Before... Again

Chapter 1

Disclaimer: BSG belongs to RDM, not me.

Summary: Laura's journey is far from over, in fact it is beginning again. Time-travel / fix-it fic.

The all encompassing pain that had been Laura's constant companion over the last few months was surprisingly easy to push away, to block from her mind in these, her final moments. She could feel herself slipping away, awareness of her surroundings muting as her senses gradually gave up. Smell and taste were long gone, touch was fading, but to her quiet joy, sight and hearing were staying to the end.

She gazed out at the new world that she was never supposed to see, that Bill was desperately trying to show her. Perhaps he thought that seeing the planet in all of its glory would make her hold on to life a little longer. If it was that simple, she would never leave him. She wanted to stay with him, to watch the remainder of humanity adapt to their new home, the home that their leaders had given everything to bring them to.

It was more likely however that he knew she was taking her last breaths beside him and wanted her to leave with the knowledge of the true extent of their accomplishment. This planet, the Earth that they deserved after all of the hardships and tragedy they had suffered, was teeming with life, with possibilities for their people. Even with the handicap of starting over technologically, their lives would be happy, easy. Everyone was busy finding a corner to claim as their own, to build a real community. They had saved Humanity. He wanted her to know that.

She did.

Her halting, breathy words sounded distant, even to her. Her vision had blurred dramatically, but she was content. Bill was beside her and the fuzzy colours before her were life giving sunlight bathing the surface of their promised land. They had made it. Her eyes either closed or stopped working, but it didn't matter.

It was time to rest.

A deep breath, a breath without pain, was her first clue upon regaining awareness that something wasn't right. Her lungs inflated, effortlessly drawing air in, holding for a second and then releasing in a gentle rush. Another painless breath. Another. Wonderment suffused her, a giddy warmth settling, tugging the corners of her mouth into a smile, as the simple action she had taken for granted continued to cause her no suffering.

As she came back to herself, she realised she was sitting, with her head resting on something before her. A desk, perhaps. She had fallen asleep at her desk many times due to the exhausting nature of her illness combined with the constant pressures of her Presidency. She couldn't recall sitting down at a desk though, hadn't she just been reclining?

Her position wasn't comfortable, there was a deep ache in her neck, but compared to what she had been living with it was a minor annoyance. Reluctantly, she cautiously brought her hands up to either side of her head on the desk, intending to push herself slowly upright. The easy movements of her arms, the lack of pain or lethargy the action should have provoked, left her reeling.

This wasn't right. Her every movement had been a painful struggle before. She hadn't even been able to walk with Bill on Earth, he'd had to carry her, wrapped securely in a blanket to stave off the ever-present chill. Bill. After carefully placing her in the co-pilots seat of his Raptor, he'd been trying to show her what he could of the planet. She recalled the soothing timbre of his voice as he spoke to her, but the words were lost. Hadn't she been getting worse? Hadn't she...?

Died. She was dead.

Her eyes snapped open as she lifted her head and pushed herself upright with a gasp, finally taking in her surroundings. The sight that greeted her was as shocking as it was familiar. The lights were dimmed to simulate night time, bathing the narrow room she had hoped never to see again. The slanted bulkheads, portholes showing dazzling stars, overstuffed chairs -currently occupied by deeply sleeping people, colleagues whom had shared in her accomplishments, whom she knew were still alive- arrayed around the desk that had been her life for the last few years. She let out an unsteady breath and warily turned to look over her left shoulder. The whiteboard innocently greeted her with an impossible number. 47,972. That can't be true...

As her mind struggled to comprehend that her afterlife greatly resembled Colonial One, the curtain peeled back and someone stepped through. Shocked, she openly stared as the one person she had missed the most crossed the short distance to her desk and dropped into the chair opposite with a sigh. He placed the small stack of papers he held onto the desk and then bowed his head, tiredly passing a hand over his eyes.

"Billy." she breathed, drinking in the sight of her most trusted aide, the son she'd never had, her heart creeping into her throat. He looked terrible. His eyes were bruised from lack of sleep, his mannerisms sluggish. His hair, unruly from running his fingers through it, nevertheless remained loyal. Instead of making him appear manic or scruffy, it simply served to highlight his sweet boyish appearance. He lifted his head, the action slowed by fatigue, and gave a shy, weary smile.

"Thirteen hundred dead, but nearly forty-eight thousand alive because of it. It doesn't seem right." he shook his head, as if to dislodge the memory. Laura was glad that she couldn't speak past the lump in her throat, as she had no idea what he was talking about. She swallowed thickly, blinking the moisture from her eyes. Billy obviously thought she was going to cry and quickly continued his train of thought, stumbling slightly over the words. "It was though. The right choice. 24 hours have passed with no sign of the Cylons."

"Hmm." The hum was the only noise she could coax from herself. His words were tickling her memory, but she couldn't place them. Death had obviously made him cryptic. He lowered his head and picked one of the papers he had brought with him up off the desk. He gestured with it, towards the whiteboard.

"Update on the headcount." He smiled a genuine, wide grin which lit up his face. "We can add one. There was a baby born this morning on the Rising Star." He glanced down at the paper again, as her heart clenched. "A boy."

