Title: Everything's Lost
Author: serendipitous
Summary: The results of a guilty conscience.
Rating: PG-13 for dark topics. Suicide, death.

Where did the bodies go? It was a question on everyone's mind whenever they saw the remains of Caprica rebirthing itself. The tourists would come in groups. Get off the shuttles, holding their digital cameras anxiously in one hand, and a brochure in the other.

Welcome to Project: Caprica! Rebuilding the Colonies One City at a Time

They had to stay behind the yellow tape, or risk falling into a manhole, or being exposed to dangerous radiation. They'll take pictures. Stand next to a prefabricated statue of Venus. The tour guide would start pointing out the buildings, explaining what they were and what they will be. The tourists nod in admiration.

But then someone always asks the question, "What happened to the dead bodies?"

The tour guide smiles, "After the colonies defeated the Cylons, they returned to Caprica, only to find that the bodies had undergone severe decomposition. They burned them in order to prevent disease and plague. Let's move onto the Trojan Memorial."

I want to tell them the truth. Scream it at the top of my lungs, that there were no bodies. There were no bodies. As the tour group moves on, I go back to welding the bolts to the foundation of the new public library.

I come home and dump my jacket and satchel on the torn, tweed couch. My apartment is small, but it serves its purposes well. The smell of fresh paint still lingers in the room. My walls are stark white now – clean, sterile, and cool. Before heading into the kitchen, I stick my head out the window to breathe in the fresh air. It clears my head after a day of constant drilling, hammering, and shoveling.

Ducking back in, I hit the button of my answering machine.

"Hey, it's me, I'm gonna be late. Want me to bring home dinner?"

"Hello, this is the Caprica Memorial Hospital calling for Kara Thrace Anders. We have your results, so if you could just call us back at this number, Dr. Lubwick would like to discuss them with you. Thank you and have a nice day."

"Hi, Kara, it's your Old Man. Call me back when you get the chance."

I pick up the phone immediately and press the speed dial for Bill Adama.

"Hey, it's me. What's going on? … Right now? Have you given him – you called the hospital? … Okay, I'll be by tomorrow. Don't worry, Bill. He'll be fine."

I hear the children crying in my ears as I hang up the phone.

---

The next day, I arrive at the Graystone Mental Institute, my heart beating like a fist against the inside of my chest. When I enter the building, the familiar musk of latex and anti-bacterial spray hits me like an unwanted memory. I approach the front desk and speak, "Hi, I'm here to see a patient. His name is Lee Adama."

The receptionist types something into the computer, then hands me a laminated nametag, "Just sign your name into the binder and go straight down the hall, until you meet security. Someone will escort you to the recreation room."

I do as the woman says, and head down the sterile corridor as I pin the nametag onto my grease-stained jacket.

As soon as I step into the recreation room I'm surrounded by sound. Not thunderous, or excited – merely mutterings and nonsensical chatter. The security guard tells me I have ten minutes, then points out Lee sitting next to the window, staring out at the garden.

Taking a deep breath, I walk towards him through the gauntlet of mental patients. I push whatever nerve-wracking thoughts I have to the back of my head and gently touch Lee's shoulder, "Hey, Tiger." I pull up a folding chair next to his, but he doesn't bother acknowledging me.

Taking his cold hand into mine, I give it a squeeze, "Lee?" I observe his features and notice he's in his quiet place. The place we all go when we don't want to face the consequences of our reality. I give his hand another squeeze and pause for a moment, trying to grasp at what he might be thinking.

His features are thin and sallow. The circles beneath his eyes are always present, along with the five o'clock shadow. There are grey hairs, unhandsomely strewn amongst his mussed, brown curls and a brown stain on his hospital shirt – inexplicable due to the nature of the subject.

I nearly jump out of my seat as he turns his head to look at me. His eyes are glazed over from the sedatives the male nurses must have surely given him this morning, but then his expression is suddenly clear. It is as though the veil across his face has been lifted by the corner, "Kara." He croaks, attempting a sad sort of smile.

