual, I tinkered before posting; all remaining mistakes are mine.
Long Way Home
Helen C.
Part One
1.
It takes the Fleet six years to find Earth.
Six years of dodging the Cylons, then watching them destroy themselves, torn apart in a civil war. From what they can learn, the Cylons are split between two factions; one that regrets the near-extinction of the human race and now claims that nothing in their religion actually condones genocide (too bad that frakking epiphany didn't come sooner) and one that argues that anyone who doesn't worship their god must die and that humans should be hunted down and killed to the last one.
The humans try to keep out of the crossfire, try to preserve whatever few resources they have left, and survive the Cylons' fall.
"Their agony is a lot more drawn out than the one of the Colonies," Hotdog observes during a triad game in the rec room, a few months after Kara's death. Lee resists pointing out that the agony of the human race is still ongoing, but from the faces of the pilots around him, he's not the only one who thinks that way.
The Colonies fell heartbreakingly easily, but years later, the survivors are still struggling for supplies, for food, for fuel, for survival.
Lee wonders how many people are still hoping that Earth will hold the key to their salvation. He knows most of their dreams of the first hour are probably unrealistic, though. Even if Earth does exist, there's no guarantee that their long lost relatives will accept them with open arms.
Actually, the way their luck is going, it's pretty likely that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
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2.
When the Fleet reaches Earth, it's not apotheosis, fireworks, and happily ever after.
The humans are exhausted, trying to deal with grief and survivor's guilt, licking their wounds and unable to look past the next day. They've been in survival mode for so long that Lee wonders how many of them will ever be able to fit into a civilization again. How could they ever have faith in the future, when theirs was so horribly destroyed once already?
They don't have much to offer to the long lost Thirteenth Tribe, but Lee doesn't think it would have made a difference. The Earthers don't want anything from them; they're too scared for that.
No one expected to find a planet that hadn't had any contact with outsiders for as long as their history goes back. No one expected that the Earthers had forgotten where they came from. If they had known…
Well, if they had known, they would have still come here. They needed somewhere to go, and this was their only plan, their only chance at escaping the Cylons, their only chance to find somewhere to live.
They needed hope, they needed to believe that their journey had a goal and that when they reached it, their struggle would finally be over.
As it turns out, their luck (or lack thereof) holds true.
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Lee spends his first weeks on Earth in a military prison, along with all the other officers who came down with the civilians, being "debriefed" by Earth's military.
The Earthers are mostly civil in that they don't beat him to a pulp or otherwise inflict any pain to get him to talk. They draw a lot of blood in the first few days, make him spend hours under a scanning device that looks more sophisticated than anything Lee ever saw on the Colonies, test his reflexes and his strength, but look more astonished than alarmed by whatever they find.
In the days after that, they don't allow him to sleep for more than half an hour in a stretch, and they don't feed him much—a well known tactic to break a prisoner's defenses. Lee feels weak and sick but it doesn't matter that he's not on top of his game. He can answer truthfully most of the questions they ask.
No, the survivors of the Colonies are not here to fight or destroy Earth. No, they're not here to invade it either. They just want some place to live again, to try to save what little of their civilization still remains—if there's still time for that. No, they've never met any life form other than humans (and Cylons, but the Earthers don't have to worry about them anymore, and Lee makes sure to say so as often as possible).
After some indeterminate time, Lee is allowed into a shower and given some clothes to wear—something orange, looking a lot like the deck crew coveralls. He's given some food, then led away to an outside expanse. He breathes in deeply, raises his head to the sun, enjoying the feeling of warmth against his skin. The soldiers escorting him don't say anything and Lee starts walking again before they lose patience and urge him forward. It's a small way to feel in control, but it's all he has and he treasures it.
They allow him roughly half an hour outside before leading him back to his room. Lee doesn't see anyone from the Fleet, but he walks by lots of closed doors. For all he knows, the others are waiting for their own guards behind these doors, and the thought of his father being locked up makes his heart beat faster, either in shock or in fear.
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Lee doesn't have any way to keep track of time. His guards allow him outside at irregular intervals and he's pretty sure he's fed at different times every day, to keep him disoriented.
Every day, Earthers come by, ask him the same questions over and over again, then leave him alone until the next session. Sometimes, they do the good-cop, bad-cop thing he and Starbuck used to be so good at, and he has to fight a smile at the bittersweet memories it brings back. Sometimes, they inject him with something that makes him loopy and makes it hard for him to focus. When their shapes are blurred and an annoying buzzing muffles their voices, they interrogate him again, and Lee falls back on a training he had thought long forgotten, giving only vague and misleading answers, keeping his replies short and to-the-point.
He's pretty sure it has been several weeks—three at least, five at most, by his admittedly imprecise estimation—when he's given blue pants and shirt and a white T-shirt, and told to shower and dress. Then, his guards lead him away from his room.
