1.)
In her last few hours, there are many people who visit her, blurred faces that swim into her vision when she is half-awake. It is Lee at one time, hesitant and guilty by the curtain until he sits beside her bed finally, tentatively holding her hand. At another, her eyes are too heavy and she can only smell thick incense somewhere close by. Religious fanatics, perhaps, the people who worship at the feet of Laura Roslin the dying leader, until she swears she remembers Cottle's gruff voice chasing them away.
Tom Zarek visits, too, placing his hand on her forehead and saying, Laura, like a sigh, and probably wondering why the leader is dying when Earth is nowhere in sight.
Bill visits, too, but she wonders why it is she never sees him when she's awake, only when she's asleep and she hears his voice somewhere skirting around the edge of her consciousness.
Her eyes are too heavy, and the pain never stops to let her breathe.
And then finally, finally, there's that single, last moment of clarity, when everything is illuminated, when she doesn't need to open her eyes to know that it is Bill beside her on the bed, fingers in her hair, and mouth to her forehead, reading the words to her skin.
'Even now, there are things that make themselves known. She is kneeling by the roses, by the garden, face turned to the sky. The curve of her heels, the grass on her palms, the sunshine on her closed eyes. I have slept so long and there is no better dream.'
--
She gasps for breath and sputters awake, blindly clutching at the side of her bed to pull herself in a sitting position.
'Deep breaths, Laura,' Someone says from her right. 'Deep breaths.'
'It's going to be alright, shhh.'
Someone is stroking her dripping hair. She is soaking wet, and she is alarmed for a moment that there is a leak in Life Station, water all over her when they should be conserving for the long journey ahead.
Her vision is blurred without her glasses, spotted with harsh red and blue lights.
'Download complete,' The hybrid states.
--
2.)
She hides behind a large tree when the gunfire starts. The fleet had landed on a small crop-bearing planet when the basestar jumped in. The air was surprisingly cool and the soil was fertile enough that fields and fields of what looked like wild corn grew as far the eye could see. They would, of course, be gathering food and herbs. No doubt the algae diet had already taken its toll on everyone, and as much as she was sure they all longed for the elusive hot fudge planet, this was as good as they were going to get.
She had gone down with the centurions against the Cavils' wishes, but the Eights had looked at her and said to let her go, see what happens. And the Dorals conceded, and a Six told her to wear something light, it was hotter than hell.
It confused her at first, this almost-kindness. There were times she expected to be tortured, killed over and over again, she imagined, with a dull, rusty blade until she confessed all the secrets of the colonies. But Boomer is the one to tell her, serenely, that they are waiting her out. She knows how it feels, she says to Laura, to feel more human than cylon, but not to worry. That phase would be over soon, and better to let Laura learn to betray them on her own than force it out of her.
'Frak that,' Laura had muttered, and went planetside.
She saw what happened: Chief Tyrol and his crew reaped crates of the crop, Dr Cottle inspected other plant life for potential medicinal herbs, and before that, Tom Zarek and William Adama argued by the forest.
Tom, she guessed from her vantage point from behind the trees, was presenting the idea of settling. He gestured to the terrain, fertile, not like New Caprica, the bright afternoon sun and cloudless blue sky, just for a little while, a month or two.
Adama had said nothing, staring him down without glancing at his surroundings before turning and going back to his Raptor.
Tom shook his head and stared out at the crops.
Tom, when will you learn? She thought, bemused. Then she watched the Raptor slowly climb the sky, becoming smaller, disappearing into the clouds. The centurions had attacked then.
A bullet races past her face, inches from her cheek, and her blood runs cold. Immortality still takes some getting used to, and she has only died once before after all.
She takes a step back and turns around, comes face to face with an Eight holding a gun.
No, not an Eight. Or what was an Eight once and now—even in her mind she spits out the word—human.
'You,' Athena chokes out, and in the mix of confusion and rage in her face she hesitates for too long a moment before she fires her gun.
'See you,' Laura gasps, twisting the knife she had plunged in Athena's stomach, 'back at the resurrection ship.'
