Those Who Lift Each Other

by lls-mutant

When the Cylons attacked, the kids of New Directions were on board the Cybele, on their way to the All-Colony Show Choir Competition. Now they're members of the Fleet, being chased by the Cylons and trying to deal with the day-to-day struggles of a life after the worlds end.

7. Burnt to the Core but Not Broken

"Holy crap," Lauren said as they stood by a window on the second floor of the school. Her hand closed hard around his arm, leaving bruises.

"Get down!" Coach Beiste threw him to the floor. A load of rubble tumbled down with a crash, a heavy girder landing right where he'd been standing.

"We have to get out of here!" He remembered shouting it as another explosion shook the earth and he stood at the top of a flight of stairs, poised for flight. "We've got to get back to Gemenon and-"

"We're not getting back to Gemenon right now! Get down there!" Coach Beiste again, shoving him forward.

The big yellow and black sign, announcing a fallout shelter.

The slamming of a door, the clicking of a lock as the tumblers fell into place, the whirring of a generator starting.

And then silence.

It was the silence that made Blaine startle awake and sit up, wet with cold sweat and shivering, clutching the thin blanket. The eerie silence that stretched through his nightmares was worse than anything that came before it.

In the bunk below him, Lauren snored. The rickety frame shook as she turned over. Something about that was comforting, and Blaine began to breathe again. He carefully swung his legs around and slid down, landing on the cold cement floor as lightly as he could. He paused, waiting, but no one woke up.

The other four inhabitants of the fallout shelter were asleep. Blaine picked up the small safety lamp that they kept lit when they were asleep and headed for the bathroom. Once he was safely inside he shut the door and flipped on the light, and his muscles relaxed as he could see again. The bathroom was echoing, with rows of stalls and sinks on one side, and rows of showers on the other. Blaine sat down in the corner, pulling his knees up to his chest and breathing deep.

Six days. It had been six days since the bombs went off and Coach Beiste had hustled them all in here. Six days since they'd sat around the radio, listening in horror to the broadcasts. The broadcasts had ended after only an hour, leaving them frustrated and in the dark. They had no idea of what was going on, except that there had been a massive nuclear attack. That was the worst, not knowing.

They'd missed the All-Colony Show Choir Championship, that was for sure. Blaine didn't even want to know what his parents were imagining. And Kurt. Gods, Kurt. Blaine fumbled at his wrist where his soma bracelet usually was, but there was only bare skin. He remembered, just a week ago, tying the bracelet around Kurt's wrist in a sappy sort of gesture that they'd both laughed at, saying that it would remind Kurt of him for the few days they were apart. The joke didn't seem so funny anymore.

Six days of being trapped in a fallout shelter with Coach Beiste and three wrestlers. The wrestlers had come a few days early to get used to the altitude before the championship, and Blaine, as the team's manager, had been dragged along. He'd agreed to manage the wrestling team in an attempt both to make some friends outside of New Directions and to placate his father. Sean, Anthony, and Lauren were good people, but if he'd had to make a choice between being trapped in a bunker with them or New Directions, he'd have taken New Directions any day of the week, even without Kurt.

Tomorrow would be better, he told himself. Tomorrow, Coach said that they'd suit someone up and send them out with the RAD monitor to see what the situation was. Tomorrow they'd know more. But until then, Blaine was pretty sure he wasn't going to sleep. He closed his eyes and knocked his head back against the wall, playing with the bare skin on his wrist and resigning to a long night.

***

"All right. Who's suiting up in this thing?" Coach Beiste asked.

The wrestlers all looked at each other. Lauren would have liked to volunteer, but the suit wasn't made for someone with her dimensions. Kind of stupid, really, to put such a small one in here. As long as everything was sealed it didn't matter if a radiation suit was too big. But then, that was Caprican thinking for you.

"Come on," Beiste said. "I need a volunteer, gentlemen. Someone step up to the plate before I volunteer you myself."

The three guys could all fit in, no problem. Lauren glared at each of them in turn, but they all seemed to be avoiding her gaze. Finally, Blaine cleared his throat and raised his hand. "I'll go."

"About time." Beiste held out the suit. "Climb on in, kid, and we'll pin you up. It might be like putting a yip dog in sheep's clothing, but we can make it work." Blaine looked like he was going to comment on the analogy, but then obviously thought better of it and focused on putting the suit on instead.

He was in the middle of pulling on the arms when they heard it- voices outside. Muffled shouting, but definitely voices. It could be rescue. It could be something a lot worse.

"Get a gun," Beiste ordered, picking up one herself. There were only two in the place, but when Lauren grabbed the other one, no one argued. Blaine stood there, half in his suit and half out of it, eyes wide and looking ridiculous as the voices came closer. Lauren moved closer to Beiste.

"You ever shot one of these before?" Beiste asked her.

"No. But it's just point and pull the trigger, right?"

Beiste grinned down at her. "Something like that." She looked at the guys. "Get behind us," she ordered, just as the door began to open.

"Looks like it's stocked, and- whoa!" There was a click of a gun and a woman was suddenly pointing a pistol at them. "Anders! Get down here now!"

Lauren raised her gun, taking aim at the woman. She was wiry and red-headed, and on closer inspection she was filthy. And scared. Lauren could see that- she was completely freaked out. But she kept the gun up, so Lauren didn't put her own rifle down. Neither did Beiste, she noticed, although the guys all had their hands up.

"Jean? What's going on?" A very good looking man with brown hair approached and peered in over her shoulder, then tried to push her arm down. "It's okay, Jean," he said. "They're not Cylons."

"How do you know, Sam?"

"They're kids," Sam said. "Look at them. They're high school kids. At a high school."

"She's not." Jean pointed her gun at Beiste.

"Of course I'm not," Beiste said. "You think a bunch of high school kids are going to be running around unsupervised? I'm their coach."

"Their coach, huh?" Sam asked, looking at them better. "Pyramid team?"

"Wrestling. So how about we put the guns down and you tell us what's going on? What the hell are you talking about with Cylons?"

"What's going on?" Jean asked, sounding slightly hysterical. "You don't know?"

"We've been in this fallout shelter for six days," Beiste said. "How are we supposed to know?"

Jean and Sam looked at each other, and something in their faces changed then. Jean lowered her gun. Lauren watched her for a minute and then lowered hers when Beiste did. "What's going on?" Beiste repeated.

"It's the Cylons," Sam said. "They nuked everything. All twelve Colonies. We're about the last people left alive in the universe."

Sean laughed. Jean snapped her head around and glared at him. "What?" he asked, shrugging. "You expect us to believe that? No one's heard from the Cylons in, what, forty years? And you want us to believe they nuked everything?"

Sam's expression didn't change. "That's exactly what we're telling you," he said. "Come on out. You'll see what's happened."

Beiste looked back at them, and then shrugged. "We'd better go," she said. "There's just something about this…"

She didn't finish the sentence, but Lauren had a damn good guess as to what she was thinking. There was something about this that was too unbelievable to be made up. There was something about this that made it feel real. She took a deep breath and braced herself for what she was about to see.

***

Sam and Jean were Samuel T. Anders and Jean Barolay of the Caprica Buccaneers. Shannon hadn't recognized them at first, but when they'd gone up into the sunlight and she'd gotten a better look at their faces and seen Sue-Shaun Lashley, it clicked. It wasn't just the pyramid team up here, either, but a group of almost a hundred people, all milling around the Delphi Union High School courtyard. Shannon stared at them, blinking to adjust her eyes to the light.

The high school looked a little beat up, with cracks in the walls and spots where mortar or stone had fallen down. But the forest around them looked the same as it had. The trees were still standing, with green leaves and sunshine filtering through. "What the hell?" Shannon asked.

Anders shrugged. "They bombed Delphi, but we're far enough out that we didn't get the brunt of the blast. Just the radiation. Speaking of which, you and your kids need meds."

"Meds?"

Jean spoke up. "Anti-radiation meds. We raided a hospital about ten klicks from here. The meds will last us for a few months, but we're going to need to find another supply."

Shannon nodded. Meds, food, water… guns. She noticed they all had guns. "Raid someplace for those, too?" she asked, pointing at the weapons.

"Old military stores," Anders explained tersely.

"How many other survivors are there?" Shannon asked. "Down in the city?" Silence. Awful, terrible silence. Shannon let out a low whistle. "That many, huh? And you're sure about the other Colonies?"

"We're sure," Jean said, her face hard and set.

"How can you be? We stopped getting radio transmissions about an hour after the bombs started going off."

"We got them for three hours after," Anders explained. "We heard them from Gemenon and Scorpia and Canceron… it's the same thing on all the planets."

Shannon couldn't quite believe it. She'd have to listen to them, see the cities, see the stores, see the bodies. And even then, the idea that it wasn't only Caprica that was decimated was unbelievable. But at the same time, even though it wasn't that simple, Shannon knew they were telling the truth, or at least near as they knew it.

"Frak me," she said finally, because what else was there to say?

Anders sat down next to her. "My thoughts exactly."

***

"So that's what we've got," Coach Beiste finished. The wrestling team was sitting in a circle in an abandoned classroom. Blaine was vaguely aware that the others looked horrified, but mostly he was clenching the desk he was sitting on and trying not to throw up. His entire body was shaking, but for some reason he wasn't crying. Not right now. "Anderson," Coach Beiste said. "You okay?"

He had to swallow three times before he could answer. "Yes." It was better than saying he was scared out of his frakking mind.

Coach Beiste didn't look like she believed him, but she didn't press him, either. "Now, here's the thing," she continued, addressing them all. "Anders tells me they're fighting back. And the way I see it, we don't have much of a choice. Because if he's right, there's no place to run, and it's just a matter of time before we all die from radiation poisoning or the Cylons find us and shoot us."

Blaine's fingers curled tighter around the desk. The shaking was becoming almost uncontrollable.

"What about Gemenon?" Anthony Rashad asked. He was an extremely attractive middle-weight that Blaine vaguely remembered played football as well. "People survived here on Caprica. Is there any chance that people survived in Lima?"

Coach Beiste shook her head. "Trust me, kid, I want to believe that they did. But according to Anders, we survived because of the altitude, the fallout shelter, and the fact that this school is so cut off from everything. He says the Cylons are going through even the little towns shooting people and hauling off the corpses. I'm sorry, guys, but with that information, I'd say everyone in Lima is dead. I wish I could tell you something else, but we've got to face the facts. And the facts are we're on Caprica, we're alive for now, and we've been found by a resistance group. There's really only one thing we can do."

"Kick some Cylon ass?" Lauren said.

Coach Beiste smiled at her. "Kick some Cylon ass," she agreed.

Sean and Anthony seemed to cheer up at that thought. Well, maybe not cheer up, but they liked it, that much was obvious. They started talking about revenge and survival and resisting. Blaine just sat in silence, watching them. When it became too much, he slipped out of the classroom.

It was cooler out in the courtyard. Blaine gasped down huge mouthfuls of air like gulps of fresh water, before he remembered that the air was irradiated and the only reason it wasn't poisonous to him were the anti-radiation meds in his bloodstream. He slumped down against the wall, hugging his knees.

He tried to pray. His mouth formed the words he knew from a lifetime of going to temple, and they came out sounding fervent. But nothing about those words moved him. He'd felt all sorts of things when he'd prayed before- duty, belief, comfort, anguish, obligation, guilt, joy. He'd never once felt like this, where his insides were cold and cracked and the words glanced off him, even as he clung desperately to them. He fell silent, unable to finish.

"Hey." Blaine looked up. Anders was standing in front of him. He was a tall, really good-looking man with muscles, brown hair, and a friendly sort of face. Blaine was a Pyramid fan and had seen Anders play, but he looked a lot different now, out of the uniform and dressed in regular clothes. "Are you okay?" Anders asked.