Lee follows them without protest. At the beginning, he tried to engage them in conversation, but none of them ever replied and Lee stopped trying after a while.
They step out of the complex and walk for about five minutes, to a vast expanse of concrete. There's a plane sitting on a take-off runway. Technologically, the Earthers seem a good decade ahead of the Colonies, but from what the Fleet gathered when they first made contact, their space traveling abilities are limited to the point of being almost nonexistent. He's not quite sure what to make of that, but he thinks that at least, it should make things easier when they get the hell out of here.
The guards gesture at him to climb in the plane and Lee starts at the familiar faces aboard—Dee and his father, Tyrol, Gunny Mathias, Showboat, Narco, Skulls and Seelix. It seems the Earthers were very efficient in keeping only the relatively high level military personnel here.
Dee's eyes are too bright and his father breathes in heavily when he sees Lee but no one says a word.
Lee smiles at them all shakily (it's not that he thought the Earthers had hurt them, but it's sill nice to see familiar faces after weeks of being interrogated by a bunch of strangers) and sits down on an uncomfortable seat.
He doesn't dare go to any of them with the Earthers looking on, not knowing how they would take that. The family reunion will have to wait.
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They fly for five hours, then are piled up in a military truck and driven to a camp. It looks a little like New Caprica, Lee notices at once. Tents, civilians gathered in small groups, everyone wearing the same clothes he does.
Fences all around and guards patrolling the perimeter, holding their weapons in an obvious way.
Anders walks to them and nods. "Good to see you guys. We were starting to get worried."
Lee's father acknowledges the unspoken, "Glad you're okay," with a terse nod. Lee feels his ex-wife's hand slide into his own and gives it a small, reassuring squeeze.
Anders looks at them and gestures behind him. "Laura's this way."
Everyone steers clear as they make their way to the tent. As soon as they're inside, Lee turns to his father, who hugs him fiercely, asking, "Are you all right?"
Lee is tired beyond measure and can't quite swallow the bitter taste of their welcome here, but he nods. All in all, things could be much worse. "Yeah." He blindly reaches out in Dee's direction and feels her fingers close around his again.
After a while, his father releases him and they turn to face Laura, who stares at them, eyes bright. "Gentlemen," she says, "Lieutenant. Let's take a look around."
The four of them slowly walk around the camp, the civilians staying away from them. Lee nods to a few familiar faces, relieved that everyone seems to be in one piece, if dangerously subdued.
"We're not sure our conversations aren't monitored," Laura says casually, the warning clear. They don't talk about the ships they left behind, in case anything turned wrong. They don't talk about the skeleton crew on the Galactica, hidden only a jump away, or about Tigh and his standing orders to wait for word that everything is fine and that the Earthers can be trusted before coming. Lee knows that when nothing comes, Tigh will wait for as long as needed, keeping a Raptor in radio reach to check for contact. Six years on the run have left their mark. Even after the first contact with Earth went fine—if reserved on the Earthers' part—they wanted to have a backup plan.
Most of the civilians wanted to come immediately, desperate for some fresh air after the years spent in overcrowded ships. They only took what military forces were necessary, however. Enough that the Earthers wouldn't suspect they had left anyone behind, not enough that the Galactica wouldn't be able to rescue them.
This isn't how any of them imagined Earth would be, but they didn't imagine that the Cylons would blow the Colonies to ashes either.
They adapted then, they'll adapt now.
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3.
"This is like New Caprica," Anders tells Lee. They're discretely studying the movements of the guards on the other side of the fence, taking note of the way they cover the perimeter, what kinds of weapons they have, how many of them there are at any given time. "Except on New Caprica, we knew the enemy," Anders adds.
Lee nods. In the end, what do they know about the Earthers? Aside from their technological level, and the fact that they've lived isolated on this planted since as long as their recorded history goes, not much.
If they had known then, maybe the survivors of the Colonies wouldn't have fought so hard to get away from the Cylons' clutches. It's not that the descendants of the Thirteenth Tribe are needlessly brutal or cruel; it's just that the humans didn't fight so hard to get here, only to end up living in a cage.
Anders hesitates for a moment before asking, "How's your father?" The worry in his voice is undeniable. Since Kara's death, during one of the last battles against the Cylons, he has grown a lot closer to both Lee and his father—the only family Kara had left, aside from him. "Lee?" They don't use ranks anymore. They're all civilians here—not military officers, not politicians officially appointed by the people. Just refugees. Prisoners.
"I don't know," Lee says, trying to pretend he's not scared. His father caught a bad cold a couple of weeks ago and the cold turned into pneumonia alarmingly quickly. The Earthers took him away, saying they would take care of him. Lee would have protested, if he had thought there was a frakking thing he could have done. "They won't say."