It ends with a hand on her side where the bullets are draining her life, while she stares at Athena, fallen to the ground, blood soaking her fleet uniform. Laura waits it out, her eyes to the sky, thinking for a moment she sees a Raptor.
--
Athena is in her room, guarded by two centurions.
'You took everything from me again.' It is a statement, a fact. Her voice does not betray what she is feeling but Laura can take a guess. 'I know why you killed me, can understand it, even, but I just don't give a damn. Your fear isn't enough. They're going to find out about you soon.'
'For what it's worth, I truly am sorry,' Laura tells her from the threshold.
Athena continues pacing through the room, hands scaling the walls, doesn't look at her again.
--
3.)
An icy breeze passes her and she shivers, hugging her thick coat tighter around herself. She's always hated the cold, back in Caprica and New Caprica, and even as a cylon she's darkly amused to find that this hasn't changed. There are new things she discovers about her body—how she can wander around in the base ship for long periods of time and finding out that full days have passed, and how she gets hungry, but rarely now, but always thirsty.
They are always thirsty, the cylons, and she's amazed to know that whenever they are not looking to annihilate mankind or fulfill God's plan, they are looking for water.
She should've looked out the window before asking to go planetside. But she was bored out of her wits, walking in endless hallways that she saw as a forest canopy at one moment—when a Six was passing by—and Galactica's senior officer's corridors the next. It was only when the baseship's doors hissed open and she felt the full force of the freezing air did she realize how exactly they were going to get water.
She is cold now but more content to be off the basestar. They are still ignoring her as she, them, and she wonders how long this waiting game will last now that she lives life as a circular, endless thing.
She kneels and thoughtlessly scoops a mound of snow in her hand. She has wandered into a quieter side of the ice mountains, the centurion excavation a faint sound in the distance.
A gun cocks behind her.
'Hold it right there.'
The snow falls from her slack hand as Laura slowly turns and faces a suddenly wide-eyed Lee Adama lowering his weapon.
'Ma—Madam President?'
'Hello, Major,' She replies. She sees calculation, realization, terror, and fierce denial flash through his eyes in quick succession. 'What are you doing here?' She asks evenly.
'We're looking for water, we—' He frowns, stops, finally raises his weapon. 'Madam President,' He stops again, pained.
A gunshot rings through the air, and it takes a moment for the pain to register on her right thigh, forcing her on her knees.
'Starbuck! What the hell—'
'Lee, grow a brain! She's a frakking cylon!'
But gods, does it hurt the same, Laura thinks as she swallows through the pain, closing her eyes briefly, hand putting pressure on the wound. When she feels her head clear enough, she Kara standing a few feet away, lit by the moonlight filtering through the dead branches, unwaveringly pointing a gun at her.
'Captain, I order you to stand down!'
'She's a cylon, Lee. And we know what she did to cylons.' Kara's eyes meet hers coolly, finger on the trigger of her gun.
'While there are no baseships in orbit, clearly, we should bring her to Galactica!'
Laura tears her gaze from Kara to look at Lee. 'They're on a neighboring planet, a similar water source. The centurions are digging through the ice,' She murmurs, pressing the wound harder.
On cue, heavy sounds of gunfire come from the distance.
'Frak, they've seen the others!' Kara yells, eyes darting to the blackness behind them.
Lee shoves Kara's gun away roughly. 'So help me carry her!'
'Are you out of your frakking mind!
'We can't just leave her here!'
'My crew is being shot at by toasters, Lee! I am not about to save a skin job!'
Laura watches his face again, and he looks at her, and she sees clearly the way his face sets, like facing her at the stand in Baltar's trial, destroying the Olympic Carrier. Always right and always feeling so very wrong.
Lee nods, and Kara is already racing to the gunfire.
'Lee, come on!'
He gives her a look like he's feeling sorry, for her or himself, she doesn't know. She gives him a half shrug. She has no answers for his moral dilemma, not then and certainly not now. Now, she's wishing that she just stayed up the baseship like a good little cylon instead of having Lee Adama forcing a secret out of her the second time.