"No," Blaine admitted. He didn't want to say it- this was Sam Anders- but something about Anders' face short-circuited the filter between mind and mouth.

Anders sat down beside him. "Yeah. Can't say I blame you." He had a ball and was tossing it from hand to hand. "How old are you, anyway?"

"Eighteen," Blaine said dully. "Nineteen in a few weeks."

Anders whistled between his teeth. "Shit."

"Yeah."

This was where the pep talk was supposed to go, Blaine thought sourly. This was where he was supposed to get the hey, kid, cheer up, we're gonna beat this, you've just got to believe in yourself schtick that he was sure any teacher he knew would have given them. Instead, Anders just sat there next to him, tossing the ball back and forth and not filling the silence. Maybe he saw it coming. Maybe he just didn't know what to say. Either way, when the tears started running down Blaine's cheeks and he started shaking, trying to hold back the sobs, Anders just reached out and rubbed Blaine's shoulder. It wasn't a gesture of comfort as much as a gesture of acceptance, and Blaine buried his face in his up-drawn knees and sobbed until his chest ached.

It felt like hours but probably wasn't anywhere close to that when Blaine had to stop crying. Not because it had helped- he still felt as broken and twisted and terrible as before- but because his body was rebelling. He let the tears stop and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"Feel any better?" Anders asked him.

"No."

"Yeah. It doesn't help me, either." Anders picked the ball back up. "I can't tell you how many times I've done that this past week, and every time I keep thinking it'll help. It doesn't."

"I feel like an idiot," Blaine admitted, staring at his shoes.

"Why? Because you're crying?" Anders asked incredulously. "This whole thing is frakked up. If you weren't crying, I'd be thinking you were a sociopath."

That made Blaine laugh a little. "Guess it's good I'm crying then," he said. He tipped his head back against the wall.

Anders patted his shoulder again. "Look. I can't tell you it's all going to be okay, because we both know it's not. We know who's going to win in the end. But we're not going down without a fight, got it?" Blaine nodded, and Anders smiled grimly. "Good. Now, let's see if we can find something to keep you busy, okay? That makes it a little better." Anders got to his feet and then reached down to haul Blaine to his. "Come on. Let's go see if you can help out in the kitchen."

It was an order couched in a suggestion, but Blaine didn't mind. He followed Anders back into the high school and towards the cafeteria. Keep busy. It wasn't much, but it was all he could do.

***

The sounds of bullets were like music to Lauren's ears. "That," she said, watching in satisfaction, "is awesome."

"I know, right?" Jean sat back on her heels, examining the gun she had been testing. "It's like we found this whole new toy section in a store." She looked back down the range at the spot where they'd set up bottles. "Three out of five. Beat that, Zizes."

"I will." She didn't know if she could, but Beiste had told her if there was one thing you needed to shoot a gun properly, it was confidence. You had to be sure when you were firing that sucker or it would come back to haunt you. She'd seen evidence of that in the past two days.

She hit two of her five bottles. Not great, but not awful, considering the first time she'd ever held a gun was when Beiste shoved one at her in the fallout shelter. Jean nodded in approval as she surveyed the results.

"We probably should wrap it up for the day," Jean said, looking down at their stock. "There's a fine line between using ammo to learn to shoot and wasting it."

"Yeah." Lauren sighed, and then squinted at the sun. "Dinner's probably almost over, too."

They walked back towards the school companionably. The Resistance had managed to get a pretty good stash of supplies. Between scavenging a hospital, a small military base, and houses and small towns along the way, they'd accumulated weapons, medicine, food, and trucks.

"What are we doing for gasoline?" she asked, nodding at them.

"There's a station not too far away," Jean said. "But I don't know how much more the tank there's got in it. We're going to have to find a new source soon."

"That's going to be our new theme song, isn't it?" Lauren asked. "We need to find more?"

Jean laughed. "Yeah. Probably."

Dinner was served in the high school's cafeteria. The ninety-seven people who now made up the Resistance only filled about half of it. Jean veered off to talk to some of the other Buccaneers, and Lauren spotted Blaine sitting down at a table, an apron over his clothes.

"Hey," she said, after she'd gotten a bowl of stew. "You're cooking?"

Blaine looked up at her and smiled. "Yeah," he said. "I figured I could at least be useful."

Lauren looked at him skeptically. "You're not pulling that Sagittaron stuff about non-violence, are you?"

Blaine snorted. "Hardly," he said. "It's just that I've tried to shoot a gun. You ever see those Galaxy Battles movies? The ones with the clones all in white uniforms?"

"The ones that can't hit the broad side of a barn," Lauren said, seeing exactly where this was going.

Blaine nodded. "If I wasn't too short, I'd totally be one of them."

Lauren couldn't help rolling her eyes. "That's just pathetic, Anderson."

"Tell me about it. The best I can do is aim at one Cylon and hope maybe my aim is off enough that I hit the one three down from him." Blaine flashed that charming smile again- the one he used when he was being self-deprecating. "I heard they're getting ready to start trying something more than raids."

"Like taking on toasters?" Lauren asked, raising her eyebrows. "Awesome."

"Yeah. Awesome." Blaine didn't look nearly so enthusiastic anymore.

Lauren leaned into his space. "What's your issue, Anderson?" she asked. "Because you said it's not being a Saggie."

"You don't have any problems with facing down a bunch of clawed, shooting robots?" Blaine asked.

"So you're scared," Lauren said.

"In a word, yes. I really think that it's completely reasonable."

"It is," Lauren agreed.

"So aren't you?" Blaine prompted when she didn't say anything more. "Aren't you scared?"

"No."

He goggled at her. "How can you not be?"

Lauren shrugged. "What's left to lose?"

That made Blaine turn pale and look back down at his stew. Lauren wished she could feel bad about it, but it was the truth. This was life now- or something like life- and there was no point in deluding themselves into thinking otherwise. All they could hope for was to give the Cylons one massive middle finger before they kicked off.

Blaine stared at his bowl for a long moment, and then pushed it away and stood up and left the table, not saying a word. Lauren watched him go. For a minute she thought she should follow, but it wasn't like there was anyone around them. If Blaine wanted to talk, he would have talked. He needed to be alone.

Lauren couldn't help wondering exactly how long Blaine was going to last. If she had money, she'd put it on him being the first in their little group to go. The thought sent chills down her spine.

She shook it off and pulled her stew towards her and began to eat.

***

The days evolved into routines of sorts, and they all had their jobs to keep the Resistance going. The school became a sort of home. The weather started getting a little cooler, and the leaves were turning colors and falling from the trees. They stood outside at night in the courtyard, because there wasn't a lot of diesel to run the generators and fires were the best way to get light.

The flames flickered in metal trash bins. "I'm trying not to think that it makes me feel homeless," Anthony said, holding his hands out to warm them.

"How cold is it going to get around here, anyway?" Sean asked. "Does it snow a lot in Delphi?"

"Don't know," Shannon said. She stared into the fire and made a note to talk to Anders about raiding houses for some warmer clothes. The problem was that the Cylons were patrolling sort of nearby, and the last thing they needed to do was give away the location of the base. "How are you guys holding up?"

Anthony shrugged. "How do you think?"

They were holding up. All of her guys had a grim look about them, but they were still going. Even Blaine was still at least putting one foot in front of the other. He was huddled in a jacket next to Zizes right now, his hands extended towards the flames. Lauren wrapped a scarf around his neck in a protective sort of gesture, and he flashed a smile at her before turning back to his own thoughts.

A beacon of light flared for a second and a whistle came down from the gates of the fence that surrounded the school. Shannon looked over her shoulder to see Anders and his squad returning from the forest. They were filthy, but they were intact. Anders strode into the center of the courtyard. "I need three squads, armed and ready to go," he shouted. "We also need three trucks. Let's go, people!"

Shannon turned to her kids. "You heard the man," she ordered. "Let's get our guns and go."

The shift into action felt good. Shannon had only gone out on raids four times now, and each time she got to blow some of those frakkers up she felt a little better. More purposeful. Like she'd taken one step closer to her goal. She made sure her kids went off to get what they needed. She wasn't going to lie- it bugged her to see these four kids pulling on flak jackets and picking up rifles, but there weren't exactly any other choices. She picked up her own gun and made her way over to Anders.

"What have we got?" she asked.

Anders shook his head. He looked spooked. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Tell me anyway. Because if it's true, I need to know what it is before I haul my guys in there."

Anders nodded. "Mass grave," he said shortly. "Mass grave and Cylons. And not just Centurions."

"What other kinds of Cylons are there?" Shannon asked.

"The human kind," Anders said. He looked up at her, and she saw just how hard he was struggling to keep it together. "The kind that look so human you'd never know otherwise."

"You're right," Shannon said. "I don't believe you."

"Told you you wouldn't," Anders said with a grim smile. "But like you said, at least now you know."

They climbed aboard the truck. Shannon sat in back with her guys, watching them. Anthony and Sean had their heads close together, talking. Lauren seemed to be playing rock, paper, scissors with Jean. Blaine was leaning back against the wall of the truck, his eyes closed, his lips moving. Shannon had the feeling he might be praying. Praying, or just calming himself down. Either one worked.

The trucks lurched to a stop, and she jumped out, automatically counting each kid as they clambered out. The surrounding forest was dark and silent, with just the sounds of breathing and people moving to break it up.

"All right," she heard Anders order in a low, rough voice. "It's one klick this way. Let's go. Stay covered, stay down, and when we get there, on my signal, let all hell break loose." They all fell into line.

She smelled the gravesite first. The rancid stench of decaying flesh and worse assaulted her nose, and she pulled her shirt up over it to shield herself from the smell. Their pace slowed, and she caught sight of the flickers in the shadows that meant firelight was up ahead. Finally, she reached the point where she could peer out of the brush to see.

"Oh my Gods," she heard Anthony whisper. "Look at the size of that grave!"

It was probably huge. There were a lot of people in Delphi. But she couldn't look, because her eyes were fixed on the Cylons. For hell's sake, Anders was right. They looked human. So completely human, and yet absolutely identical. There were several of them, all men with short brown hair and plain faces and bad clothes, as well as a lot of the mechanical ones. They moved about, complaining as they pulled corpses into the grave.

"Shit, Coach," Lauren said. "Do you see them?"

"I see 'em, all right," Shannon said. She picked up her gun. "You guys got it?"

Three of her four kids picked up their guns, ready for the signal. But Blaine stood there, motionless, staring at the scene in front of him. "Anderson," she whispered. He didn't move. Shannon leaned over and knocked his arm. "Anderson! Are you okay?"

Blaine snapped back to reality. "I… Yeah. I'm okay. They're just-"

"They're not human," Shannon told him firmly. "Don't go thinking that, okay, kid? I know they look like it. But they're not."

Blaine nodded jerkily, and Shannon shouldered her gun again, then looked back at Anders. She held her breath, tensed, and then finally there it was. The signal.

Gunshot ran out, shattering the silence. The Cylons began dropping. Some fired back, but all Shannon was aware of was the way her rifle kicked back against her shoulder and the deafening sound of the guns, the falling bodies, and the way the firelight flickered. They had caught the Cylons by surprise, and it wasn't a battle as much as a wipeout. When the smoke cleared, the Cylons lay dead on the ground.

"You guys okay?" she asked her kids.

"Yeah," Anthony said breathlessly. He was looking at the field, a smile spreading across his lips. Sean and Lauren high-fived.

Anders waved them forward. Most everyone followed, but Shannon noticed that Blaine was still standing stock still, staring out at the site.

"Anderson. Come on. We've got work to do." She knocked his shoulder with his arm.

