Kara blinked her eyes as her body woke up from its slumber. She wasn't surprised to see Lee staring down at her. It seemed he was always watching her when they were sleeping, almost as if he couldn't get enough of her. She sighed in content and reached up to brush a soft kiss across his lips. "I was dreaming about you."

"Were you now?"

"I was remembering the day you asked me to marry you for real."

Lee's smile widened. "That was a good day."

"I thought so, too, until I had to push a kid from my body nine months later."

Lee chuckled. "Yeah, we learned to stop being spontaneous after that day."

"You should just feel lucky that we weren't still on Galactica anymore. I would have killed you for grounding me."

"I love you, Kara," Lee whispered, planting a small kiss on the top of her head.

Kara shifted to look up at him and smiled. "I know."

"Attention all ship personnel. Galactica will be docking on planet in approximately ten minutes." They heard Dee pause in her announcement and hiss, "Do you really want me to say this, Felix?" She must have gotten an affirmative from Gaeta because she cleared her throat and started talking on the ship speakers again. "Starbuck and Apollo, you are instructed by the XO to stop fraking and… um… get your asses down to the hanger bay."

Kara and Lee burst out laughing. "Gaeta obviously forgot it's been twenty years," Lee pointed out when they finally got control of themselves again. "We're not as spry as we once were."

"Lee?"

He looked down at his wife and sighed. "You want to frak next time we're on board."

"Can we?" Kara begged.

Lee chuckled. "There's nothing I'd rather do than finally make love to you in one of these bunks, Kara."

Kara ran her hand down Lee's body. "Gods, I wish we had more time right now."

"Frak me," he whimpered as her hand cupped him through his pants. "We cannot do this, Kara. Not right now."

"Damn," she said, removing her hand and giving him her famous pout.

Lee shifted over her body and stepped out of the bunk. "We should probably stumble our way down to the hangar bay before we're docked. Gaeta's probably going to want reassurance before letting his people off the ship."

"Thank gods we were here, Lee. I don't know what our family would have done if we weren't around to ease them in."

Kara let Lee fuss over her appearance for a moment like he always did before pushing past him into the corridor. They walked silently hand in hand through the halls of the place they had both called home so many years before. Everything looked the same except for maybe a few patches of rust here and there.

The light was already filtering in from the open airlock doors as Kara and Lee finally made it to the hangar bay. They weren't surprised to see most of Galactica's crew was waiting for them to arrive.

"There's no need to be worried," Lee called out. Kara smiled at him as he naturally stepped back into his long-forgotten role on Galactica. "We want to welcome all of you to the Thirteenth Colony. You'll find much is different from the worlds you once knew, but at the very basis, it is the same. This is a place where you can finally give yourself the much needed rest you so bravely earned over the years."

"There should be a delegation outside that will take you into some sort of debriefing," Kara added. "We've been assured that it will be as painless as possible, and you should be given a place to stay within a few hours. The government of Earth wants you to consider yourselves a part of their civilization, and given time, we hope you will come to call this planet your home."

"And please try to behave yourself," Gaeta pleaded as he gave his crew a sharp salute.

Everyone returned his gesture with a smile and began to make their way down the open airlock ramps. Kara and Lee waited until everyone had exited the ship before following suit. Her hand tightened around his as she stepped into the light and saw the abundance of docked ships. The Fleet had made it.

Kara's eyes rested on a young woman leaning against a battle-scarred Viper. The young girl had hair dyed a deep red hue and looked to be rather unimpressed with her surrounding. She reminded Kara of herself when she had just started at the Academy, and she was quick to point that out to Lee.

"She's a pain in the ass like you, too," said a deep voice from behind them.

Kara's eyes went wide, and she let go of Lee's hand in order to fling herself into the open arms of Karl Agathon. "Oh gods, Kara. How I've missed you," Helo whispered as he held on tight.

When the tears had finally dried and Helo had set her back down onto the ground, Kara turned to look at the young woman again. "She's yours?"

"Yeah, that's my daughter. Nadia's going through her rebellious stage right now."

"She wants to be a Viper pilot, and her father just doesn't know how to handle that," Sharon said as she stepped up to stand beside Lee.

Lee paused for a moment before hesitantly saying, "Madam President."

Sharon rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to shoot you, Lee."

"She fights for the side of good now," Helo joked.

Sharon smacked him on the arm the second he got within reach. "Listen. I know this is difficult for you two to comprehend, but my serving as President works well for my people right now."

"Your people meaning humanity or the toasters?" Lee asked.

Sharon glared at him. "Just like your father. You Adamas are so cautious in your trust." She turned to look at Kara. "I guess that would include you now, Kara. I heard about the news. Congratulations."