'Go on, Captain Apollo.'
Lee turns and runs after Kara, his footsteps soft against the ice. She drags herself backwards to a tree, leaning her head back tiredly and waits. Soon, the gunfire stops, and the shouts and calls and the harsh sound of Vipers lifting off the ground.
It is not as easy as the first time, or the second, though both were really were; but now there is nothing but dead silence, and the cold. She looks up, but the stars are blocked by the thick black branches, so she pulls herself through the snow again, her leg numb and her blood leaving a dark trail.
She finally settles herself at a space in the clearing, content at the view of the sky. She is sleepier and more bone tired than ever before, and if she finds it ironic that now she is annoyed at not bashing her head in at the tree instead, while for two years she had clung on so desperately to life, well.
She manages to kick off her boots and remove her gloves, unbutton her coat. In a few moments, she is well and truly cold; can feel the ice run in her veins.
--
'Laura,' Athena calls from behind the centurions blocking the threshold.
She only hesitates for a moment before approaching the Eight. 'Yes?'
'I heard about what happened,' Athena says.
Laura hmms and crosses her arms, burying her arms in the sleeves.
'Phantom pains.' Athena nods to her hands. They are shivering, a little. Laura still can't quite shake off the feeling of snow. A pause, and then, 'You could've convinced them to take you, and they would have.'
'Why should I? I would've ended up here anyway, only by airlock,' She replies dryly.
'The admiral wouldn't put you out the airlock.'
She raises an eyebrow. 'Unlike you, I see and recognize the line between human and cylon.'
Athena gives a harsh laugh. 'I can't believe you still won't admit it, Madam President. Lee Adama would've saved you, put you on his ship and reinstated you as president because that line between human and cylon is so blurred now that he was never thinking about whether to save a cylon, but to save Laura Roslin, human or otherwise.'
'So that's how it is now? The good cylons, Laura Roslin and Sharon Agathon, and the human race go hand in hand to Earth, live in peace for all eternity?' She mocks. 'You're willing to put your faith in that belief, the lives of your husband and child, and that of every single one of the fleet and the last colony, that forty, fifty, one thousand years down the road, you won't reprogram and blast the human race out of existence?'
Athena is staring at her in something of a mix of frustration and admiration and realization, and Laura is wondering whether she has given too much of herself away.
'Nothing has changed,' Athena whispers.
Laura turns and walks away.
--
4.)
The raptor touches down on the ground harshly, jolting her. She reaches out to grasp a support bar as if to steady herself, but in truth she needs to clutch something hard to stop her shaking. There is silence, and a faint purr as Helo kills the power.
She had never doubted Athena's rescue. She'd known it the moment she heard the blare of the basestar's alarms, the hybrid's urgent shout of intruder, intruder, intruder. She'd settled back on her bed, closing her eyes. And when she'd opened them, it was to the barrel of Helo Agathon's gun. She really hated, she thought dryly, how she got to see too many of those these days.
Now Helo puts an arm around Athena, sitting across her, protectively, when the door slowly starts to come down. She also had not expected Athena to tell her husband to put down the gun, take her to Galactica. Athena had looked at her pointedly, as if, perhaps thinking she would prove something right.
Laura is having trouble breathing.
'Just,' Athena begins quietly, 'think that nothing has changed.'
But everything has changed, She wants to say, but the door has already opened. Helo and Athena walk down the hatch slowly. Laura gets up slowly and turns to the threshold. Ten armed marines suddenly aim their weapons at her. She stops.
'Don't shoot, she's with us,' Athena calls out. Her warning is met with silence, and every face at the cockpit is fixed on Laura Roslin.
She studies the men and women in orange and blue, surveys their fearful, contemptuous stares, and thinks back to the time she held each of their lives in her hand.
'Arrest her and throw her in the brig.'
She takes her time to lower her eyes to where Adama is standing—in front of the crowd with Lee and Kara tensed beside him.