He startled out of his trance. "Yes, ma'am."

The smell became even stronger as they appproached. Corpses were nasty business, especially these- they had to be at least two or three weeks old. Shannon couldn't even look at the grave of all those dead people. Instead, she stared down at a humanoid Cylon at her feet, nudging him with the butt of her gun.

His eyes hadn't closed when he'd fallen. They stared up at her. There was no beeping, no fizzling sound of failing wiring like she kind of thought there would be. She crouched down, studying the corpse. He really did look human. He even smelled human.

"Well, shit," she said, turning the body over.

"That's really a Cylon?" Lauren asked, looking over her shoulder. "That is some creepy shit."

"No kidding," Shannon said. "It's not even like twins. They're really copies." Lauren shuddered. Shannon glanced up at her. "You go over to the grave?"

"Nah," Lauren said. "Anthony and Blaine did. I think they wanted to pray or something. Me, I don't need to look at a pile of dead bodies."

"It's not necessarily a bad thing," Shannon corrected her. "Remember why we're fighting."

"You think I can forget?" Lauren asked her, arching an eyebrow.

Shannon smiled grimly at her. "No. I guess not." She stood up and clapped Lauren on the shoulder. "Come on. We did what we came here to do. Let's get our guys and get our asses back on those trucks."

Lauren went off to get Sean, and Shannon headed over to the grave to collect Anthony and Blaine. It seemed like there was something of a commotion over there, and as she got closer, Shannon saw exactly what it was. An old man- obviously a priest of some sort given his dress- was talking to Anders. "What's happening?" she asked, coming in between Anthony and Blaine.

Anthony answered her first. "They found him in the grave," he said. "He was still alive. Amazing, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Wow." Shannon was impressed. She wondered how many other humans were hidden in little cubbies and hideaways, still outlasting the Cylons. They couldn't have been the only ones who sought refuge in fallout shelters. She shook her head. This wasn't a time for wondering or anything like that- this was a time for getting the frak out of here. "Get to the truck," she ordered the boys. "It's time to haul ass."

Anthony nodded and went off easily, but Blaine hesitated, still staring down into the grave. "Don't look, Anderson," she said, because the sight really was gruesome. "Just get going."

"All right." But he'd looked, and taken it to heart. She could see the horror in his eyes.

Shit.

She made sure all of her guys were headed towards the trucks, then fell into step alongside Anders. "Everything okay?" she asked.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. As okay as it can be," he said. "You see what I meant about the Cylons?"

Shannon nodded. "Frakked up shit, right there."

"To put it mildly." Anders cocked a little grin at her, one that didn't reach his eyes.

"Makes you wonder if they only look like that," Shannon continued.

"Yeah. I'm wondering the same thing." Anders slung his gun over his shoulder and lengthened his step a little in order to keep up with her.

"You think they can look like anyone in our group?" Shannon asked him.

Anders shook his head. "No. They're out to annihilate all the humans. If we had Cylons with us, they'd kill us."

That made sense. Shannon nodded, glancing back over her shoulder. "So who's our new friend?" she asked, watching some of the others help the priest.

"Him? Says his name is Brother Cavil."

"A priest. Does this mean the gods are finally on our side?"

Anders's laugh was as bitter as she felt. "If it makes you feel better, you could always look at it like that."

"Not really," Shannon said. "Need anything else?"

"Nope. We'll see you back there."

Shannon nodded and headed over to the truck and climbed in. The kids were sitting together, talking. Lauren, Anthony, and Sean were recounting the battle. Shannon listened to them for a moment, how they painted pictures of violence with words. Back on Lima, she would have been appalled that the kids were talking so happily about splattering guts and how glad they were to kill something. Right now, she only nodded approval. "You guys did good," she said.

It took half the trip back to the base for her to really notice that Blaine was sitting huddled in a corner, looking miserable, his gun still clenched in his hand. She scooted over, checking to make sure the others were still occupied. "What's going on, Anderson?" she asked, lowering her voice. "You okay?"

"I'm not wounded."

"Didn't think you were- you're not bleeding all over the floor. So what's going on?"

Blaine looked past her at the others, still talking and laughing. Shannon glanced over her shoulder. "What about them?"

"How do they do it?" Blaine asked. "How do they just do it? I was standing right there with them, and when they started shooting at us, I couldn't move. I couldn't… I just stood there with my gun on my shoulder."

"Least you stood there," Shannon said. "That's something."

"Which makes me feel so much braver," Blaine said with a bitter laugh. "You know, I remember just a few years ago telling Kurt to have courage. Why don't I have any now?"

Shannon snorted. "Because courage isn't about not being afraid," she said. "Let me tell you something, Blaine. We're all afraid. And we should be. Courage is about being afraid, and then going ahead and doing what you need to do anyway. And you've got that, kid." She clapped her hand on his forearm, leaning in. "If you're trembling in your shoes and you go ahead and fight them anyway, that makes you one of the bravest men I've ever know."

She wondered how much more she should say. This was one of those moments where she should probably yell at him to pull himself up by the bootstraps and soldier on. But to the kid's credit, he was doing that. He was just scared shitless as he did, and Shannon couldn't blame him.

She turned back to look at the others. Lauren, Anthony, and Sean were still laughing, blowing off steam. Shannon scooted back over and joined them, listening to accounts of exploding Centurions and speculation on the human-looking toasters. And after a while, Blaine scooted closer to her. He wasn't joining in, he wasn't adding his own stories, but he was listening.

Shannon considered that progress.

***

The first time, when they'd discovered the humanoid Cylons, Blaine had been too scared to shoot. He'd stood there frozen, his gun on his shoulder, watching the violence around him.

The second time, when their squad was ordered along on a raid of a small medical outpost and they encountered a squadron of Centurions, Blaine managed to shoot. He was positive he didn't hit a damn thing, but that terrible, paralyzing fear was diminishing.

By the sixth time, he could move. He could run, he could duck, he could shout to the others. He could fire, he could throw when they had explosives, and he now knew he'd gotten some of them. Probably. The human ones were easier to kill than the Centurions were. At least, they went down easier when they were hit by a bullet. It made Blaine sick to see them on the ground, corpses that he couldn't quite believe were broken machines.

It got easier to fight, but the sick feeling in his gut never really left. He was learning to cope with the grief that he felt every time he thought of everyone on Gemenon. His parents, his friends, the Warblers, New Directions, Kurt…. Thinking of Kurt hurt more than Blaine ever thought it would,. As much as Blaine wished it was true, Kurt wasn't somewhere on Gemenon, holed up and fighting Cylons, taking radiation shots each day. But maybe that was a good thing. Kurt didn't have nightmares about mass graves. Kurt didn't know what human flesh smelled like when it decayed or burned. Kurt didn't know what it felt like to crouch under bushes, a gun in hand, waiting for that right moment to shoot at robots that were eight feet tall and armed. Kurt didn't know what it felt like to kill. And Blaine was glad that Kurt had been spared all that.

The Resistance couldn't go down into the city of Delphi. It was crawling with Cylons, both the mechanical ones and the human ones, and the Resistance wasn't that good yet that they could take on that many. But they could get supplies from lone houses, small towns, and little pockets of civilization nearby. Some of the houses were empty, but more often than not the former occupants were still there. It was awful to see the dead bodies, constantly driving home what they knew. Blaine thought he could handle it. But the worst was when they saw dead children. Little kids, five and six and younger, lying cold and decaying on the ground. It hit him every time he saw them, stirring not only grief but anger. As many times as he saw it, it didn't get any easier. He didn't understand any of this.

Belief in the Gods had always come easily for Blaine. He'd been raised on Sagittaron, and his parents had left for political reasons, not religious ones. They'd fled to Gemenon because the Gemenese mirrored their personal belief system more closely than anyplace else in the Twelve Colonies. The Gods had been in Blaine's life since he was a baby, present at every ceremony and every rite of passage. He'd thought nothing would ever be able to shake his belief in the Gods, that they would always be a part of his life. Then he saw the nuclear wasteland that was Caprica, and it was like there was a hole inside him where that belief had always been. A dark, gaping hole that was bleeding his soul, slowly but surely.

They were coming back from a mission when Blaine overheard Brother Cavil telling Anders that any time he wanted to make his confession, Cavil was ready to listen. The words hit Blaine with the force of a maglev train. Confession. Something he'd done every week since he was six, although he didn't always think so deeply about it. But now, something pulled him to the concept of confession and to Cavil like a moth to a flame.

He found the priest in the courtyard that night, sitting on an overturned bucket and staring up at the sky. Blaine approached him, and Cavil noticed, raising his thick gray eyebrows in inquiry.

"I heard what you said to Anders," Blaine said hesitantly. "About confession."

"You do know you can't confess for him, right? This is something he has to man up and do himself?" Brother Cavil's brows furrowed down.

Blaine's face was hot. "I know. That's not… never mind."

Cavil sighed. "Frak. No, I get it. It's been a long day, kid. I got your meaning wrong." He turned another bucket over and set it beside him. "Want to sit?"

Blaine nodded. "If this is a bad time, I can come back another day."

"You want to take that gamble that you're going to have another day to come back?"

Right. Blaine sat down. It was weird to be beside the priest like this for a confession. "Er…"

"We can skip the 'Bless me, Brother, for I have acted against the example of the Gods...' part if you want," Cavil suggested. "Let's just cut to the chase, shall we? What's on your mind?"

"I don't even know how to say it," Blaine laughed awkwardly, running his fingers through his curls. "It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud."

"So does everything. Come on, son. To use a rather crude phrase, shit or get off the pot here."

"It's the Gods," Blaine said in a rush. "Before I say it, you have to understand. I'm Sagittaron. I was born there, and even though my parents didn't share a lot of their beliefs, we've always been religious. That's why we moved to Gemenon and not Caprica or Scorpia or something."

"Okay, so you believe in the Gods." Cavil nodded. "I'd kind of figured that out given that confession is important to you, but go on."

"But that's just it," Blaine said. "I'm not sure if I do anymore. And I know that sounds silly, but I think that's why I'm so afraid. I can handle pain. I can handle dying. But what if the Gods don't exist, and there's nothing after this? What if everything I know is wrong? And when I look around, all I can think is what kind of Gods allow this? If the Gods are so powerful, why did they let the Cylons destroy us all?"

Cavil's face was hard to read. "I see."

"And I already thought of the idea that maybe the Gods are on their side." The words tumbled out of him, forcing a shiver and a wave of nausea. "But that can't be right. I mean, I know people do terrible things. I can see how the Gods would think that some of us deserved to die, maybe. But what about the kids? What about the people that don't hurt others? There are some out there. Even if you accept that the Cylons are what the Gods want life to be, it's still hard to believe that every human is without redemption. And what about the squirrels?"

Cavil drew back. "The squirrels?"

"The squirrels!" Blaine said. "Look around the forests. There are no squirrels, or deer, or chipmunks, or birds, or cows, or… or anything! So much of the animal life has been wiped out." Cavil's face cleared in understanding, and Blaine relaxed a little. "If the Gods hate their creation that much, why not just… send a flood again or something? Something that would wipe the slate cleaner than nuclear bombs? Why leave such destruction in the wake? And then the only answer I can come up with is there are no Gods."

"Well," Cavil said, when it became obvious Blaine was done talking, "that's because you're assuming the Gods had any hand in this at all. They didn't. That's not how they set things up."

"But-"

"Let me let you in on a little secret, kid," Cavil said, leaning closer. "People suck. Humans suck. They kill, they steal, they cheat, they lie… they run the whole gamut, don't they? And like the Gods made humans, Cylons are made in the image of you guys. So Cylons aren't going to be immune to human foibles. And the Gods know that. The Gods allow that, because that's what free will is. It's the ability to suck."

