Disclaimer: I do not own Battlestar Galactica, or any of the characters of Galactica. All I own are my ideas and theories.
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7.
He looked over the endless desert in silence. His small cabin, and the stream that flowed alongside it were the only things that broke the landscape. His feet rested in the water, and as he looked up at the sky he remembered sitting in another streambed on another planet, light-years away.
o0o
He heard her walking up behind him before he heard her voice.
"Didn't expect to find you playing in the sand."
"It's not sand. It's alluvial deposits. This used to be the river mouth."
"And you just had to take of your shoes and play in the alluvial deposits." She turned to face him and smiled slightly. "How romantic." She turned away again to look over the budding tent city, but he continued to watch her.
"That's a nice colour on you," he finally said, avoiding her gaze.
"Thank you." They sat in a comfortable silence for a moment.
"It's good to see you, Laura."
"You too, Bill."
o0o
That time spent orbiting New Caprica had been hard. He hadn't consciously noticed until then how much he looked forward to seeing her every day, and how slow the days were without her. And that night she had convinced him to let some people go, and so his family had shrunk even further. . Even Lee had been over on the Pegasus. As horrible as the cylon attack on New Caprica was, it had gotten the fleet back together. Of course, had they stayed successfully hidden on New Caprica – had the Cloud Nine not exploded – his family might still be alive. Of course, had they stayed, it might have remained fractured. He had no trouble deducing what had happened between Lee and Kara, and knowing the two of them, nothing short of them beating each other half to death would have resolved it. Being a bystander when they had one of their frequent fights could be dangerous.
But now he was alone. He had wanted to be; had asked to settle somewhere that he wouldn't have to live with people. They could never replace his family, and he didn't want them to.
He looked behind him at the ship sitting in the window. It was one of the few personal possessions that he had kept. He didn't keep it for the workmanship of it, but for the scars it bore. It was almost a physical manifestation of his own scars.
He looked back out to the desert and saw figures in the distance that seemed to be moving towards him. He squinted, confused. The only people that he ever saw were those who delivered supplies weekly. The people of Earth had been happy to provide the Colonials with everything they needed to start a new life in exchange for access to the space technology. The Colonials never let on that it was in their best interest for Earth to develop their space program, and so they got off with the better end of the deal. But now there was an obvious crowd of people moving across the empty desert. He stood up, and watched as they approached.
Deserts have the ability to make larger distances seem much shorter, and so it was the better part of an hour before they began to resolve into separate figures. It was at about that time that he started to notice that there was something familiar about them, but at the same time, something slightly odd. As they got closer, he realized that he was staring at the figure in front in disbelief. They stopped on the other side of the river, and he felt a single tear roll down his cheek.
Front and centre was Laura Roslin; no longer suffering from the ravages of cancer, and wearing something very similar to what she had worn to the groundbreaking ceremony several years earlier. Behind her stood Billy Keikeya, still looking the innocent young man that he had always been, and Elosha, who had paid the blood sacrifice on Kobol. Laura smiled at him, and waved. He smiled back before finally allowing his gaze to drift past her.
Saul stood to on side, his arm wrapped securely around his wife, and his missing eye returned to him.
A large portion of the crowd seemed to be full of the Galactica family that had set out in search of Earth so many years ago. He could see Cally, who had airlocked herself not long after the battle of the nebula. Prosna, who had dug out an old picture of him and his sons, and who was one of the many rooks that had been lost in the venting of the port flight pod in the initial cylon attack, was nearby, along with Jammer, who had mysteriously disappeared right after New Caprica. Several other deckhands that he recognized stood behind them.
Among the pilots, he could see Kat, who was joking around with Hot Dog and the others from their nugget group. That had been Kara's first. Racetrack and Skulls, who had been a party to so many discoveries, and had finally been defeated by the explosion in the pilot's rec. room. Seelix and the rest of Sam Anders' basic flight group – the only ones who were not trained by Kara. Countless others; their names ran through his head. People he had known in his early days of service too. Those from the first cylon war, and later.
His eyes fell on his parents, and Carolanne. He had stopped taking out her picture every year, but here she was. His eyes searched the faces in the forefront, looking for those he knew he would find. They finally settled Lee's face. Wrapped loosely in his arms was Kara, an absolutely unguarded smile on her face, the likes of which he had never seen. Slightly to the side of his brother, stood Zak, proudly wearing the uniform that he had fought so hard for.
Bill felt the tears running down his cheeks as he looked at his family again. He wanted to run to them, to embrace them, but somehow he knew that they would fade away should he try that. He contented himself with looking; with drinking in every possible detail. His eyes finally returned to her, seeing her as she would have been had her cancer not returned and robbed her of her life.
He didn't know how long he stared, before he realized that the figures were fading. She gave him a sad smile, and one last wave, before fading completely. He continued to stand there, as the sun slowly sunk lower in the sky. Finally he moved inside, removing a small, silver lighter from his pocket, and using it to light the lamp at the table. He then sat down, and opened the book lying on the table. He had not touched it since she died. Had not been able to bring himself to finish it. He opened it to the last chapter, and as darkness fell around him, he immersed himself in the end of the story, remembering it so that one day he might tell her how it ended.
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She kneeled in front of the memorial and added a couple of roses to the masses of flowers at the base. Roses seemed to be one of the things that had stayed the same over the years since the exodus of the thirteenth tribe. The ones from Earth were indistinguishable from the ones that used to be found all over the twelve colonies. She heard a slightly uneven footfall behind her.
She stood up next to him. Though Earth's technology in prosthetics was slightly more advanced than the Colonials, he was still unable to walk without a limp.
"Do you come here often?" he asked.
"Once in a while. You?"
"Same. I never really went to look at the memorial wall on Galactica all that often, but this place just seems to draw me. You're looking good, Dee. How's Earth treating you?"
"It's fine. It's almost everything we imagined it to be. How about you? Still working on the Colonial/Earth technology interfacing?"
"Yeah. I really think we're getting somewhere. We're trying to find a replacement for Tylium though. It's probably one of the reasons that they lost space travel. No Tylium to be found for thousands of light-years. Their fleet probably went out to look for it, and got stranded.
She made a slight noise of acknowledgment, as silence fell. They both looked up at the memorial in silence. So many people were lost. Suddenly, her watch beeped, and she looked down at it in surprise.
"I've got to go. I'll see you around, Felix."
He listened to her footsteps fade, and took one last look at the memorial before slowly limping after her.
The inscription on the memorial shone in the setting sun. Words in the ancient language of Kobol; what had come to be known as Latin on Earth: acta est fabula – The Play Has Ended.
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A/N: Well this is the end. Thank you to all who have stayed with me throughout these little vignettes. Huge thanks go out to all my reviewers; Mariel3, BossaNovaBaby24, The Breeze, laloveskt, jewel of the sea, and Afoo. Thanks to Afoo/Alex, who is my beta, and also the co-creator of the idea for this story. To those of you who I promised more Lee/Kara, well it's not much, but they are in there. Thanks for reading this far, and I would love if you would take a couple seconds to leave a review.
And just as an extra note, I would like to comment that I actually came up with the ending right after "The Ties That Bind". When "Faith" came around with Roslin seeing the dead, I was incredibly surprised, and amused that I had shared this thought with the writers.