My smile is sad as well, but I am much better at hiding that sadness, "Hey, Lee." I don't ask him how he is, because I know exactly how he feels, "I heard the Old Man stopped by yesterday."

His smile falters, "Yeah … --Yeah, I saw him. But I had another nightmare."

I nodded, understanding, "Was it the one about the kids?"

His gaze begins to drift back to the garden. I know I'm losing him, "They kept on screaming at me, Kara. They started climbing the wings …"

"You know they're not real, Tiger." I reach up with my hand and comb back his hair, "Just keep on going back to that lake whenever you feel overwhelmed."

He looks at me once more, "You look good." His conscious flashes like a lighthouse.

"So do you." Another smile.

He laughs, rubbing his chin with his scarred hands, "You're a shitty liar." I laugh along with him, because I don't want to face the truth.

We continue our conversation for the next seven minutes, covering everything from the down-sizing of the Department of Air and Aeronautics to the recent Pyramid play-offs on Saggitaron. When my time with Lee is up, a male nurse comes to escort me out of the building.

"You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine … don't sweat it, Starbuck."

I feel some part of me crying. I give Lee's hand another squeeze before standing and following the male nurse out and away from the one person in this universe who needed me the most.

The following day I am greeted by the one person in this universe who loved me the most.

"Mornin', Sunshine. Heard you went to see Lee the other day." Anders pours himself a mug of coffee, "How was he?"

Skimming through the front page of the Caprica Intelligencer, I lift my head as he plants a kiss on my forehead, "He was … okay. Those doctors sure like to keep their little patients doped up on sedatives." I sip my coffee with far too much sugar.

"That bad, eh?" Anders stuffed a water bottle into his bag, zipping it up before slinging it over his shoulder.

"It's not exactly The Pantheon up in that—" I stop, not having the will to say the words. I can feel Anders's eyes searching me.

"Hey, don't sweat it, Sunshine. He's being taken care of. He'll be out of there in no time – remember?" He wraps his arm around my shoulders, comforting me in that way only he could.

"You're right." I glance up, "He'll be out of there in no time." I should know.

Anders leaves for the school, where he teaches Colonial Civics and coaches the varsity Pyramid team. His team had just won an away game against Picon, garnering the school another chance at nationals.

I, on the other hand, have a very long day ahead of me at the construction site. Someone had discovered a dried-out well beneath the foundation, so the structure had to be taken down, piece by piece. We had to start a month's worth of work all over again, in addition to filling up the hole.

Highly displeased, I begin banging away at a bolt with a hammer to loosen it out of its place. Another construction worker, Harmon, follows me with the wrench to pull the bolts out.

Today's weather turns out to be rather unusual. Raining one minute, sun beating down on us the next. Caprica's still reeling from the attack, begging us to end the pain somehow. But we can't; we just have to wait it out.

"Hey, Thrace!" It's Riley, calling me from the ground, "You've got a phone call!"

I pause what I'm doing and look down, "All right, just a sec."

While I walk to the office, I try to think if I had forgotten to do something that day. Groceries, pick-up the dry-cleaning, call the hospital … call the hospital. I had completely neglected to return the message from the other day. I pick up the phone and answer, "Hello?"

"Hi, Kara, this is Dr. Lubwick from the hospital. How are you?"

"I'm fine, I'm sorry I didn't call earlier, it completely left my mind." I lean against the desk the phone is resting on, glad to be out of the bizarre weather for a few minutes, "So you got my test results back?"

"Yes, that's why I'm calling. Kara, the news isn't good."

Rain drops start beating against the office window, "How bad?"

"It's malignant. But we can fight it with radiation therapy and some surgery."

They're like tiny little fists knocking against the pane glass, pleading us to help, "No. Radiation's what got me here in the first place."

"Kara, if we don't start fighting this now it's going to be too late."

"Well, then it's too late, because I'm not going to spend the rest of my frakking life in a hospital, doc." The children start to cry.

"If that's your choice, then there's nothing else I can do for you, except to give you some pills for the pain."