"Thanks," Blaine said dully. "That helped a lot."

"I'm not finished," Cavil said. "Humans are weak, pathetic, cowardly, lowly creatures. But when humans are good or strong or noble, that's not when we ask 'how could the Gods let this happen?'. And the Cylons are the children of humanity. They take after their parents, so to speak. We all do horrible things to each other, and the Gods allow it because they have to. Because it's part of free will. It's the greatest gifts the Gods gave humanity."

"So, that's your advice?" Blaine asked. "'People suck and we're all gonna die'?"

"Well, forgive me for having my own crisis of faith at the end of the world, but yeah. That's my advice. The Gods aren't here to help us or hurt us- we do that to each other."

"Thanks," Blaine said with a sigh. He wasn't sure if it helped or if it didn't, but it was another perspective.

Cavil smiled grimly, then stood to head inside. "Don't stay out all night," he told Blaine. "You need to get some sleep."

"I know." Blaine watched him leave. He turned his face back up to the sky. It was hard to see the stars. Smoke from nuclear detonations still clouded the sky, leaving it a strange golden-gray during the day and an empty black canvas at night. He wished he could see beyond those clouds, beyond this plane and see if the Gods really were there. He wished he could feel them, like he used to when he was younger and he prayed.

Blaine had told Kurt that once, but Kurt had snorted and said that it was just Blaine wanting to believe so badly that he convinced himself the Gods were listening. The funny thing was that thinking of Kurt was the only time Blaine could believe in the Gods right now. It was only when he thought of Kurt being with the Gods in Elysium that he felt any peace at all, secure in the knowledge that that, if nothing else, was true.

The Gods aren't here to help us or hurt us- we do that to each other. Blaine sighed, knocking his head back against the wall. He sat on late into the night, staring up at the clouds and wishing that he could make sense of anything at all.

***

They'd been lucky, Shannon knew that. After a few tentative starts, Anders now had the raids down to something of a science. He was very fond of explosives- anything that could cause maximum damage to the Cylons and minimum damage to the humans. As a result of Anders' tactics, very few humans had died. Of course their luck couldn't last.

They heard the explosions from the camp. They were very faint and far off in the distance. She was sitting with Lauren, cleaning a pile of guns when they heard them.

"This wasn't a combat mission," Shannon said, frowning. "There shouldn't have been explosions."

"They'll let us know soon enough," Lauren said, still cleaning her gun. She didn't seem overly concerned, but at the same time, she was right. They weren't the ones calling the shots right now.

She'd cleaned four guns when a truck rumbled through the gate and Anders hopped out. "Get help!" His voice was rough, and when Shannon saw him he was covered with scratches, soot, and blood. "We've got four people down in here! Hurry!"

"What happened?" Shannon asked, catching Anders by the arm.

"Ambush," Anders said, his eyes scanning the school building like he expected Cylons to pop out of the windows at any moment. "It was an ambush."

"Frak." Shannon looked at the gate. "Where are the other trucks? Do they need help?"

Anders shook his head. "The other trucks aren't coming," he said.

"They're gone?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he broke free from her grip and headed back to the truck, calling for medical supplies. But that was answer enough.

Three trucks gone. If she guessed right, that could mean up to thirty people dead. The number was staggering in her head, and instinctively, Shannon looked back over her shoulder to check for her guys. Lauren was still by the guns, lingering uncertainly, and Anthony and Sean were lurking in a doorway. She'd seen Blaine in the kitchen before she came out here. They were all here. They were all safe. She breathed out slowly.

Anders called to her, and she pushed her worries aside and went over to help bring in the wounded. "What about the bodies?" Shannon asked.

Anders didn't answer. At first, she wasn't sure he heard her. But Jean Barolay touched her arm and shook her head. When Anders was out of earshot, she said, "We left them out there. I know it's terrible," she said, correctly interpreting the shocked expression on Shannon's face. "But if we bring them here, they'll either decay or we'll have to burn them, and the smoke would tell the Cylons where we are."

She was right. "How's he taking it?" Shannon asked, jerking her chin in Anders' direction.

"How do you think?" Jean asked. Concern was written all over her face as she watched him. Shannon clasped her shoulder for a long moment, because yeah, it sucked when your best friend had the weight of the world on his shoulders and you couldn't do a damn thing to help. She'd been there. She knew that.

"I'll go start organizing the supplies," Shannon said. "If you guys need help with figuring out who's gone, let me know." Jean nodded, her eyes still on Anders, and Shannon headed off.

"What's going on, Coach?" Lauren asked when Shannon got close enough into earshot.

"Come on," Shannon said, beckoning with her head. "We've got work to do. I'll fill you in as we do it."

***

"What happened?" Blaine asked Lauren when he sat down across from her that night at dinner. "I've been in the kitchen and I keep hearing… something, but no one will tell me anything. I don't know why they won't."

"They think you can't handle it." Lauren was too tired to be tactful.

Blaine took offense. She could see it in the way he drew himself up and the scowl on his face. "What happened out there?"

"You really want to know?"

"No. I'm asking because I want you to lie to me."

He meant it. Lauren sighed. "There was an ambush," she said. "They got thirty-eight people."

"Thirty-eight." Blaine shook his head. "Wow."

"Wow? That's what you've got to say? Wow?"

"Well, I figured out people were dead," Blaine said. "I'm not stupid, you know."

"True. No one ever said you were." Lauren pushed her food around on her plate. "Everyone's just scared that if you hear, and if you know, you're going to go off and cry again."

Blaine blinked at her. "Of course I'm going to cry," he said.

"You're not now."

"Because I did when I heard that people died. I knew it was a lot- I just didn't know the number or the how. Thirty-eight people are dead, and they're people we knew. You don't think that's worth crying over?"

"Nope," Lauren said. "It's just going to be us soon enough."

She meant it. There was no point in crying for the people who'd died today. Their work was done. They were at rest, and their time was over. If anything, it felt like the Gods had let them out of some sort of Purgatory, and they got to go on. There were fifty-three of them left now. Fifty-three was such a small number in the billions that had died. Frankly, Lauren was sure that the Gods had pretty much forgotten about them.

But at the same time, a little voice inside her head told her that Noah would have cried. Alone, maybe, and he would have pretended he wasn't. But he would have cried. Blaine said he'd cried. And she'd seen Beiste crying as they put away the supplies. Maybe there was something wrong with her that she couldn't force a single tear over this.

Blaine was watching her. He looked cautious, like he was afraid she was going to explode. Frak that. Lauren wasn't the one breaking down over their situation- he was. She picked her plate up. "I'm going to go find Anthony and Sean," she said. "See you later."

"See you later." Blaine watched her go. Lauren thought there might have been pity on his face, and then decided there couldn't be, or she'd have to go back and set him straight and she really wasn't in the mood to do that right now. Thirty-eight dead people were enough; no need to make it thirty-nine.

***

Blaine watched Lauren go, the familiar choking feeling seizing his throat. She only had said what everyone had thought- what he thought. That he was Sagittaron, through and through. That he was a coward. That he was too soft. That he couldn't handle this life and this battle. That was why no one was telling him details. That was why he was sitting alone. So it was a shock when, five minutes later, Anders sat down across from him.

"Hey. I hear that you sing?"

"Where did you hear that from?" Blaine asked.

"Your coach. Is it true?"

"Yeah," Blaine said, surprised. "I haven't much these days because I haven't felt much like singing, but before this…."

"Yeah, point taken. I'm guessing you don't feel like it much now, either, but we've just…. We've been trying to figure out the funeral, you know? Thirty-eight people. It's a big deal." Anders looked drawn and worn and uncertain. "There needs to be something more than just talking. I don't suppose you know a funeral song or anything, do you?"

Blaine frowned and looked down at his soup. "There's a song from Sagittaron, one I learned back when I was a kid. 'Run to the Water.' It… fits."

Anders nodded. "You think you could sing it? Even teach it to a few other people? I know it's not much time, but I think it would make a difference."

"I could try. Who all do I have to teach?"

"Me and Brother Cavil. That should be enough." Anders gestured over his shoulder, and Blaine spotted Cavil standing by the cafeteria door, watching them. He pushed his soup away and stood.

"This is a high school," Blaine said when they were almost to the door. "It's got to have a music room somewhere."

"Well, then, let's go check it out," Cavil suggested.

The music room was a little disheveled, just like the rest of the school, but as soon as Blaine stepped over the threshold, something clicked inside. He closed his eyes and breathed out slowly, because he knew this feeling. This was home.

The upright piano was covered in dust. Blaine ran his hand over it reverently, and then sat down and opened the cover. He played a few notes, cringing at how out of tune it was. For the first time since Coach Beiste had herded them into that fallout shelter, Blaine felt like things were right.

Cavil and Anders were prowling around the room, opening cabinets and looking in corners. "Hey," Anders said, pulling a guitar out of a cabinet. "Check it out! A guitar!"

"Fantastic. Do you play?" Blaine asked.

Sam shook his head. "Nah. Never learned."

"That's too bad. It's a noble instrument, very much maligned." Cavil smirked.

"Do you play?" Blaine asked, surprised.

"I do," Cavil said, taking the guitar. His smirk deepened. "My father taught me." He strummed a few notes. "All right, son. Teach me this song of yours. We'll see what we can do with it."

***

The fifty-three remaining members of the Resistance stood in the courtyard with heads bowed in front of a makeshift stage. Blaine swallowed hard, stretching his neck from side to side and trying to get loose without being obvious about what he was doing. It didn't seem appropriate, somehow, even though he could argue that the thirty-eight people killed deserved the best performance he could give as a tribute.

Brother Cavil was speaking. Blaine listened to him, but the words just wouldn't permeate his ears. Nothing stuck, nothing made sense. He told himself it was because he was nervous, but that wasn't the truth, and he knew it.

Anders stood beside him, listening intently. His face looked wrecked, and he kept clenching and unclenching his fists. It was like he took it all personally, like it was a failure on his part that he couldn't personally keep these people safe.

Brother Cavil was winding up. Blaine jerked his attention back to him, waiting for his cue. Finally, Cavil sat down on the chair and picked up the guitar. Blaine stepped out onto the stage and nodded to Cavil. Cavil played the opening chords of "Run to the Water", and Blaine took a deep breath. In his mind, he could see the Warblers. In his mind, he could see New Directions. In his mind, he could see Kurt.

""Oh desert speak to my heart, oh woman of the earth,
Maker of children who weep for love, maker of this birth
'Til your deepest secrets are known to me, I will not be moved.

It was a song he knew from Sagittaron, from the oppression and the poverty and the Colonial troops marching through the square in his hometown. As he sang the first verse, he remembered hiding under the bed as they marched by, even though his mother had told him he was safe. And in his mind, the Colonial feet moving in unison became Cylons, lurching together in some sort of stilted rhythm.

"Don't try to find the answer when there ain't no question here
Brother let your heart be wounded and give no mercy to your fear"

He glanced over his shoulder at Brother Cavil. It was an automatic thing, because Cavil had the guitar and there were considerations of tempo and phrasing, all which needed to be communicated with a look and a nod. But the expression on Cavil's face- the intense focus and the gimlet eyes- made Blaine even more aware of the words he was singing. No answers were coming. No divine explanation, no cosmic intervention.

The song built to a hard crescendo, and he looked back at the people massed in front of him, some with heads bowed in grief, but many facing them. Defiance, anger, resolution… he could see it on their faces as he built up to the chorus.

"Run to the water and find me there- burnt to the core but not broken.