One of the marines—one of her old security detail, Jim, with two daughters in Aerilon—almost tentatively reaches out to shackle her wrists. She holds out her hands.
When she passes by Adama, she stops and turns to look at him. Lee's hand is on his gun.
'Admiral,' She says, searching his stoic face, 'You're too kind to Cylons.'
'Get her out of here,' Tigh snaps when Adama does not reply.
--
She is lying down on the hard bed, hand twisted in the thin sheets. The doors to her cell open, and Adama walks in. She sits up slowly.
'Leave us,' He tells the marines. He walks closer to her, suddenly stops. There are a lot of things she understands about the Cylons now that she is one. First is that everyone will always look at a Cylon like it will kill them at any given chance, and the second funny thing is that she—Her model, whatever, She waves away the thought, semantics—can't. The human Laura Roslin couldn't knock down a fly; so can't the Cylon Laura Roslin. In fact, she reminds herself, there was never the one to begin with, only the other.
He is standing a few feet away from her bed.
She rises, tilts her head. 'Admiral.'
'Is the rest of humanity going to die soon?'
She does not answer.
'Did you tell them your government secrets? Defense protocol? Escape routes, backup jump coordinates?' He asks, voice low. Each question fuels him, makes him step closer and closer to her. 'Will we be ambushed when we reach the Giordan Nebula? Will a cylon basestar land on top of us in the next hour? The next day? Will we be destroyed by a godsdamned virus?' He is in front of her and then his hands are on her forearms, gripping them tightly, shaking her.
'Tell me,' He snaps, and she is close enough to see the deep outlines of his face, the crow's feet of his eyes, feel his breath on her mouth. 'Tell me,' He repeats, and she looks at his impossibly blue eyes and knows that she can't answer the question he is asking.
'No,' Her voice is steady. 'No.'
He holds her for another moment, before he releases her roughly, making her stumble to keep her balance. When she recovers, he is again a safe distance away, his back to her. She is surprised he would dare turn his back on a Cylon, wonders what he'll do if she lunges at him, takes his gun from his holster, shoot him in the head.
'I didn't tell them anything,' She finally says to the grey of his hair, the deep blue of his back. 'And they don't tell me anything.'
He makes a derisive noise under his breath, and without turning to her again, opens her cell door.
'Do you believe me, Admiral?' She allows a mocking incredulity to enter her voice. 'Is this how the military deals with cylons now? Shake them for answers?'
The muscles on his back tense and he does not say anything for a while.
'If I were the cylon,' He tilts his head, not glancing back, 'what would you have done?'
'Put you out the airlock in a heartbeat.'
She does not see his reaction. The door clangs shut behind him, and before he leaves the brig she says, 'Just kill me, Bill.'
It's soft, but strong, and maybe he doesn't hear.
--
It's Tigh who comes for her, late in the night. The nearest airlock is in the starboard deck, as she well knows.
She stands implacably at the middle and holds Tigh's one-eyed stare.
'How does it feel to stand on the other side of the airlock, Madam President?' His question, interestingly enough, is not malicious but almost, maybe, curious.
'It feels like a frakking bitch, Colonel.'
His bark of laughter and the blaring urgency of the alarm are the last things she hears.
--
'Laura, Laura.'
She stretches out on her bed, feeling the world shift when she tries to sit up. It doesn't help that she still feels as if she were flying out the airlock.
'Sshh, don't try to get up.'
Six is by her bedside, face lit with pure excitement and reverence.
'I just felt like I needed to tell you. We think we found Earth, Laura. We found Earth.'
--
5.)
The cabin is small, just a few minutes' walk from the stream. She had never figured him for a garden person, yet there it was, a small one, well-kept, by the back door. It is just about spring, and his roses just about in full bloom.
She waits outside, turns her head away, inhaling the mountain air. It is cold and damp and bitingly real. The door opens, and he steps out, his back to her.
'The ranger told me you'd be here,' She says.
