Kendra sat on the hillside watching the water rush through the stream below. Leoben and Ares had hiked to a quieter spot up the stream to fish more than an hour earlier, leaving her to her thoughts alone. The intensity of the sun's silver light caused her to squint from time to time, or shade her eyes, but she didn't mind. There was nothing more incredible than the sun on one's face and the wind in one's hair. She never wanted to take advantage of those things again.
As if in agreement, the life inside her shifted position, a tumbling so powerful that she was sure her kidneys had been bruised in the process. She reached down to smooth her hand over the round surface of her belly, and she smiled. It was almost time. The doctor had told her she could go at any day while they were in the village three days earlier.
Leoben called it the village, but Kendra wasn't sure how much of a village it was, really. A small smattering of survivors clumped together where New Caprica City had once been. They had been rebuilding the city piece by piece for almost five years, restoring one of the apartment complexes to house the people, getting the medical facility back on its feet. Slowly, the small number of survivors were putting some semblance of society together, but it hadn't always seemed so simple.
Out of the five hundred or so survivors, there had been only fourteen humanoid cylons and a small host of Centurions. It had been a difficult first year. Humanity, in the throes of desperation, had rallied against the surviving cylons. After all of the suffering endured during the years in exile, the vengeance of humanity over the annihilation and torture, Kendra felt helpless when they arrived and arrested Leoben. She was sure as she held onto him, screaming as they dragged him out, that they would never see one another again, but God had prevailed.
Through some miracle, reason touched the minds of the self-appointed council. Fourteen cylons were not a threat, especially fourteen cylons who wanted peace and the opportunity to live. Like Leoben, there was a Sharon model who had been living with a member of the human resistance, she had acted against her own kind time and time again because she believed in justice and morality. There were three Simons, all of whom had worked diligently in the medical center saving both human and cylon lives. Five of the Sixes had survived, two of them having worked side by side with Simon in the medical facility, the other three just wanted peace and an opportunity to live. Of the remaining four, there was a second Two, a soul even more spiritual and connected to God than Leoben. There were three of the Number Threes and one Number Five.
The number Five had been hard for her to acknowledge at first, as nightmares of Aaron Doral still raked through her nightly dreams. From time to time she dreamed of them together, the way he had said it should be, and sometimes those dreams felt so real that she woke up unsure of who and where she was. He'd left a part of himself behind in her, haunted her, but even now that part of him was slowly fading away. Every passing day drew another piece of him out of her memory, and the happiness of her choice to remain there on New Caprica created new memories, and soon that empty part of her life would disappear forever.
The sound of their voices alerted Kendra from her reverie, and she looked up to see Leoben and Ares walking back toward the embankment with poles over their shoulders and a bucket swinging between them. Leoben was talking, Ares avidly hanging on his father's every word as he pointed out the current in the stream and shared all that he knew of the universe with his son.
"Come on you two," she struggled against her awkwardly shaped body to stand, and seeing this Leoben hurried toward her and held out his hand. "You can study patterns and flow through the stream later. Right now, I'm starving."
"It's a good thing we did well then," he held the bucket toward her. "Your son caught two of these all by himself."
"Good for you, Ares," she reached out and tousled his hair when he turned a toothless, eight-year-old smile up at her. "Though I'm not sure if your father is trying to turn you into a fisherman or a spiritualist."
"There's room for both," Leoben laughed, and lowered his arm down over Kendra's shoulder. "Go on, tell your mother what you learned today about a drop of water into a puddle."
"It goes on and on forever," Ares said. "And that is what we are. We are drops of water into the puddle of all creation. We go on and on forever."
"You make your father so proud," she drew him in close on her other side, and the three of them began the long walk home.
Five hundred survivors became six hundred, six hundred became seven, and as they grew together, they nurtured the land and endured the long, damp winters of New Caprica. They thrived as best they could, and they multiplied. Perhaps they would never be a viable representation of humanity, but they would live on and they would continue to multiply until one day there was no way to distinguish the difference between human and cylon.
A/N: Thank you to the thousands of people who have read this story over the last six weeks. I was surprised by the numbers, but pleased that everyone kept coming back to each new chapter. I would also like to say thank you to all those who were kind enough to leave reviews. They are always welcome and appreciated.