There was a ripple in the audience at those words, and a ripple down Blaine's soul. Burnt to the core, but not broken. He'd sang the words so many times in teaching Anders and Cavil the song, but now, in the irradiated air and with the cloudy sky above him, the words hit hard enough that his voice faltered. Anders saw it and stepped up beside Blaine, giving him a grim smile and joining in for the last few lines of the refrain. Their eyes met, and Blaine felt himself growing a little stronger as the music played before the second verse.

He looked out over the group again, and he found Coach Beiste and the wrestlers. Anthony and Sean had their heads bowed, but Coach Beiste and Lauren were both standing tall, their faces defiant. Proud. He clung to them with his gaze, pushing away all of the past and seeing them here in context, as warriors against a force that had destroyed their civilization. The words for the next verse flowed out of him, roughened with emotion but inevitable, like a river breaking free of its dam.

"And I will never leave you until we can say,
This world was just a dream we were sleeping now we are awake
In a moment we lost our minds here and dreamt the world was round
A million mile fall from grace thank god we missed the ground"

He closed his eyes. In his head, he heard the drums that should have gone with that build to the chorus, and behind his eyelids he saw light. Not the watery, contaminated sunlight of Caprica or the dusty oppressed sunlight of Sagittaron, but the clear, bright sunlight of Gemenon, from a summer day when he'd walked barefoot in the grass, laughing with Kurt. The sunlight from Elysium, from paradise, from heaven. And when he sang the words of the refrain again, Anders' voice backing him up and Cavil's guitar grounding them both, the bands of fear around his soul began to crack. He stretched his arms out as he sang, opening himself up and letting that sunlight in his mind fill him.

"Run to the water and find me there, burnt to the core but not broken
We'll cut through the madness of these streets below the moon
With a nuclear fire of love in our hearts
Rest easy baby, rest easy and recognize it all as light and rainbows
Smashed to smithereens and be happy"

The bands broke completely, and when he opened his eyes to see the faces tilted up to him, he knew. There was a purpose here for him. The Gods hadn't forgotten them, and when their work was done, they could go home. He'd be with his parents, with his friends, with Kurt, and he would be whole. They all would be.

As the music died away and he looked at the faces and the sky and the grimness of Caprica, at Sam Anders and Coach Beiste and Brother Cavil, Blaine knew he finally wasn't afraid anymore.

A mortar exploded, and Lauren ducked behind what was left of a wall. She glanced over and caught Anthony's eye. I'll cover you. Anthony nodded, scooped up the ball of explosives, took a deep breath and ran out towards the Centurions. Lauren leaned back around and fired, and Anthony tossed the explosives and then dove behind a wall across the way. The ball rolled towards the Centurions' feet and exploded.

She had to duck behind the wall again and cover her head and ears as debris rained down on them, but when she came back up, there was silence. At least, there was no gunfire.

"All right, guys!" Anders shouted, coming out from his position. "Good job." He high fived Anthony as he jogged by. "Now let's get these weapons and get out of here!"

"Awesome cover, Zizes," Anthony said as he fell into step beside her.

"Thanks. You didn't do so bad yourself."

He grinned. He was a hottie, Lauren had to admit that. Once, it totally would have done something for her. Now all she could think was that he'd be dead in three or four months anyway, just like her. Or a year. Or something- she really had never expected that it would last this long.

The armory they'd raided was pretty well stocked. Lots of guns, ammo, explosives, plastics, and grenades. Lauren picked up an X16-027, testing the balance and the weight. And to think, three months ago she wouldn't have even known what an X16-027 was. They worked all morning, filling the three trucks and clearing out as much as they could. Anders looked satisfied when they were done. "Take 'em on back," he ordered. "I'm going to take the third truck and swing by Montgomeryville."

"What are we doing out there?" Sue-Shaun asked.

"There's a grocery store we haven't hit. We need to pick up something for dinner."

They all laughed, because it was a joke and yeah, it was kind of funny. But Lauren felt like she was laughing on autopilot. When they climbed into the back of the truck, Lauren tipped her head back against the wall, closing her eyes.

"You okay?" Anthony asked her.

"Fine," she said, because she was. She was exhausted, she was drained, and as they began the slow trip back, bouncing over ruined roads and dirt trails, she wasn't thinking about her parents, or her friends, or Noah. Funny how she called him Noah a lot more now than she ever had to his face. She drifted off to sleep, although it was hard to tell with the nightmares that kept flitting through her mind.

The truck lurched to a stop. She jerked out of a dream where a Cylon had its hands around her throat. This one was different than the one they'd seen at the grave. They'd discovered that there were at least four more models- a tall, thin, blonde woman, an elegant woman with slightly darker blonde hair, a smaller, dark woman with almond shaped eyes, and a blond man with a lean build and a maniacal gleam to his eye. The model in her dream had been the tall, thin blonde woman. She blinked, clearing her vision and she saw only humans in front of her, sitting in the back of the truck.

"You okay?" Anthony asked again.

"Frak off," Lauren told him. She jumped down out of the truck and started gathering weapons. "Let's get these in."

They were on their second load when Blaine and Sean came out to help them. Blaine looked different the past week since the funeral- his easy smile was back on occasion, and he moved with more ease. Once, Lauren would have been glad to see it. Now, all she could think was that maybe he'd be more useful out in the field.

It took seven trips to unload the truck. They were just going out to get the last one when the final truck came through the gates. "Hope they got food," Blaine said. "We're getting really low in the kitchen."

Lauren was about to say something when the passengers climbed out. There were the C-Bucs and Anders, but there were also two other people that Lauren was positive she had never seen before. The one was a man wearing what looked like a leather suit. He was tall, with broad shoulders and chiseled cheekbones and a pale, haunted look about him. The other was a blonde woman who looked about ten years older than them, if that. Both of them were armed. The man looked impressed by the camp; the woman didn't.

"Hey!" Anders yelled, raising his arm up. "Let's get these weapons unloaded! Let's go!"

"Who are they?" Lauren asked, indicating the strangers.

"They look military," Blaine said.

"No, they can't be. Cylons keep hitting the military bases," Sean argued.

"I lived on Sagittaron under a military occupation for ten years," Blaine shot back. "Trust me. They're military." The two of them were deep in conversation with Anders now.

"Probably been on the run," Anthony said with a shrug as they went to help unload the truck. "They could have found meds and food, just like the Resistance did."

"Gods," Blaine said, still watching them. "Can you imagine what it must have been like to be alone for the past few months? With nobody else?"

Lauren looked at Anthony, who shrugged, and Sean, who rolled his eyes. Blaine didn't notice. He was watching the newcomers, admiration clear on his face. Lauren just wondered how the hell Anders knew for sure these weren't Cylons.

Her questions got answered at dinner. The remaining members of the Resistance were gathered in the cafeteria when Anders came in, the two newcomers at his side. "Settle down," he shouted, climbing up on a chair. "As you can all see, we've got some new faces. Trust me, me and the C-Bucs checked them out, and they are not Cylons. Cylons might be cruel, but they don't remind you about called-back foul breaks in a Pyramid game." Anders grinned, and a little bit of tense laughter rippled through the crowd.

"This is Karl Agathon and Kara Thrace. They've been on the run from the Cylons almost as long as we have. And I'm sure that you all see these fancy Colonial Fleet uniforms they're wearing. Well, these guys are the real deal. So, as long as they stay with us, they've offered to help us out with our tactics."

A buzz of conversation greeted his words, and Anders jumped down and clapped Agathon on the back with a grin. Lauren looked back at the rest of her table. "What does he mean, as long as they stay with us?" she asked. "Where else would they go?"

"I'm pretty sure that's a polite way to say if they don't croak," Sean said, and the other two nodded. Of course. It was stupid that she hadn't thought of that herself. Lauren pushed her glasses back up her nose and sighed. She couldn't afford to get her head muddled by anything like this right now. She took one last look at Agathon and Thrace, told herself it wouldn't be enough to save any of them, and turned back to her dinner without another thought.

***

"Shannon. Can I talk to you?"

Shannon looked up to see Anders standing over her. "Sure, boss," she said. "What's up?"

"I need you in a strategy meeting. With Thrace and Agathon and a few others."

Mystified, Shannon stood up and followed him. This was either really, really good, or really, really bad.

Thrace had a map spread out on a table, and she and Agathon were studying it when they walked in. The C-Bucs were there as well, and a few others. All older. All capable of keeping their mouths shut.

"Our objective," Thrace said, "is this emergency airstrip up at Gup's Point."

"What about something closer to home?" Anders asked.

Thrace looked at Agathon. "Might not be a bad thought," he said. "You said the Cylon jump drive had a greater range than ours do."

"Yeah, that's a good point." Thrace began shifting maps.

"Excuse me," Shannon spoke up, "but what exactly are we doing? Because this doesn't sound like we're just shoving explosives up the Cylons' asses."

Anders nodded. "It is more than that. We're trying to steal a ship."

"A ship. Why? Where are we flying?" Shannon looked from Anders to Agathon to Thrace. "What's going on?"

"This is confidential," Anders told her. "Not one word."

"Of course."

Anders took a deep breath. "Thrace here," he said, "wasn't on Caprica when the Cylons attacked. She hasn't been on Caprica this entire time."

"So… she's from Gemenon?" Shannon asked, not comprehending.

"No. There's a Fleet. A Fleet of ships that escaped the Cylon attack, with over forty thousand people." Shannon's mouth hung open as she stared at Anders. "I know, right?" he said. "It's a lot to believe. I'm not sure I believe it myself. But Kara thinks she can get back to them, and if she can, she can mount a rescue mission to get the rest of us off Caprica and up there."

"You're kidding." Shannon wished she could get her mouth to close properly. "You're frakking kidding me."

"Trust me, I'm not kidding," Thrace said. "And I'm getting back there."

"You can see why we don't want word about it spreading around," Anders said.

"Why not?" Shannon asked. "Would sure raise morale around here."

"For a while. And when they don't come back for us, it would plummet. We've already got Armageddon- we don't need a second blow to go along with it."

Thrace didn't look like she liked that assessment. Wounded pride- Shannon had seen that look enough to recognize it easily on any face. But Anders had a point. Too much could go wrong, and if her guys knew that that Fleet was there and it didn't come back for them…. "Yeah," she said out loud. "I see your point. Okay, so we keep our mouths shut. So why not get a couple of raiders to get everyone back there?"

"We can't all fit on two raiders," Thrace explained. "Heavy raiders carry about eight Cylons at the most. I'm not sure what the weight limits are, but two of them will only get sixteen of us there, and even if we double that, that's only thirty- two."

"We're not leaving anyone behind," Jean added in. "And deciding who would get to go… it could be a disaster."

"I've gotten to know this group pretty well," Anders continued, "and there aren't any pilots. There's one woman who took some lessons on some small planes, but I don't think she'd be able to look at a spacecraft she's never seen and be able to pilot it in seconds."

"Got it," Shannon said. "So we get you two," she pointed at Thrace and Agathon, "back to this Fleet, and then we hold until you come for us?"

"That's the plan," Agathon said.

"Well, I say let's get our Prince Charmings here a white horse and get ready to be rescued," Shannon said. It was a long shot, but it was also a tiny light at the end of a very long tunnel. She pulled the map towards her. "Let's plan this."

***

When she got back to the classroom where she and her guys slept, they weren't asleep. They were all sitting on the floor, playing Triad and drinking a bottle of rum. If the wrestling competition had gone as it should have, she'd have their asses for the drinking part, but as it stood, she didn't say a word. They'd all figured out their tolerances by now.

"Come join us, Coach," Sean called when she walked in. "We'll deal you in next hand."

"All right." She sat down on the floor with them. After all, it wasn't like she was their teacher anymore. And they weren't children.

