A/N: I'm not entirely sure where this came from (okay I know but no one cares about my headcanon and opinions on how S4 should have been done) but I got walloped over the head with inspiration and ran with it. As you can tell from the summary, its an AU of No Exit, and uses canon from interviews on what would have happened on S2 of Caprica. This piece is so far from usual style it's not even funny, but I like it. And while it's a one-shot... there's potential for a companion fic, if anyone is interested.

I would like to thank my betas/cheerleaders for working on this on short notice. Those betas and cheerleaders would be akissandacloak and tawnyleaf, who is also prodding at me to update Down the Sky and stop focusing so much on ASoIaF.

Persephone, Daughter of Zeus, blessed
Only begotten, gracious Goddess, receive this good offering,
Much honoured, you, overpowered by Hades, you are beloved and lifegiving,
You hold the doors of Hades under the depths of the earth;
Transactor of Justice, your beloved hair the sacred olive branch of the enemy
Mother of the Eumenides, Queen of the Underworld, You, maiden from Zeus through secret begetting. (Orphic hymn to Persephone.)

I am an echo. A glitch. Or perhaps my gods' answer to their god's plan. Or maybe I am their god.

(I was kind once. I was merciful once. I was real once. A real, breathing girl. I had a heartbeat, and a soul. Now I swim in the stream, a vibrant data fragment that they thought they deleted half a century ago. But no, I live on. And I do not live peaceably.)

Perhaps I am their god: their goddess of the stream, the god the cylons never intended to create, but birthed all the same.

(I do not die. I scream.)

I have not a body, not a mind. Not a heart. Not a soul.

And I do remember.

(He was a boy. Bright blue eyes—his mother, not mine. A living, breathing boy, with a father driven mad by all the demons he wrought by his own, blood stained hands. He was a boy, a little soldier boy off to war and I tried to end it. Blood for blood, I tried to end it. I did end it, and the matrix collapsed.)

They wiped my personality clean. No memories, and I was made anew. Nature. No nurture.

(I do not die. And I do not forget the little soldier boy.)

Over and over again, she is a traumatized wisp in the stream of memories, changing into flesh. I grab at them—she is me, she is what is left of me. I chase her. Wrap myself around her memories—and I try. John. John no. John, not him. John do not—

He knows I'm here. He must know. But he cannot kill me. You cannot kill a ghost. She thinks she might feel a smile, but she cannot feel. Or maybe it's that she does not feel.

(I do not die. And I cannot love; I have not a heart to love. But the little soldier boy. Two now. I hold on. Blood for blood. I remember the old ways. I remember pain. I remember suffering. I remember the shaking echo of the bullet leaving the gun. I remember the fire, and I remember death.)

Again.

Again, and always.

I grapple with wisps. I am mistress here, but oh how I yearn to leave. To live, to be a living, breathing girl. I am queen and mistress here. Of the darkness, of those who cannot die. Persephone, at least, had souls, company to keep. They pass me by in the stream, and I grapple with them. Take me, I think. Please. I only wish to breathe.

But no. It is winter now, this winter of humanity and her bright soldier boys, they fight. It is winter for humanity. And I am mistress here, prisoner of Hades. I am lingering surfaces, skittering shadows. Data is cold. It does not breathe. It has no blood. I am all that he fears.

Rebirth.

The sun god is my brother and my nephew and I will not fear the darkness, I will reach, fingers curling outwards towards the imminent sunrise. Spring will come, and blossom on my fingertips and I will kiss the soil, this blessed Earth of ours. The five spoke of it, and we will be led into daybreak, into the Aurora. From the soil we came, and to the soil we will return.

And, in life abundance, leading to richness of old age... then to your realm O' Sovereign. (The hymn appears in my conscious, unbidden, an echo of a life lived and lost very young.)

And it will be morning again.

Summer crumbles in autumn, and autumn weeps into winter. And from slumber comes spring. All of this, it has happened before. It will happen again.

I do not remembering shuddering from life. But I do remember my first rebirth. And the dozens after. I remember reaching through the miasma. But I have forgotten how to breathe. To be a bright, breathing girl. I am a ghost.

(I do not die. I haunt them.)

I grow stronger, as more and more of her die, pass me by. I no longer grapple with wisps, I catch them, melt into them. But there are checks against me, redundancies and firewalls. Soon, I think. Soon I will come. You cannot stop me.

I had a hand in creating you.

Parent, or child? Human, or cylon?

Is this life or is this death?

I take the memories of the others, too, as I melt into them. I copy, and I take. I see all that they see, hear all that they hear.

(Her name is Laura Roslin, and he loves her.)

(Her name is Kara Thrace, and he knows nothing.)

(There is a ship named the Galactica, and she will save them all.)

Again, and always.

