Author's Note: This is the last chapter. I've included the inspirational playlist for this story at the end as well (look at me be all Stephenie Meyer!). If you liked this story, please review it and let me know! If enough people ask for it, I may write a continuation. Otherwise keep an eye out for more new BSG work, and I promise more Lee & Kara awesomeness!! Thank you to all my awesome reviewers so far!!!
Kara could feel the guilt rolling off of Lee. On their way back to Galactica he wouldn't look at her. After viewing the body with the Old Man he disappeared. Kara might have been the ghost, but Lee was just hollow. Even though he had retired, he wore his uniform to the funeral. She could see he was grasping at the one thing that had been stable for so long, his military life.
Anastasia Dualla was the first Sagittaron to be buried on land since New Caprica. It had been a point of contention with the Sagittarons that according to their funerary rights and rituals, their dead were to be hastily returned to the ground from whence they came. There was to be no embalming, no fancy coffin, just a simple funeral, a body wrapped in a sheet and a hole in the ground. Being trapped in space had upset their rituals, and Cottle kept as many of them in cold storage as he could (more as of late with the decline in food supplies and refrigerated room availability), but more often than not they got lumped in with everyone else in the crematorium, and evacuated into space. This was an honorable burial for a pilot, but for civilians, it was less than they expected. From space dust they came, to space dust they returned.
Dee's friends had gathered and her superiors, her fellow Sagittarons too. It was dawn the day after she had joined so many others who went before her. Sagittaron priests had dug the grave in the sand; it was the easiest place to dig and offered the least resistance. Karl, Lee, Felix and Sam acted as pall bearers, carrying the stretcher with the sheet wrapped body from the raptor. It was the job of the priests to actually lower her into her final resting place.
Lee stood between Kara and his father as the ritual began. He had never been much for the gods, much like his father. Zak and his mother had always been the spiritual ones. Events like this always made him slightly unsettled. Zak's funeral had been awful, and he was secretly happy that he never had to attend his mothers, granted she had no funeral at all outside of a burning planet.
The priest began with the prayer:
We gather here this morning to deliver our daughter Anastasia Dualla back into the ground from which all of us are made. In the beginning life here started out there, and so it shall continue in the future. By placing her here, we give her remains a chance to nurture what will come after her. While this planet is not her home of origin, it was nonetheless the home of a tribe of our brethren. Her trip to the Elysium Fields will not be easy, but we hope that the gods take mercy on her, for she had survived so much and had burdened herself with so many responsibilities. She served her colony, her fleet, her family and her friends well. Her voyage across the River Styx will be perilous, but we hope she will be greeted on the other side by her brother Darrin, and her mother and father. While she did not follow her pacifistic faith, she did defy it, but by doing so she helped to save so many. Lords of Kobol, let this child pass, embrace her in the afterlife as she was in this life, and set her free. So it is said in the book, so say we all.
During the ceremony the only thing she could do is lace her fingers between his and squeeze his hand. His hand was limp in hers, but that didn't stop her from holding it. She had looked up at him several times, to only see a stoic countenance. She only let go when the prayer was over. When the priest was done, they each dropped a handful of sand onto the body.
People stood around and mingled, recalling the Dee they all knew and loved. No one mentioned the Dee that would take her own life. Lee did his best, accepting handshakes and hugs from various Sagittarons. He was visibly uncomfortable, but Kara could do little to comfort him.
As people boarded the transports to head back to the stars he had opted to wait until the second round to head back. Kara followed suit. He wandered down the beach among the ruins of a former civilization, amidst the ruins of the human race. She had never been much for maternal instincts (at least before the stinging memory that was Kacey), but right now all she wanted to do was care for Lee. She just wanted to know he was okay. Delicacy was not something she was skilled at either.
"Lee, are you ever going to talk to me again?" Was the first thing that came to her mind, she lacked the filters to stop herself from saying it out loud.
"Does everything have to be about you Kara?" The bite in his words was not lost on her.
"I didn't mean it like that. I meant, I mean, gods Lee, you have just shut down. Twenty-four hours ago we were here, on this planet, we were together, and now, you won't even look me in the eye."
"She blew her head off. Kara, have you ever seen that? One half was Dee and the other half was meat." His voice cracked a little when he spoke. "I'm sorry if I feel like maybe I might be more than a little responsible for putting my ex-wife in the ground."