The thought hit her harder and harder as the kids played and talked. Four months ago, these kids were talking about the wrestling competitions, glee clubs, boyfriends and girlfriends, and what they were going to do with their lives. They were listening to music and going to dances and squabbling about stupid shit and worried about their popularity. Now, they were comparing the best method to take down a Centurion and swapping war stories- literal war stories. They'd been shot at, they'd shot- hell, they'd killed those people-like toasters. They'd seen people killed and they'd killed, and they were a handful of people left alive in existence.

That last thought made her want to tell them about the Fleet. These were kids- they deserved hope. But she kept her mouth shut and played the game, even as she wondered why these kids had to be stuck here, instead of on that Fleet somewhere in the stars.

The next day, when they tried to take a ship and Kara Thrace was captured, Shannon was insanely grateful that she'd never said anything about the Fleet. Because without Thrace they weren't getting there, and ruined hope was worse than no hope at all.

***

She's not dead, Anders insisted, and his evidence was the most disturbing thing Shannon had ever seen. A humanoid Cylon, standing right there in their camp, a bandage on her shoulder and a determined look on her face.

We can trust her, Agathon said, but Shannon didn't. She'd seen those women marching down the streets, she'd seen them firing at her kids, she'd seen them with guns and bombs and ready to kill. This one wasn't any different- she'd helped kill off billions and billions of people. But Anders and Agathon believed her, so Shannon kept her mouth shut. She was getting awfully good at that.

At least this time, they were right. Sharon helped them rescue Kara from where the Cylons were holding her, and got her, Helo, and herself into the air in a Cylon heavy raider. She might not be completely trustworthy- Shannon wondered if she'd really take them to that Fleet across space- but she at least came through on that much.

Kara Thrace escaped Caprica, and it was reasonable to assume she made it back to her Fleet. But the days ticked by with no signs of rescue, with only death and blood and explosions, and Shannon wished Anders had never told her where Kara was going.

***

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly…" Blaine put the pot aside and reached for the next one. Singing those words hurt, but the menial task of doing dishes soothed him enough to face it. He sang the song the whole way through, Kurt's face in front of him the entire time. Even after six months, Kurt's face was as vivid as ever in Blaine's mind.

"That's pretty," Anders said from the door.

Blaine turned around. "I didn't know anyone else was in the kitchen."

"Yeah, well." Anders looked at the pile of dishes. "You need some help?"

Blaine shrugged. "I've got it under control. But if you're just looking for something to do…."

Anders picked up a towel. "How about I dry?"

"Sounds good."

"I don't suppose you'd teach me that song you were singing," Anders asked as they turned to the pile of dishes.

Blaine grinned and sang it through again for him. After the first time, Anders started joining in. His voice was nice. It wasn't trained at all, and his breath control and his phrasing weren't all that great, but he had a nice rough tone that Blaine really liked. By the time the dishes were done, Anders had the song down by heart.

"I take it that one's kind of special to you," Anders said as they finished.

"Why do you say that?" Blaine asked, keeping his attention focused on the sink he was now scouring.

"I can just tell. You sing with a lot of emotion. It's like hearing you sing 'Run to the Water' again. The feeling in it just knocks me over."

"Oh. Yeah." Thinking about 'Run to the Water' made him flustered, and a little proud. He scrubbed harder. "Anyway, 'Blackbird' was the song that made me realize I was in love with my boyfriend back on Gemenon." He lifted the pot to the other side of the sink and rinsed it. "Did you have someone? Before the attacks, I mean?"

"There's always someone," Anders said, laughing a little. "But not like that, no. I try not to think about the one who got away."

"Yeah. Although it's getting a little easier."

"Really?" Anders looked skeptical. "Because when I hear those songs you're singing, I'm not so sure I believe it."

"Okay, it's not," Blaine had to admit. "Not really. I just keep waiting. I feel like he's waiting." He shrugged. "I still can't decide if I believe that or not, but I guess on some level I do. How much longer can it last?"

"We've still got meds for a few more months," Anders said. "After that, well, we could get up above the radiation. Hit the hills."

"That wasn't really what I meant," Blaine said with a sigh.

"I know. But it's the only answer I've got for you, kid." Anders clapped him on the shoulder. "You need any more help in here?"

"No. I'm good."

Anders must have finally cottoned on to the fact Blaine was in here alone voluntarily, because he nodded and retreated out the door. "See you later," he said, and walked away humming "Blackbird." Blaine watched him go, and then leaned forward and buried his head in his arms on the counter. Anders had a B-plan for when their anti-radiation meds ran out. That thought- that this would just go on and on and on- made him give in and start crying.

***

When the Resistance had rescued Kara Thrace, they'd rescued her from some weird farm thing, where Cylons were trying to use humans as breeding stock for making babies. Anders had told them about it right after, determined to blow every last farm on Caprica to smithereens. In theory, Lauren had fully agreed with him. Reality, however, was a different story. Blowing up farms meant finding farms, which meant traveling too far away from Delphi Union to be practical. At least with the whole group.

"You know what we could do," Jean said glumly, tossing a Pyramid ball to Lauren. "We could just wait. We're down to fifty-three right now. At some point, we're going to be down to a good number to travel with. When that happens, we just leave the camp and go blow shit up."

"I could be down with that," Lauren agreed, tossing the Pyramid ball back. She knew better than to play Jean- Jean would kick her ass in a way Lauren didn't appreciate- but a friendly game of catch killed time. "How would we find them?"

"Does it really matter?" Jean asked. "We just keep blowing shit up. As long as we're blowing up toasters, what's the problem?"

"Good point. Can't argue with that."

"So. Are you getting it on with Anthony?" Jean asked her.

Lauren snorted. "No. Are you with Anders?"

"Water way under the bridge. Besides, he's still hung up on that Kara." Jean considered her ball. "Anthony's getting into you, though."

"Yeah. Because I'm pretty literally the last woman in the world. Or close to it." Lauren was skeptical. "Not that he wouldn't be lucky to get his hands on this. But it loses appeal when everyone else is dead."

Jean disagreed. "End of the world apocalypse sex is really pretty hot. Kind of crazy, and you can do all sorts of shit you wouldn't usually do."

"But every time we think it's the end, we wake up the next morning. I'd still have to deal with him. And I don't need some puppy dog school boy crush following me around, unless he's toting the gun to back me up."

"He is. You guys work well together." Jean cocked her head. "Was there someone back on Gemenon?"

"There was, but that's not the issue," Lauren said, firmly telling herself that she wasn't lying at all. "It's all about the here and now."

"Which is why you should totally do it." Jean looked at the sky. "Come on. It's getting late and we should get dinner before they clean up."

Lauren tossed the ball back to her, not commenting. The idea of sleeping with Anthony just did absolutely nothing for her, no matter how hot he was, but she really couldn't explain exactly why. She shrugged, falling into step beside Jean. All that mattered these days was the damage they could do before they got taken out. And Lauren was determined to be around when it came time to travel around and blow shit up. It sounded like there was finally something worth living for.

***

"Ten miles to go," the driver called from the front of the truck. "Almost there." The truck thudded over another pothole. Blaine leaned over and steadied the crate in front of him. The crate had glass bottles of pickled vegetables in it, and the last thing they needed was for them to shatter. It was a small group this time- just six of them. The houses they'd hit had been in an area that the Cylons weren't paying much attention to. On the surface, it was an easy job- go in, bring back anything that could be useful. Food, clothing, medicines, weapons, batteries- anything. Blaine had even grabbed a few board games for something new to do. But there were still bodies of the families in there. It was bad enough seeing those decaying corpses each time, but the worst part was when Sean looked at one, shrugged, and said, "Same old, same old," before he got on with his work. Blaine was not only horrified that things had gotten to the point that anyone would feel that way, but horrified to find there was a part of him that agreed with Sean.

He was thinking about that when the explosion hit, and the truck flew up into the air.

He closed his eyes and threw his arms up over his face out of sheer instinct, and then found himself falling as the truck landed on its side. The box of bottles he'd been steadying crashed before he did, the glass shattering into tiny crystal shards that cut into his skin. He fell against the far side of the truck, the impact winding him. Outside the truck, he could hear the sound of Centurions firing.

"Get out!" someone shouted. "Get out of the truck before it blows!"

He remembered grabbing his gun and jumping out of the truck. He remembered ducking behind a tree and firing. He remembered Sean running and trying to cover him, and then Sean being hit, his back arching before he fell to the ground. He remembered darting out, ready to run to pull Sean back, to get him behind some sort of cover. He remembered the sound of a huge explosion, shaking the ground and hitting his left ear with a huge force. And then he remembered nothing more.

***

When he woke up, it was silent. His vision was blurry, and the smell of dirt, blood, and fire was strong. Blaine lay still for a long moment, taking inventory. Everything hurt, but he could also move everything. He groaned and rolled to sitting. No injuries that were too bad- no gun shots.

The sun was low in the sky now. He rubbed his eyes and looked around the silent forest, and then immediately wished he hadn't. Ten feet away from him, Sean was lying on the ground, eyes open. That was bad enough, but just a little further away was the top half of the driver. Blaine took one look at that half-corpse and had to lean over to throw up. The bile was bitter and acidic, and the heaves hurt his ribs.

Dead. They were all dead. The Cylons had just left them all, and they must have assumed he was dead, too. Blaine was pretty sure the mechanical ones didn't know how to check for a pulse. He blinked, knowing that he should cry, but his eyes were dry and he felt nothing. Defense mechanism, some part of him said, and he didn't really care.

He looked around at his dead comrades one more time and then hauled himself to his feet. As he did, a shaft of pain shot up his leg and his knee buckled. Shit. He struggled, and then managed to catch his balance and investigate the leg. It wasn't bleeding, and he could almost put weight on it. There were small favors after all.

He tried to orient himself. Right before the explosion had hit, the truck driver said that they were ten miles from the base. Ten miles wasn't bad in itself, but right now the biggest danger was how low the sun was in the sky. It was late. The problem wasn't the darkness or the Cylons or dehydration or food. The problem was that he needed to be back in time for his radiation shot.

Over the past nine months, Blaine had gotten used to looting places with corpses. Now, as he hunted through the overturned truck for supplies, he discovered how much worse it was when he actually knew the corpses. The woman who had been sitting in the passenger seat was still there, glass from the windshield embedded in her face. Blaine couldn't look. He found a few canteens of water, some food, a flashlight and batteries, and a first aid kit. No radiation meds, though. He dug through the supplies and found a bottle of painkillers. It wasn't much, but it was something. He hastily took two, and then wormed his way out of the truck.

He found a long branch to use as walking stick and a pack to put his supplies in, and threw his gun over his shoulder. On a bad leg ten miles was a long way, and he had to get started now.

***

"Any luck?" Anthony asked anxiously as Lauren hopped off the truck.

"Nothing. We didn't make it all the way to where they were going, so maybe they're further out. But we're not going to find them in the dark," Lauren said, pushing her hair back with a sigh. "It's not looking good."

"We're going to search more tomorrow, right?" Anthony peered out into the darkness in the vague direction of where the rescue party had come back from.

Lauren shrugged. "Guess so," she said. She headed towards the school.

"Lauren?" Anthony called after her. "Are you okay?"

She stopped and shrugged. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Sean and Blaine were on that truck."

"I know."

"So… are you okay?"

Lauren turned back towards the school. "I'm fine. I'm going to go get a shower."

"Lauren!" Anthony called, but she ignored him. She'd said all she needed to say on the subject, and there was no need to discuss it any further.

***

None of this looked familiar. As the sun came up, Blaine was sure of it. He'd made a wrong turn somewhere, and he had no idea where he was. His leg was throbbing and he was sweaty and dirty. His stomach was churning, too, and even though he knew on a rational level that it was pain and hunger and fear, he couldn't help wondering when the radiation poisoning would start.