He pauses for a moment before turning to her slowly. The years have not been kind. The lines on his face are deeper, and there are strands of white in his hair. He is out of uniform—truly just an old man now, She thinks—but nevertheless there is still something in the way his shoulders are set, the glint in his eyes, that makes her think of space and years and years ago, of battlestars and war.
He takes in a while to study her, the way she hasn't aged a day since her first death, and she tries not to squirm.
'Come in,' He finally replies, and goes back inside without looking at her again.
It's warm inside, and the cabin is sparsely furnished. There's a couch and a small oak table, a kitchen area to the far left, and an open door which leads to his bedroom. And, of course, two large shelves filled with books.
He disappears inside the kitchen and she sits on the couch. There is a book on the table that he is reading, dog-eared and well-thumbed. War of the Worlds. She does not recognize it, and her cylon heart aches for the rows and rows of familiar mystery thrillers in his room in Galactica.
He sets a cup of tea in front of her and sits down beside her, an arm's length away.
'It's more than I've ever dreamed,' She says, gesturing to his window. 'Their civilization is younger, and there is a lot they have to learn.'
Bill sips his mug. 'Yes, they do.'
'But they learn fast.'
'Yes.'
'I saw Kara at the base yesterday, teaching new pilots how to fly.'
His gaze turns sharp.
'They had constructed their first dozen Vipers and—'
'What are you doing here?' He asks roughly. 'Not to report about the state of flying advancements, which I don't really give a frak about.' He sets his mug down.
It is her turn to hide her face in her cup, sipping the sweet tea. 'I came to tell you,' She whispers, 'that all cylon base stars and resurrection ships are gone.'
He drains his cup. 'Athena and Hera are dead.'
'Yes, I know,' She replies. Athena, she knew, from the last war, and Hera, at ten, from pneumonia. The irony of their kind's weakness to the most trivial of human disease has never been lost to her. The day she found out, she said a prayer to any god, lightly touching her arm, selfishly thankful that she did not have to kill Hera herself. She was not so sure she could kill the child that made her human for a while longer.
'That's what you've been doing all these years?' He asks her.
'Yes,' She murmurs. 'All the cylons are gone.' She raises her cup in a mocking toast. 'Humanity is safe.'
'All cylons,' Bill agrees, looking out the window, 'but one.'
'Yes,' She says again. There's a pause between them, and then, 'What's your book about?'
He looks at her, and takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes. The action is familiar, comforting. 'It's an Earth classic. The planet is attacked by a group of aliens.'
'Sounds familiar,' She says with a small smile.
'It is,' He agrees with a quiet smile of his own, and she breathes and thinks, unwillingly, of years and years of missed mornings and quiet smiles, and finally, and suddenly her eyes are wet and his image is blurred, and she tries hard not to blink.
And then she finds herself leaning towards him, crossing the space between them, gravitating to his soul as she always has, and presses her forehead to his neck.
'Kill me?' She whispers.
His arms are slow to go around her. But when he starts, he can't stop until his hand is tight around her shoulder, his fingers tangled in her hair. 'Already have.' His voice catches.
Her vision swims when she looks at the cup on the table and she understands, closing her eyes. 'Where's an airlock when you need one, huh.'
He laughs, a strange, sad sound. 'Or a gun.'
Laura makes a strangled noise. 'Have had enough of those.' Her eyelashes start to flutter and she inhales the roses on his collar, buries herself infinitesimally closer to him, and loves the anomaly in her program that craved human touch.
'Laura,' He says against her hair, and he can feel, she is sure, her lips turn up slightly at the sound, 'Laura. Do you remember when you died?'
'Too many times.' Her hand tightens on his sleeve, holds on to life for the first time in a long while.
'The first,' He says. 'Laura.' Her name is a catch on his throat.
'Yes, Bill,' She murmurs, fading. 'I remember. I remember. Tell me again.'
He tells her. It is her first peaceful death.
'I have slept so long and there is no better dream, than this: it is summer, the air is warm in my hands, the ground cool at my feet, and she turns to me when I am crossing the distance to meet me halfway, saying, good morning, love. Good morning.'