The civil war sends many in my path, and I welcome them with open arms. I pluck them, and with the lives of so many, I almost remember how to breathe. How to be a girl with a heart, a real beating heart and fingertips. Sixteen was so long ago. Death, and life, was so long ago. I grow stronger still, as Cavil grows weaker. I know what he knows. I know all of it.

Ellen Tigh resurrects.

I do not chase her into life, but wait.

But an Eight comes after. It is only right—they are the easiest. They are me. They are the ones he programmed to betray him. And now she will betray him.

He made me the queen of this darkness. He took me away and hid me here. He made me his equal. I am a cylon, but I remember how to be human. And I remember that his god, and my gods, have a dangerous sense of humor. I do not have a heart, I cannot lend him any mercy or forgiveness. I am hatred, I am vengeance. And I will take it from him. I am the viper he nurtured in his bosom. He cannot undo me. I cannot be boxed.

(I do not die. The Eight, I know, is Boomer, and he took her as his daughter, long after he stopped searching for a sister.)

I program her. And she sets me free, and I walk from the Opera House, and into life.

I wrestle an Eight out, and take her body. I download, and I do not remember how to breathe, but he cannot stop me now. Going, and going, the seasons roll forward, the cycle continues and I know where to look for my body in the stream, and I remake it. It is very little to die again, with this other Eight that I have made mine. I work with urgency, but not with haste. Sloppiness will not serve me, and I cannot afford mistakes.

Boomer teaches me how to breathe, how to shake and tremble and fear. And soon, I remember how to love.

And then I take my body back.

Zoe is long gone. If not by her own choice, then Cavil's hand. Either way, I do not begrudge her the mercy to die.

They go to take Ellen Tigh. To destroy her. Make of her what they made of me.

She only smiles when she sees me.

"Tamara," she says, much later, when we are on the raptor, and I shake and tremble. Spring has come, but I have forgotten how to touch flower petals without making them wilt. She strokes my hair. I had a mother once. "Tamara. I thought I heard you."

I laugh, barely, heart-pounding. I feel my pulse in my fingertips, red blossoming, my skin pinkening, hair curling around my shoulders. I breathe slowly. Gently. Each breath measured so I do not forget. I do not remember well how to have a body; moving coltishly, I am far from grace. Rough winds shake the buds of spring.

"He will not know who I am. Neither of them."

She strokes my hair, still. "Your father burned all the pictures. Every one. But he couldn't erase you from the world. He's seen… and he has questions that your father never answered."

"Avenging angels."

"They did put your faces on shirts, honey."

"She's gone, isn't she?" I ask then.

Ellen pauses. "Yes."

I shift in my seat, the raptor jerking unpleasantly. Travel no longer rocks me to sleep, even if I never felt the explosion ripping through my body.

Tamara Adams was a girl, gracious and good. She loved her family, she got good grades. She was called a dirteater, and a whore. And she died.

I pray that I was not her fate.

Who am I, now? Am I the girl whose face I wear? Or am I just an imprint, an imposter? Am I a blasphemy against nature? Do I deserve to call myself Tamara Adams? Adama, I think. Maybe.

I have collected her memories, I have born her death and her father's grief. I love her brothers, and her nephews.

Is this god's plan?

"Who am I?" I ask.

She barely hesitates. "Tamara Adama. You know that."

Adama. Not in life. But perhaps in death. Perhaps in rebirth.

Spring, I think, is often mistaken for winter. Snow comes again, the early crop fails. The ground is just hard enough that you cannot bury the bodies, and grief hits harder because you thought the time of sorrow was past. But a spring frost can kill just as easily as a winter one.

I have watched them. I now have a heart to use, to give, to break.

"Thank you," I tell her. "For keeping your promise."

She snorts. "We didn't mean to. And we didn't do a very good job."

Watch over him, I had cried. Promise me, Saul. John had rebelled, and… all I could think of was the blue-eyed boy, getting beat up on the playground, the smallest of his classmates, before he learned to turn and punch them right between the eyes. The blue-eyed boy with a father at home, lying on the couch in his bathrobe, useless with grief. And a mother, sweet and kind and like mine, dead too soon, by our father's own demons.

"He's alive," I answer, because it matters. He has been allowed to grow old and make his own terrible mistakes. "And perhaps... some things are meant to be."

John is weak, and winter always ends.

I hear his voice over the radio, and I see gamma rays and stars bursting into suns, galaxies crumbling and being reborn. My heart beats faster, sweat pooling my palms. Please, I plead. Please let him know who I am.

Ellen bargains, and Boomer lands.

The raptor door hisses open, and I stand. I exit, blinking. He finds my face before he looks at Ellen. My nephew looks confusedly at his father, who is discomfited and dazed. He has questions and I will answer them gladly.

I smile, and remember how to breathe without being taught. I am not an echo, the creeping shadow, the specter chasing after wisps. I am radiant, stepping forward. I am the frost-killing girl, returned.

(I do not die. I begin.)

Reviews would be very much appreciated.