He should be terrified. A few months ago, he would have been, to the point where he would have been immobilized. Blaine grit his teeth and gripped his stick harder, resolute. Courage is about being afraid, and then going ahead and doing what you need to do anyway. Coach Beiste's words ran like a mantra in his head, and he clung to them. He could do this. No matter what else he was feeling, he knew that. He could do this.

He turned around and began limping the other way.

***

They found the truck. They'd missed it the night before because the explosion had taken it off the road. Lauren stared at it, frowning. The truck wasn't too badly damaged, aside from the windshield being blown out and the side being severely dented. She wondered if it was still driveable. It would be a shame to lose one of the trucks.

"Found another one!" she heard Coach yell. "Looks like Gravens."

The others ran over, but Lauren just circled the truck and climbed up inside. The contents of the truck were a mess. That was five bodies now, she thought as she looked at the supplies. Five out of six.

"Any sign of Anderson?" she heard Anders ask. No one answered.

A crate caught Lauren's eye, and she bent over, looking at it more closely. It was turned right-side up, and it looked like it had been opened deliberately. At closer inspection, she could see that the contents were rather orderly. She looked out of the truck.

"I think Blaine's still alive," she called out. "Or he was."

"He either escaped or they took him," Anders agreed. The same thought that occurred to Lauren occurred to him.

"Hope it's the first," Lauren said, thinking of the farms and shuddering.

"No kidding. Come on. Let's go find him."

***

The sun was high in the sky the first time Blaine vomited. It wasn't bad, he told himself. Just like being sick. Just like having a virus. He could still go on. It wasn't bad in itself, but what it meant was definitely bad. Radiation poisoning.

The road was starting to look familiar. He'd found the spot where he was pretty sure he missed a turn several hours ago, and now he was recognizing landmarks. That big rock, that house set back from the street, that broken sign. He was going the right way- all he had to do was keep going.

His leg still hurt and slowed him down considerably, but it wasn't getting worse. He tried to take heart from that, to look at the bright side of things. But as the steps wore on and he had to stop to vomit again, he couldn't help but think that he might not get back to the Resistance at all.

***

It was dark, and Jean had the high beams on. They drove slowly, just in case. "There!" Anders leaned over and pointed, causing Jean to swerve. "Did you see that? Stop the truck!" Jean put the brakes on, and Anders jumped out before she'd even come to a full stop. Lauren leaned forward and saw Anders hovering over someone.

"Open up the back!" Anders ordered, and someone obeyed. Everyone moved aside and Anders gently laid Blaine down. He looked terrible in the light of the lantern, Lauren thought, pale and clammy, his curls damp and his eyes unfocused. "Relax," Anders said, squeezing Blaine's hand. He jumped up into the truck and sat down on the floor next to him. "We're going to get you home, okay? Lauren? Tell Jean to go."

Lauren leaned forward and relayed the message, and the truck lurched back into motion. She knew she should be relieved they'd found Blaine, but as she looked at him, she was pretty sure that there wasn't much of a reason to be happy.

***

"Well," Brother Cavil said, giving the impression of throwing his hands up in the air, "the sickness should pass in a few days. But if I'm reading this right, then there comes a latent period where it all looks okay before it all goes to hell. Without treatment, he's probably got somewhere between two and six weeks."

Two to six weeks. Shannon tried to say something, thought better of it, and turned around and punched a shelf. Books fell to the floor, landing with a vaguely satisfying thud. "Two to six weeks? That's not right."

"That's what it says here," Brother Cavil said.

They were sitting in the school library, several candles and a battery-powered lantern giving some light. Blaine was in the nurse's office, sleeping. It had turned Shannon's heart over when they'd brought him back, to see how bad he looked. It was bad enough she'd lost one of her guys today, knowing that Sean died. Losing another wasn't on. "But we can do something about it, right?" she asked. "You said without treatment. What's the treatment?"

"'Antibiotics, blood products, colony stimulating factors, and stem cell transplants,'" Cavil read. "We can do antibiotics, but got me as to the rest. This is a high school library- I don't know that we'll find much else. Not to mention, even if we found guidelines for the precise treatment, I'm not sure we've got anything but the antibiotics."

"Frak," Shannon said, but it wasn't enough. "Frak! What the hell are we supposed to do? Just sit here and watch him die?"

Cavil shrugged. "Might be all we can do. Or he might not die. He might be able to recover on his own. We don't know exactly how much radiation he took in."

"That's not good enough."

"Well, you're free to make a petition to the Gods."

"Like they're listening," Shannon said with an angry snort.

"Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but this is what's going to happen to all of us once those radiation meds run out if we don't find any more. It's not going to be pretty."

"Frak you," Shannon said and stormed out of the library.

He was right. She knew that. But that didn't mean she had to like it.

She went down to the nurse's office, and to her mild surprise, Lauren was sitting by Blaine's bed, watching him sleep. "How is he?" Shannon asked.

Lauren shrugged. "About the same. It's pretty miserable."

"So I hear. Cavil says it should ease up in a day or two, though. Go latent."

Lauren snorted. "Right."

Shannon pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. "You seen Anthony? Is he all right?"

"He's back in the room. I think he needed to be alone. Sean," Lauren added in explanation.

"Yeah, well, Sean. That's kind of what I was asking about. You all right?"

Lauren shrugged again. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"Because he's dead."

"I know. Look, I know it seems like I don't care. But here's how I see it: if I start caring, then I've got to care about everything else that's happened, and if I do that, I'll fall apart. And right now, there's no time to fall apart. You fall apart and you're dead. So if it seems like I don't give a shit, that's because there's nothing left to give a shit about." She meant it, too. Shannon could see that. Lauren was in here because of duty, not because she felt some urge to comfort Blaine or look out for him. She was in here because that was what she needed to do.

Shannon stared at the girl sitting across from her for a long moment. Lauren had always been a tough kid, and Shannon had really respected her for it. With Blaine breaking down at the beginning and the other kids to watch out for, Shannon had been grateful that Lauren was so tough. Now, though, she wondered if she hadn't let Lauren Zizes down worse than any of the others.

***

When Blaine woke up, Brother Cavil was sitting over him, head bowed.

"Are you praying?" he tried to ask, but his throat was dry and scratchy. The words came out as a croak.

Cavil didn't move at first, then raised his head and handed Blaine a glass of water. "Here you go."

Blaine drank. The water was cool on his throat. "Thanks," he managed to say when he was done. "How bad?"

"We don't know. But you should feel better in a few days, when the worst of the initial poisoning has passed."

Blaine wanted to say something but his throat protested and he settled for smiling. Cavil looked disturbed.

"You've had a lot of visitors," he said finally. "Pretty much everyone's found their way in here, Anders at least four times. A lot of people want to see you recover."

Warmth flooded Blaine at that news. "Thank you," he managed again.

Cavil frowned. "Don't talk," he ordered. He picked up the blanket and pulled it higher around Blaine's shoulders. "You're not out of the woods yet."

Cavil had said don't talk, but Blaine couldn't resist one question. "Pray with me?"

Their eyes met for a long moment, and Blaine actually thought that Cavil might refuse. But then Cavil nodded and bowed his head, taking Blaine's hand in his. "Lords of Kobol, hear our prayer…"

Blaine let the litany of the prayer wash over him, and the unexpected gratitude for being given just a little more time flood his soul.

***

The morning was one of the brightest and clearest they'd had yet. If there were birds left alive, they would be singing. Shannon, Anthony, and Lauren were at the shooting range just outside the school fence, practicing. Blaine sat in the sunshine, a blanket around his shoulders. The worst of the radiation sickness had passed, but he was still sick and weak.

"Nice one, Lauren," Anthony said, as Lauren took out four of the five bottles.

"Thanks." Lauren tossed the gun down and sat down next to Blaine. "You're up."

Anthony headed down to set up new bottles for his own turn. He had set two of them up when the gunshots rang out and he crumpled to the ground.

"Frak!" Lauren shouted, rolling for her own gun. Shannon jerked around and saw three Centurions emerging from the forest. She took aim and fired right at the head of the one, and the sparks flew.

"Run!" she yelled at Blaine. "Get back to the school and tell them the Cylons are coming!" Blaine stumbled to his feet and took off, dropping his blanket as he ran. She turned back to face the Centurions. "Wish we had something bigger," she shouted, firing her gun again.

"Is there a reason we're not running, too?" Lauren asked. "It looks like there's more coming."

A whining sound from above their heads answered that question right away. "Get down!" Shannon shouted, pulling Lauren to the ground. They covered their heads as an explosion shook the forest floor. Debris rained down on them. Another explosion followed the first, and then the rapid sound of gunfire. They could hear screaming coming from the school.

"Get up!" Jean was running towards them. "Get up and run! They're about to bomb the school!"

Shannon and Lauren exchanged glances, and did exactly as Jean said. Shannon was vaguely aware that they were leaving Anthony's body, but they'd left bodies before. She clung to her gun and ran like hell, praying that others would follow.

"Hurry!" Jean yelled, catching up.

"Where the hell are we running to?" Shannon demanded.

"Just away!" Jean looked back over her shoulder. "FRAK!"

The force of the explosion sent all three of them flying. The dirt scraped Shannon's cheek as she landed on the ground. She tried to get to her feet, but the force of the air rushing over her wouldn't let her. Finally, the pressure let up and she was able to scoot over to Lauren.

"You okay?"

Lauren's face was dirty and there was a nasty cut on her forehead, but her eyes were clear. "I'm ready. Where are we going?"

"Got me. Jean?"

"Anders said to regroup two klicks south. He said spreading out might be the best thing."

"But what about the others? We sent Blaine back-"

"If he's alive, he'll be moving," Jean said. "Let's go."

They made their way through the forest. Shannon felt like they should be stealthy- after all, they were on the run- but neither she nor Lauren were hunters, and Jean managed to step on pretty much every twig and pinecone in her path. Not that Shannon blamed her. After being safe at the high school for the past nine months, the attack had shaken her badly. Not to mention that she couldn't understand why the Cylons wouldn't be hunting them down and taking them out, or just nuking the whole area. If they'd decided to stomp out the Resistance and bomb the school, then this was a mission of extinction. No one was going to survive.

As they walked, they came across other survivors. By the time they reached the rendezvous point, there were eighteen others there. Shannon sat down on a big rock gratefully, taking a bottle of water that someone handed her. She had no idea what was going to happen next.

Little by little, people trickled in, and by the end, they had twenty-seven. She smiled when she saw Anders, but that relief wasn't anything compared to when Brother Cavil joined them with Blaine. Blaine had to be supported and his face was downright gray, but he was at least still alive. Shannon met Cavil's eyes, and he gestured with his head for the two of them to step away.

"Everything all right?" Shannon asked.

"He's gonna need help," Cavil said. "The latent period picked a really bad time to end, and I'm not sure he's going to make it."

"He's going to make it wherever we're going if I have to carry him myself," Shannon informed him. "We'll sort it out when we get there." Wherever there was- she had no frakking idea. Shannon strode back to where Blaine was sitting with Lauren, who had the sense to be give him some water. She had two kids left now, and she had to believe she wasn't going to let anything happen to them.

***

They walked the whole morning. Lauren was used to walking at this point, but she was tired and her head was killing her, and when they saw ships streaking across the sky, she couldn't even find it in her to be afraid. Just exhausted. If the Cylons were going to wipe them all out, couldn't they at least get their elbows out of their asses and do it right? This getting left behind thing was getting insulting, to say the least.

"Shit! Everyone get down!" Anders gestured to them all.

Again? Lauren hit the ground with a weary sigh. But the last thing she expected was someone calling out.

"You got a Samuel T. Anders there?"