"A baby." she repeated, forcing the words through frozen lips, the déjà vu finally catching up to her. The baby boy on the Rising Star had been the first baby born in the fleet. One of the few, actually. "Thank you, Billy. You should... go get some rest." She forced a smile to put him at ease, hoping he would give up the charade and get on with telling her about death, what came afterwards, anything.

"You too. Goodnight, Madame President." Billy replied. He nodded happily to her and stood up, dashing her hopes of a joyful, tearful reunion. It almost seemed as if he didn't know he was dead, as if he didn't know she was dead.

"Goodnight." she responded automatically, watching him walk out of the space that for so long had been their private office. As soon as he was out of sight she released a shuddering breath and closed her eyes, dropping her head back on to the desk. What was going on here? If this was the afterlife, it wasn't what she was expecting. Where was the river? Where was her family? Why didn't Billy seem to know what was going on? This was more confusing than-

A sudden, shooting pain erupted in her left breast, forcing a gasp from her and her right hand to compress against it, vainly trying to soothe it. The cancerous mass that greeted the press of her fingers chilled her to the bone. She stilled, frozen in shock. Pain. Should she be feeling pain after death? Should the cancer have followed her? Wasn't she supposed to be whole and healthy in the afterlife?

A frightening possibility took root in her mind. She hastily forced herself to sit back up, to drop her hand from the invader that had killed her from the inside, twice. She stood from her desk, marvelling at the ease with which she could do so, and slipped her hands into her jacket pockets to keep the coldness at bay. When her fingers encountered something in her right pocket, her stomach dropped. She gritted her teeth and slowly withdrew it, not looking until it was sitting before her in the palm of her shaking, upturned hand.

It was a folded piece of paper. There was only one reason she had ever kept folded bits of paper in her pocket, to keep her regrets and mistakes with her. Somehow, she knew what this one said, but opened it anyway. Two words glared up at her, written in her own handwriting. Olympic Carrier. Her mind spun dizzyingly with the implications of what she had just seen, heard and experienced.

It's not possible... She dropped the paper as if scolded and turned from it. The need to escape forced her legs to carry her out of the room and into the head, needing the closeness of the small space that she had taken refuge in so often. Luck was with her and the little room that had become her private head after housing had been sorted throughout the fleet was unoccupied. She swiftly closed the door behind her, locked it and leaned back against it, her breathing loud and unsteady.

She tried to regain control of her breathing, telling herself that perhaps this was simply some form of letting go that she had to go through before her soul could move on. It didn't work. This was nothing like what she had experienced when Emily had passed on, when she had almost joined her in crossing the water. This was very different. This wasn't death, it was life. She couldn't go through this again. She couldn't die again. She covered her mouth in time to strangle the sob that panic forced from her.

Why was this happening? Hadn't she fulfilled her destiny? Hadn't the prophecy come true? She had lead her people to Earth, two of them in fact. She had died. What more could she do? What more could the Gods want from her? Wasn't leading the remainder of Humanity through the stars and settling a planet, with the remnants of the rebel Cylons, enough to allow her peace? She should be dead, she should be experiencing whatever came next for her, not waking up once again as the 'Dying Leader' of thirty-eight thousand people.

No, not thirty-eight thousand, she realised, recalling the number on the whiteboard,Forty-eight thousand. They had gained quite a few people from the Pegasus and from the rescue mission to Caprica, but they had lost well over ten thousand people during the journey. Most of those deaths had transpired on New Caprica, but they had lost some to starvation, disease and overcrowding.

As she turned that thought over, her breathing calmed. She was right back at the beginning of the journey, back before most of the losses occurred. Was that why she was here? To bring more people to Earth? Could she even do that? All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. She had lost her faith once, after finding the first Earth a barren, nuclear wasteland. Then a good dose of Kara Thrace and Bill's gentle words on the surface of the new Earth had given it back to her, in time for her to apparently fulfil her destiny.

Laura nodded to herself as a fledgling plan began to slowly unfold in her mind. She unhurriedly turned, unlocked the door, opened it and made her way back to her office. She stooped, almost reverently, to pick up the paper she had dropped earlier and slipped it back into her pocket. She wandered over to the whiteboard, carefully erased the last number and replaced it with a 3 for the baby boy Billy had told her about as she turned over the idea in her mind.

To ensure the future of the Human race, to keep their gene pool large and healthy, they would need to safeguard it while they can, even increase it while their supplies are high. A very large chunk of the fleet was over fifty years old. Although this wasn't a problem for the male half, by the time they reached Earth hundreds of women would no longer be able to conceive. She needed to do something about that. Soon.

Walking over to her desk, she quietly sat down, withdrew a fresh piece of paper from a stack on her left and began to outline her suggested plan of action.

A.N: Which events do you think are essential and cannot be changed? Please let me know what you think. Despite being President, Laura is one person, so she will be unable to change things like e.g.; the Kara/Lee romance thing. It'll still sort of happen-ish like it sort of did on the show.

This will be a babyfic, of a sort. It should be easy to see where I'm going with this. I'm not sure why they didn't do some of this anyway in the show really, considering they were IT for Humanity. I hope people will stick with this, as I have begun researching pregnancy in women over 40 to try and keep this realistic. Also, they had more than enough test tubes for nearly 50,000 blood samples, so there should be more than enough for... 'life samples' too.