The Passing

by Kadi

Rated K

Disclaimer: BSG and its characters do not belong to me, I am only borrowing them or a time. I would promise to return them in the same condition I found them in… but I'm afraid that wouldn't be true - my girls would be alive!

A/N: Recent BSG Binge had me writing this. The end breaks my heart every time I watch it. I try to remind myself that we were always going to lose her… but losing Kara too was such a blow.

There were only just over thirty thousand of them. They scattered across the continent, moved in groups to the far reaches of the planet. They would set up homes, villages, and begin anew. A new life. New promises. There was such hope for all of them that finally they had come to the end of their journey. This place, this Earth, it was all that they had longed for and more. Here their civilization could continue and evolve, with hope that they had learned from the mistakes of past.

She watched them go. Small dots moving on the horizon as she looked down from her grassy hill. The breeze picked up, lifted her hair, and she almost smiled. It carried the very promise of peace. A hand slipped into hers and her lips did curve into a smile. Her hazel eyed gaze continued to watch the last vestiges of humanity as it spread out in search of places to set up camp.

"Do you think they'll be okay?" She spoke, voice soft, and waiting for her answer, she glanced to her right for the first time.

"Hmm." There was a smile, her companion shrugged delicately. "I would hope so. Or else all of this has been for nothing." She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun. She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It feels good. It feels like it could be a home." Her eyes opened and she let them wander to the people below. "I think they'll be fine." Her head tilted and she let her gaze wander to the girl beside her. "What about you?"

"Me?" The question surprised her. "That seems a little redundant. I'm done."

"Are you?" Her lips turned up. "If you are, then why are we standing here?"

"Because you weren't ready to leave yet." Her eyes sparked with the challenge, with amusement.

"Ah." A brow lifted. "Of course. Kara Thrace, guardian angel. I never saw that one coming."

She snorted indelicately. "No. But apparently we come in surprising packages."

"Surprising. Yes, that's a word for it." She turned and let her gaze wander to the mountains. "I know that it's wrong to linger. I just never expected it to be so difficult. This was always going to happen."

"You were always the dying leader." Kara's head tilted and she considered. "Simply a reprieve. Fate's way of stalling the inevitable."

"I suppose." Laura sighed. "Yet here we are, and it still seems rather cruel."

"I don't know. Like you said, this was always the inevitable end. We all had our little parts to play. Destiny." She almost sneered at the word. Gods how she hated it.

"Yes." It was something they had both come to despise. "Very well, my little guardian, what's next?"

"Kicking your ass if you don't stop calling me that." Kara smiled gamely, and it lit her face. Never in life would she have uttered those words, yet here they were.

"Dare to dream, Captain Thrace. Dare to dream." The edge in her tone, the added threat, it simply made the girl laugh harder, and Laura could not contain her smile. Such a carefree sound. How long had it been absent?

"No offense, but when I dream, you're not in them." They turned away from the hill as one and began to walk away from the humans that their deaths had served so well. "I didn't exactly get a manual with this job. We've said our goodbyes. We're not actually here anymore, not in the sense that we were. I don't think we're supposed to know what comes next. I think it it just happens."

"Another destiny?" Her nose wrinkled. She cast a glare at the girl. "That's going to send me looking for an airlock."

"Sorry, you're fresh out." Kara looped an arm through one of her older companion's and was not surprised to find that she no longer felt frail and brittle. She appeared as she had a year ago, thick full hair and laughing green eyes. Before destiny reasserted itself. "No, we've earned our rest. Now we simply… move on."

"Move on." She murmured it quietly, and the wind very nearly carried it away completely. "Sounds simple." It was anything but. Her eyes lifted to the mountains again, she had tried to find her way back there, but she had been drawn to Kara instead.

"We begin again." Kara smiled slightly. "Isn't that what you said?" Her brows lifted. The challenge was back in her gaze. "You said that, If you believe in the gods, then you believe in the cycle of time that we are all playing our parts in a story that is told again, and again, and again throughout eternity." The younger woman shrugged. "Maybe parts of that are still true. I don't know."

"I thought you said that they would be okay?" Concern filled her gaze. "You think everything will happen again?"

"No, not in the way it did. I think that, as much as we hate the concept of destiny, that some of us are going to keep coming back. Again and again, as each story is retold. At least, until we get it right. I think Destiny owes me. I had to find and burn my own body. Yeah, Destiny owes me one big, fat, happy ending. All I have to do is wait for it."

"Hm." She turned with a light hum and began walking again. "That might not be so bad. Begin again. Avoid some mistakes, make others, perhaps not die so soon this time. Do you think that is really possible?"

"I think that anything is possible now. I think the cycle has ended. I think we get to be whatever we choose." Kara stopped walking and looked at her. "I'm tired. I'm done. I think you are too."

"Yes." Laura faced her, and as much as she would have liked to find her way back into the mountains, the promise of peace was also just as strong. Her body had ached for too long. Her heart had hurt for far longer. She wanted to be free. "Do you think—"

"Yes." Kara smiled, and this time she looked up, toward the bright blue sky, with the heavens and the stars beyond. "And mine is waiting for me." Her gaze fell, but her smile was no less bright. The planet began to fade around them. "Come on, Airlock, I'll teach you how to fly…"

Her laughter lingered behind them, and lifted by the wind, carried into the mountains. A gentle song to ease the ache of passing.

~Fin