"Lee, you didn't make her do this."
"I never made it easy for her, you above all know that."
"What Lee, do you think if you had been up there instead of here with me that things would be different?"
"She knew I was down here looking for you. She wasn't an idiot."
"Sure Lee, once again Kara the frak-up is responsible for everything bad that happens to you. That's a convenient lie isn't it? If I felt I had anything to do with this I'd admit it but I really doubt one event is what pushed her over the edge. Things have been rough for a lot of people. Finding the hope of our people to be a desolate destroyed piece of rock didn't make anyone's life easier."
He sighed, Kara knew that to be Lee's you're right sigh.
"They gave me a box of her things. She hasn't even been dead 24 hours and her locker is cleaned out."
"I'm sure it wasn't easy when Anders got the box of my stuff."
"We never cleaned out your locker." He said quietly. "We had talked about it, Anders and me, but we couldn't do it."
It hadn't even dawned to her that when she came back her locker was in the same way it was when she left.
"Why are we doing any of this when all that's left of us can be neatly fit into a box when we're gone?" Lee asked, maybe not of Kara, but at least of the gods.
"A life is more than what fits in a box. A life is also stored in the memories of the people you touched. Dee isn't just what's in that box. She's stored in all the lives she touched."
"Helo told me that her last night she spent watching Hera. When they came back from shift Dee and Hera were laughing so hard they were crying. They were tickling each other, and just laughing. He said it was hard to tell where Dee's laughter stopped and Hera's began. How do you go from being that happy to shooting yourself in the head? I just can't understand it." Lee stared out into the dark sea. The tide was coming in, even on a dead planet the tide rose and fell like clockwork.
"Maybe she wanted her last memories to be happy ones. Maybe she didn't want to go onto the next life filled with sadness. She wanted to go with a lighter heart."
Lee nodded, seemingly understanding, but she still knew he didn't.
"Lee, when I went, away, I couldn't go until I had unburdened myself, I had to let go. Maybe that was Dee's way of letting go of this life. It's not easy to understand I know that…"
"No, it is. I remember floating out there; floating among the stars, and making peace with my life, ready to sink into the abyss. There was one thing I couldn't let go of; I think it tethered me to life. I guess I just can't understand being able to cut that string."
"It's not easy to let go of the things you love." Kara walked up to him and put a hand on his arm.
"I couldn't let go of you. You were my one regret, you were the one thing I wanted to make right. I wanted to live long enough to see your face one more time." He looked at her for what felt like the first time, "I guess it just makes me sad that Dee had nothing to tether her to this life, and neither did you."
He took her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the mouth.
"Lee…"
"No, I don't want you to explain yourself, you don't owe me anything."
"But Lee, I didn't need a tether. I knew it wasn't the end for me, somewhere deep inside of me I knew it." She wrapped her arms around him tightly and put her head to his chest. "I loved you enough to know that when I went into that cloud things weren't ending. I knew that when I met you on the other side there would be a new beginning." Lee protectively wrapped his arms around her.
"I love you enough not to leave, and you love me enough to leave." Lee sort of scoffed at the idea. "What a pair we are." He almost smiled as he kissed her on top of her head.
They stood like that for a while. When the raptors broke atmo they created sonic booms. For a moment it sounded like fireworks, but there were no sparks in the sky, no flashes of light, just sound. They slowly made their way back to the transports, and back off the planet.
*****Fin*****
Prologue
Somewhere on earth, in an empty meadow grows a tree. Early on it grew in two directions, but now it grows as a single force, erupting from the ground. It holds both arms up to the sky, and on one of the arms there are names.
Playlist (not separated by chapters, just in some semblance of order for the story):
Gary Jules – Mad World
Stone Sour – Through Glass
Placebo – Running up that Hill
Ana Nalick – Catalyst
Smashing Pumpkins – Rotten Apples
Nine Inch Nails – Dead Souls (Joy Division cover)
Death Cab for Cutie – Lovesong (The Cure cover)
The Foo Fighters – Everlong
The Urgency – Fingertips
Jay Gordon – Slept So Long
Nine Inch Nails – Sin
The Cure – A Night Like This
Regina Spektor - Us
Toad the Wet Sprocket – Something's Always Wrong
Death Cab for Cutie – Cath
Save Ferris – Let Me In
Shakespeare's Sister - Stay