He never liked feeling powerless, never liked being out of control, and the situation is slowly driving him mad. If it was only up to him, he'd take up arms right now and try to make a run for it. It's probably a good thing that it's not his decision to make, too, because the attempt would almost certainly get him killed.
When they escape, they'll do it together. Laura made that clear, as did his father.
Anders doesn't offer him empty reassurances, the way everyone else does. Instead, he looks around. "You think they're going to leave us here long?"
Lee thinks that by now—eight months after the officers arrived at the camp—it must be clear that they're nothing but a harmless bunch of refugees. If the Earthers had planned on letting them roam the planet free, they'd have done so already.
"I don't know."
Anders nods in understanding and falls silent. Together, they resume their observations. Surely, they'll be able to spot a weakness eventually.
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Lee's father is brought back to the camp eventually, ten ponds underweight, his hair gone completely gray. Two Earthers support most of his weight, waiting near the entrance of the camp, and Lee walks to them, peripherally aware that all activity has stopped around him. It seems that everyone is frozen in place, watching the scene unfold.
He knows there are guns pointed at him, too, and he'll need to talk to Anders about that later, because for the first time, he has the feeling that the Earthers are doing it mostly out of habit instead of because they expect trouble.
"Dad," Lee calls when he's close enough.
His father offers him a tired smile. "Lee." He coughs briefly, shrugs off the help of his two guards and takes a step to Lee. Then another, and another. Lee doesn't move, allowing his father to reach him at his own pace, then puts an arm around his waist, helping him to his tent.
He can hear the slight wheezing in his father's breathing as they walk, he can see the people watching them as they approach the tent, but he doesn't care about any of that.
He hadn't wanted to admit, even to himself, how scared he was that his father wouldn't come back, that he would die alone in a medical facility, surrounded by strangers on an unknown planet that was supposed to become their home.
Unsurprisingly, Laura is waiting for them, and she helps Lee guide his father to the bed.
"Good to see you, Bill," she says, her tone warm. She shoots an alarmed look at Lee, who ignores her.
"Good to be back," Bill replies. "I suppose." He reaches out and clasps Lee's hand. "Looks like you're in charge, now," he says.
Lee wants to protest so very badly, wants to say that maybe Cottle will be able to do something once they get back to the Fleet, but then he sees the way his father's hands are shaking, the way he's already lying back on the bed, exhausted, and the words stay stuck in this throat.
"If you wanted to retire, Bill, all you had to do was ask," Laura says, her eyes too bright.
Lee and his father chuckle at the same time, more loudly than the joke deserves, then Lee says, "We'll let you rest."
His father grunts softly, already half asleep. Lee and Laura step out in the sun without a word. There's no one around and Lee is grateful for the relative privacy.
"He'll get better," Laura says, patting his back gently.
Lee nods, not trusting his voice.
She adds conversationally, "In two months, it will be Colonial Day already." She adds under her breath, so softly he barely hears it, "Captain Apollo."
He looks up at the sky. They're not going to get several chances. If there isn't a Raptor up there, if there isn't a rescue mission already planned by Tigh and Helo, they won't stand a chance. On the other hand, they've waited long enough. More data gathering won't teach them anything they don't know about the Earthers procedures and means of defense. They're as ready as they'll ever be, and it's possible that the Earthers are finally letting their guard down a little.
"I know," he says. He whispers, only for her, "Madam President."
Anders is watching them and steps closer when Lee nods at him. "Your father?" he asks.
"He'll survive. He'll be fine," Lee says, because he needs to say it out loud if he wants to believe it. "Did you watch the guards when I went to him?"
Anders nods, a grim half smile on his face.
"Let's talk, then," Lee says.
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4.
The Earthers have grown complacent with the months, as it became clear that their visitors weren't going to rebel.
They don't expect the attack, and they sure as hell don't expect everyone, including the civilians (some of whom were in the resistance, some of whom just don't like their cage anymore than the military does), to take part in it.
It happens fast and it's easier to steal the weapons from the guards who bring in the food than Lee thought it would be. By the time any of the high-ranking Earthers stationed here have the chance to understand what's happening, it's too late for them to ask for reinforcements.
Fifteen minutes after the first punch was thrown, Lee finds himself in the command center, facing a terrified-looking kid who can't be more than twenty and who didn't even think of raising his gun when Lee pointed a rifle at him.
"Please," the kid says. "I've got a son."
Lee looks at him coldly. "We need a radio."
He spots a movement from the corner of his eye. The Chief. Good.
The kid points to a door behind Lee. "In there," he says, then gulps. Lee knows that part of the building was secured by Anders.
He nods at the kid to walk there, keeping his gun trained at his head. As soon as they're in, the Chief sets to work on the equipment while Lee ties the kid's hands behind his back.
"Tyrol to Galactica," the Chief calls. "Is there anyone up there?"
The only answer he gets is static. He shrugs when Lee looks at him. "It might take a while."