Kara gave her a small smile and a nod. "Lee and I will take the time to explain your situation to the President here on Earth. We'll do the best we can, Sharon, but we can't promise you anything."

"I have no doubt about that." Sharon sighed. "Is it wrong of me to be so sad on such an important day?"

The four pilots stood in silence as their minds all drifted back to the day this whole struggle had started. None of them thought it would take this long or that they would have to sacrifice so much to get here.

"President Roslin left me a message to tell you two on the day we found you again," Sharon said quietly. "She was so delirious towards that end that I wasn't sure she knew what she was saying. Then I heard you had returned to the Fleet."

At Kara and Lee's looks of confusion, Helo stepped in to explain. "Laura Roslin requested meetings with Sharon several times in her last few days. It always seemed like she knew more than everyone else."

"She wanted me to promise that I would protect the Fleet and my child with everything I had until the day in which she said two lost souls would show up to take the responsibility away from me. At the time, I thought it was just her normal prophecy talk. I mean, it didn't make a lot of sense to me how I could protect the Fleet from my glass cell. Then your father invited me to take on the Presidency, Lee."

"Sharon is the sole reason we been in the position to relax these past few years," Helo offered. "The Cylons have stopped chasing us."

"That's good," Kara replied. "I would have had to kick your asses if you brought those fraking things here with you. I've worked too hard to keep this word in one piece only to have you people screw it all up."

"I had a feeling you would say that," Helo joked.

They lapsed into a calm silence again, and Sharon took the opportunity to once more begin relaying the message entrusted to her. "President Roslin told me to let you know that she was incredibly proud of the sacrifices you two have made for the safety of humanity. She wanted you to know that she was as proud of you as only a mother can be, Lee. You taught her that it was okay to lean on people even when she was supposed to be a pillar of strength."

Lee felt Kara's hand reach out to rest in his, and he gave Sharon a small nod. Learning that the gods had seen fit to take Laura Roslin away from this plane of existence hurt him deeply, but he also knew that there had been little chance her cancer would not take her life in the twenty years they had been apart.

"Kara, the President wanted me to assure you that your destiny was never what you thought it would be."

"Excuse me?" Kara exclaimed. She could feel Lee stiffen beside her, and she found herself wondering why she had never told him about the things Leoben Conoy and Simon had told her years earlier. It had never seemed important since the two of them had managed to make a home far away from the Cylons' reach. Maybe she should have, though.

"You have been told numerous times that you play a critical part in the events to come by the Cylons. The President knew that this burden plagued you greatly, and she wanted you to know that your role was something to be proud of." Sharon gave Kara a warm smile and stepped out to rest her hand on her old friend's shoulder. "You were selected by the gods to pave the way for the Fleet to find their new home. Throughout each lifetime, you have always been the one that gave humanity the hope that they could survive. That is your role, Kara Thrace, and yours alone."

Kara gave her a small nod as she fought to hold back tears. She didn't want to cry right now. There had already been too much of that in her life.

"We have to be going," Lee said as he wrapped his arm around his wife. He could feel Kara was teetering on the edge of something and knew she probably wanted to tell him what was going on. It was odd how good their communication skills had grown in the past sixteen years. Tearing himself from his thoughts, Lee gave Helo and Sharon a quick nod. "There are a million things that need to be done so that everyone in the Fleet can start their new lives."

"I understand," Sharon said. She took a small step back towards her husband.

Kara let Lee lead her past the Viper that Helo and Sharon's daughter was still leaning against before she turned back. Her eyes rested on the two people who had been her closet friends in the whole Fleet pre-attacks. "When you're cleared, I want you to come over and meet our children," Kara called out. "Bring Nadia. It might be nice for her to have someone to relate to in the jumble of this strange planet."

She could see the relief pass across both Sharon and Helo's face as they understood what she was offering. It was a lot more than just a simple introduction of families. Kara was giving them the forgiveness they had both been desperate for since the day she stumbled upon them in the Delphi Museum.

Kara turned to look up at her husband. "I want to go home and see my children, Lee."

He nodded and started leading her through the docks. As they made it to one of the planetary transports, Kara paused to glare at her husband. "And don't think I forgot what you did to help our son set fire to the backyard. Zak would never have gotten that crazy notion into his head if you hadn't let him stay home from school and if you hadn't taken him to see that stupid pyrotechnics display last week. Sometimes I really wonder if you're cut out for this whole parenting thing, Lee. It seems like I'm the only responsible one in this relationship."

Lee stared at the passionate beauty of his wife for a moment before he began arguing back. It was good to be home.