"I'll come pick up the prescription this afternoon." I hang up, to silence the wails.

---

That night, Anders asks me why I'm so quiet. I tell him I'm just tired, and keep myself in the bedroom while he grades exams. I flip through old photo albums – it's been eight years, and the faces in the pictures seem suddenly so familiar.

Is that a Viper pilot? or a future construction worker? I silently wonder why the Fates decide to turn on us at such a crucial point in our lives. I wonder if the Fates even cared. They certainly didn't care for the women and children who were ripped apart by a vacuum onboard the failing Zephyr. That was when the glass wall separating our sanity from the chaos of our subconscious shattered, and blew millions of broken shards into our already beaten souls.

All but one of the pilots on that mission had suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. That one was unable to complete the run due to engine malfunction, but the rest of us made it to the Zephyr in one piece.

There was a suicide bomber, ready to set off a nuke on the third deck promenade. He was keeping the women and children hostage, making demands from an intercom. Why the ship didn't just cut off his communiqué, I don't know.

When our team reached him, he was running off about inequality, and a lack of judicial legitimacy. Like he had any right to talk about justice? I couldn't help but feel a little infuriated at his skewed perspective. I just wanted him to shut the frak up.

It was only moments later that I had the Cylon operative in my crosshairs, ready to pull the trigger when he suddenly yelled, "You are all guilty! Guilty of murder!" Raising his right hand, he aimed a gun towards a sobbing woman and shot her in the head. She was dead before she hit the ground. Immediately, I pulled the trigger on the rifle and shoot him clear through the temples. But I wasn't quick enough – with a flick of his thumb, he had started the timer's countdown. We had five minutes to get 1,500 people off this ship before it turned into another Cloud Nine.

"Captain Thrace to the Bridge, begin emergency evacuation procedures immediately, I repeat, begin evacuating all civilians and personnel off of this ship immediately, we have a live bomb." As soon as I had ended the wireless, the alarms began to blare through the speakers, and a ship-wide announcement could be heard. The women and children being held hostage had been escorted to shuttles by my team, with me giving orders over the wireless.

Everyone was ready to get off the ship in three minutes and forty seconds – right up until one of the shuttles exploded in the hanger bay. Seventy-two civilians and ship personnel had died immediately, and one other shuttle had been damaged in the explosion. We had no room left in the Raptors, especially not for another one hundred and fifty civilians. Less than a minute left. We had to leave them …

---

After the incident, nothing was the same. We were all so tired of watching our numbers dwindle everyday. The pilots' blood pressures shot through the roof every time they went out on a run, for fear of losing another comrade. After the defeat of the Cylons, every personnel member onboard the Galactica underwent psychiatric therapy to weed out any PDT sufferers. Some were worse than others. So bad we had to be institutionalized – voluntarily – at Graystone. Two years of being caged in the same room, the same building, the same routine. There was no way I couldn't have been brought back to my senses. I wasn't cured, of course. I was just taught how to control my urges, and to suppress my nightmares. For the longest time it worked, and I felt as though I could move on from my destructive past. But ignorance is bliss, and I was soon enlightened to the true nature of my existence. The nightmares returned, and all I could do was grit my teeth and bear it.

Lee wasn't so strong. From the day he had his first visit with the psychiatrist he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The last eight years for him were a bombardment of obstacles, mental and physical. It didn't surprise me when he took his own life.

Something inside him just quit fighting, and the memories that were slowly eating away at him finally took over. The nurses found him lying in a mixture of blood and membrane. He has smashed his head open with the leg of his bed by lying under it, while it was tied up by his bed sheets on the bars on his windows. It was just a matter of tugging the knot free and waiting for the cries to end.

I didn't attend his funeral. I couldn't. By that point, the most I could do was hold down water and dab at my mouth with a washcloth every time I tasted blood. I regret every day not following him into Elysium, even though I know Anders would miss me.

I guess I deserve to be in this state of perpetual torment. It gives me time to memorize the faces still clawing at my bed, pleading for salvation.