Lee nods and gets back to the main control room of the center. There are cameras recording everything that happens in the camp, and he can see that the prisoners have overpowered their guards relatively easily. They probably don't have much time until more troops arrive, but hopefully, they'll be gone by then.
And if they're not… Well, he wouldn't mind dying in the attempt, rather than settling in this prison, watching his father die, and depending on his guards to feed him for the rest of his life.
It takes Tyrol fourteen minutes to make contact. When he yells, Lee runs back into the room, Anders on his heels, just in time to hear Hotdog's voice through the speakers. "Chief, good to hear your voice."
"Likewise," the Chief says, a little choked up.
Lee walks to the transmitter, relief and adrenaline making him dizzy. "Hotdog, we need the Raptors and the Vipers down here, and the shuttles to evacuate. We don't know what they did with the ships we came down with, so let's assume they're lost."
Thankfully, those ships weren't armed, so that's not something the Earthers will be able to use against them.
"Will do, sir," Hotdog says, and Lee releases a breath he hadn't known he was holding. Looks like Tigh learned from New Caprica and kept his men ready to fight at a moment's notice. "ETA 30 minutes," Hotdog adds.
Lee looks at the kid they captured and kneels next to him. His superior officers are still alive, under guard in another part of the building, but the kid doesn't have to know that. "We're going to leave, and you'll never hear from us again," he says. He sees the kid's disbelieving eyes and he motions to the Chief behind him. "See that man? He has a kid too. And I'm sure he'd like to see him growing up free, instead of locked up in a camp in the middle of nowhere."
The kid looks away as Lee adds, "We need some place for our friends to come get us." He aims the gun at the kid's knee. "We could look by ourselves, but we don't have that kind of time."
The kid whimpers when Lee pulls the gun's safety. "Please," he says.
"I'm not asking much," Lee replies. "Tell me."
The kid looks around at Tyrol and Anders, and pales at what he sees. "There's a clearing, three miles up north."
"Right," Anders snorts before Lee can react. "The one where the choppers deliver the food you bring to us? Not good enough. It's guarded, I take it?"
The kid pales, stammers, "I… I'm sorry, I, I didn't think about that, I—"
Lee isn't far from feeling sorry for him, but they don't have time for this. "Think harder," he snaps.
"East," the kid says. "There's a road, it's in the open, but—"
"The road they used when they drove us here?" Lee asks.
The kid nods fearfully.
Lee shoots a look at Anders. Not great, exposed and a frakking tight fit for the shuttles to land and embark the civilians, but it doesn't look like they'll get anything better. He rises to his feet. "I'm taking a few men and checking the place," he tells the Chief and Anders. "Give the coordinates to Hotdog, tell him not to land anything there until we give him the all clear."
They nod and get to it as Lee drags the kid out. "Let's go trekking."
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Lee boards the last Raptor to leave the planet. He can see the battle raging in the sky above him, the Vipers against the Earthers' flight defense, and spares a thought for the pilots who will die today, so they can escape. He just hopes the final body count will be smaller than it was on New Caprica.
He watches the pilots as the Raptor takes off—Athena and Helo, focused on avoiding incoming missiles and debris from the battle.
He hadn't realized how much he missed flying, had tried not to think about never climbing into a Viper or a Raptor again. Now that he's in the air, it's all he can do to remain in his seat instead of rushing to Helo, dragging him out of his chair and taking his place. The fierceness of the feeling surprises him.
"I missed it too," Showboat says from her seat next to him.
Helo turns to them before he can reply. "We're clear, Apollo," he says. "Galactica just called the Vipers back."
Lee nods at him gratefully, gets to his feet and walks to the cockpit. The Galactica is looming above them; he smiles at the sight of the Bucket, still flying, and thinks that as long as she is, there's hope.
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5.
"Now what?" he asks Laura. They're sitting in his father's office, with Tigh and his father, Anders, Helo and Dee.
She sighs. "I don't know."
His father speaks up, his voice stronger than it has been since he came back to the camp after the pneumonia. "We don't have much choice."
Lee nods in acknowledgement. "We keep looking for a planet."
He doesn't say that they could jump blindly from one place to another for generations without finding a habitable planet. What else can they do? Go back to the Colonies, or to New Caprica? The Cylons are all but extinct, but there are some left. Besides, the Colonies suffered a nuclear attack and there isn't enough radiation medication to sustain them all, and New Caprica tastes too much like poison to all of them.
So they keep looking and if they never find a planet… well.
"The Fleet has been our home for so long," Laura says, echoing Lee's thoughts. Most people won't accept spending their lives, raising their kids and dying in tin cans floating in space, but Lee is starting to think that maybe, the journey will be more rewarding than their goal, whatever it ends up being.
And after all, with Earth out of their reach for good, the journey is all they have left.
end