The voice was familiar, but she couldn't place where she'd heard it before. It wasn't one of the humanoid Cylons- she'd know those voices anywhere. It came to her when someone shouted back, "Is there a Kara Thrace there?" The first voice had been Karl Agathon.

"If there is, you tell her she took her good, sweet time getting here," Anders added.

Lauren looked over at Coach. "Kara Thrace? The crazy military chick who flew off?"

Coach shrugged. "Maybe she found someplace safe."

Anders was charging down the hill and then hugging Thrace, and everyone began standing up. Thrace had brought a hell of a lot of people with her, including people in flight gear and… frak, yes. Marines.

"No way," Coach said. "She really came back."

There was something about her voice… Lauren looked at her sharply. "Came back from where?"

"Incoming!" someone yelled, and yet again, they were running forward and diving for cover. There was a broke stone wall of a destroyed house that at least gave them something to hide behind, and this time there were Marines all around them. Lauren found herself shoulder to shoulder with a Marine, firing at the Centurions. The Marine didn't comment, but she saw the glint of approval in his eyes. The Marines and Thrace and Agathon were shouting back and forth about Raptors and jammed signals, but all Lauren could focus on was the Centurions firing at them.

On her other side, Blaine was propped up against the wall, a gun in his hands. He looked like shit and his eyes were so glassy that Lauren was sure he couldn't be hitting anything he was firing at, but he was still fighting. She had to respect that.

Then, as suddenly as the attack had begun, it stopped. The forest was silent, except for the breathing of the humans and the clanking of Centurions. No gunshots. No explosions.

Anders was talking anxiously with Thrace and Agathon, and the toaster that had been with them before. Lauren tried to listen, but Blaine was vomiting next to her. He was trying to do it quietly, but it sounded wretched. She rubbed his back, looking around at the faces of the Marines who had come.

They had to have been holed up on some military base, she thought as she looked at them. It was certainly possible. They certainly looked like they'd been through the wringer. But her eyes kept coming back to one face, a Marine who was watching her. His brows were furrowed together, and he looked so much like Puck that she couldn't keep her eyes off him.

"Where are you guys coming from?" she asked the Marine next to her.

"We're from the Fleet." He handed her a canteen of water. She took a swig from and then passed to Blaine.

"The Fleet?"

"Yeah." He saw her confusion. "Lieutenant Thrace told us you guys were still back here. Hey- is he okay?"

Lauren glanced over at Blaine. He was still conscious, at any rate. "Radiation poisoning," she explained to the Marine. She noticed a patch on his uniform that read 'Nowart'. "He needs medical help."

"When we get him back up there, we'll get him to the doctor," Nowart promised. He looked over his shoulder. "They're still not firing."

Because he'd just been firing at toasters a few minutes before, Lauren decided not to mock him for stating the obvious. Instead, her eyes were drawn back to the Puck look-alike, who was still staring at her. Really, though, he did look like Puck, right down to the-

"Zizes? Is that you?"

"No." That was his voice, and it made her stomach drop all the way down to her toes and her blood turn cold. "No way."

The Marine's eyes widened. "Lauren! You're… holy frakking shit! You're alive?"

She couldn't move, but Puck crawled across the space between them and threw his arms around her neck. She supposed she should wonder if he was a Cylon, but she was pretty sure even a Cylon couldn't pull off this sort of blubbering as he held on to her.

"Hey!" Coach hissed. "Let's keep the gratitude down a bit, will ya? They're still out there!" She opened her mouth to say more, and then realized exactly who had Lauren in a death grip. "Puckerman? Is that you?"

Puck finally pulled away. "Coach?"

"Whoa, let's not do the running across the fields to embrace thing," Coach said, her hand up. But her smile was undeniable. "That's really you?"

"What?" Blaine asked, his voice rough but a smile pulling his lips. "I don't get a big hug hello?"

Puck looked at him and then recoiled. Lauren wished she could believe it was just surprise, but it probably wasn't, not with the way Blaine looked. But all Puck said was, "Oh, man. Kurt is gonna freak when he finds out that you're still alive."

"Kurt?" Blaine struggled to sit up. "Kurt's still alive?"

"All of New Directions is," Puck said eagerly. "They're all up in the Fleet. Well, all except Finn- he's down here with his Raptor and-"

"You're a Marine, Finn's flying a Raptor," Blaine said weakly. "I hesitate to ask this, but what's Kurt doing?"

"Working with Tom Zarek."

Blaine looked at Lauren. "I died," he said seriously. "That is the only possible explanation. I died."

"Or you're hallucinating," Lauren agreed. She kind of wished the damn Cylons would fire on them again. Gunfire wasn't fun, but it was at least straightforward. "Although I'm not so sure we'd be sharing the same hallucinations."

"Kurt's still alive," Blaine repeated, staring hard at Puck. He reached out one hand and touched Puck's arm, probably to assure himself that Puck was real. "You're taking us out of here."

"Yeah, if we can get past these frakkers," Puck said. He glared at the wall that stood between them and the Cylons. "Wonder what the hell is going on?"

Minutes ticked by with nothing happening, and eventually, Lauren made herself a little more comfortable. Nowart had moved, and Puck had taken his place next to her. Having him sit there beside her again was the most surreal experience of her life.

"You look different," Puck said after a half-hour had gone by.

"Yeah?" She hadn't looked in a mirror in ages.

He nodded down at her body. "You've lost a lot."

"Running around shooting toasters all day will do that." She wasn't what she'd call skinny, but what she had was turning to pure muscle. "You look different, too."

"You don't know the half of it," Puck said, thumping his helmet. "I don't have the 'hawk."

"Wow." It was all she could think of to say.

"Yeah." Puck sat down beside her. "Come on. I'm sure you've got a lot to tell me about what the hell you guys have been doing that you survived down here for nine frakking months. Which is amazing, by the way. Should have known the Cylons couldn't stop you."

She glanced over at Thrace, Anders, and Agathon. They were still watching out the little peep hole that they'd found, but nothing was happening any time soon, from the looks of things. Something about the way Thrace and Agathon were sitting made Lauren think they were going to be here for a while. Maybe even enough time to catch up with a dead boyfriend.

Lauren was pretty sure this ranked as one of her top ten most frakked-up days in her life.

***

"They're gone. They just left," Thrace said.

Shannon stared around at the empty forest, unable to believe it. First they had rescuers, then the New Directions had survived the attacks and were in the Fleet, and now the Cylons had just up and disappeared? It was too much hope all at once, and she didn't know what to do with it. They couldn't be gone.

But they were. Brother Cavil raised his hands to the sky. "Thank the Gods! It's a miracle!" he announced, and then took off his hat and bowed his head. "Let us pray."

Shannon didn't bow her head for the prayer, waiting for the other shoe to fall. But no Centurions lurched out at them, and the forest stayed quiet except for them.

"All right," Agathon said as soon as Cavil had finished his prayer. "If they're gonna let us run, let's run. Let's move out, people!"

"This is real, isn't it?" Blaine asked her when she went to help him to his feet. He felt a lot lighter than he had before he'd got caught out in the forest. "We're really getting off this planet?"

"That's what they say, kiddo. Come on."

They walked through the forest, Lauren in front of her talking to Puckerman, Blaine at her side, struggling to keep up. Shannon tried to keep the bitter thought that if this had happened a week ago, they'd still have Sean and Anthony out of her mind. They had this much. She should be grateful. But it was hard, especially when after a klick she gave up and handed her gun off to Lauren and pulled Blaine up on her back piggy-back style. She could feel the heat of fever from his body.

She didn't start really believing this was real until she saw the Raptors, ready and waiting.

"Finn!" Puck yelled when they got close enough, and he wasn't lying. There was Hudson, wearing a leather flight suit. She wouldn't have recognized him if Puck hadn't called out- he didn't look like the kid she remembered in the football jersey. He looked like a warrior now. But his eyes widened as he saw them, and he ran forward.

"Coach? Coach Beiste, are you kidding me?" He waited just long enough for her to slip Blaine off her back and then wrapped her in an exuberant bear hug. Shannon couldn't help laughing.

"Come on," Puck said. "For some reason, the Cylons let us go. So let's go already."

"Right." Finn's eyes were wide when he recognized Lauren, too, but it was the sight of Blaine that really changed his face. He clapped Blaine on the shoulder, squeezing hard, and then jumped into the Raptor and started flipping switches and talking to his co-pilot, and now he was pure Raptor pilot. Shannon guided Blaine in, and Puck and Lauren and several other Marines piled in after. Finn shut the door, and they lifted off the ground. Through the front window, Shannon could see the trees shrinking, and then the blue fading into black.

"Jumping in three, two, one… jump!"

The world lurched, and they were away. Caprica was gone.

The docking bay of the Galactica was as big as a parking garage. Shannon was impressed, but even more, she couldn't believe that they were here. That they were off that damn planet and they were safe. And the number of people milling around… she hadn't realized just how cut off they'd really been- just how alone they'd all really been- until she saw them all.

"Come on," Finn said when the Raptor was shut off and the door was open. He squeezed back into the passenger section and put an arm around Blaine. "You ready?" he asked, gently helping him to his feet. "I told Dee to pass the word that we were coming. Kurt might even be there already." Blaine nodded and tightened his grip around Finn's neck.

People were watching curiously as they emerged from the Raptor. It occurred to Shannon that they must be one hell of a survival story, just like the Fleet was to them. The Fleet. The number of people who must be here was-

The clatter of a clipboard falling to the ground and a high-pitched shriek broke her train of thought. Out of what felt like nowhere she saw Kurt run to Blaine, throwing his arms around his neck. Blaine had to take a step back, but his embrace was no less tight, and both of them were crying as they held on to each other.

A man in a suit and tie picked up the clipboard Kurt had dropped. "Get a picture of that," he said to the woman standing near him, who was holding a camera. "That's gold." The woman obeyed. Shannon stared at him, because who the hell thought of turning a reunion like this into gold? But the man didn't notice her; he was watching the scene unfolding in front of him with hawk-like eyes. Kurt and Blaine were now in the I can't believe you're alive stage of their reunion, with Kurt cupping Blaine's face in his hands and Blaine running fingers through Kurt's hair.

After nine months of survival on Caprica, the bay of Galactica seemed like a foreign world. Shannon watched the medical team running in, immediately loading the injured onto gurneys and speeding them away like it was a scene out of a dream, or a slow montage from a movie. There was a hand on her own elbow then, and someone telling her to come with them to a decontamination shower. She saw Blaine being pulled from Kurt and people erecting huge screens and bringing out hoses.

The water was so cold and hit her with such a force that she couldn't help yelping. It was far from the most pleasant thing she'd ever felt, but it was over fairly quickly. When the water turned off she was left with her clothing sodden and dripping and her shoes feeling like they weighed a ton. Lauren was pushing her sopping hair behind her ears and a pair of medics were helping Blaine onto a gurney. Kurt followed him, clinging to his hand.

"Cylon!"

She whirled as she heard someone say it. "What happened?"

"They brought a Cylon up. The priest." The mechanic moved past her, headed for a tool bench. "Cavil, I think he calls himself. They hauled him to the brig already."

The news nearly knocked Shannon off her feet. Cavil was a Cylon? All she could say was the same thing she'd said the day that Anders had told her about the attacks.

"Frak me."

"Yeah," Anders said, appearing at her elbow. "I feel the same way."

Blaine hurt- everything hurt. His stomach was cramping to a ridiculous extent, his throat felt like burning sandpaper, his muscles were sore and he was shivering with fever. There was a lot of beeping monitors and people sticking him with, but Blaine didn't want anything to do with any of that. He just wanted to lose himself in the two warm hands wrapped around his own, and Kurt's face above him. But the rest of the world insisted he acknowledged it.

"Blaine Anderson?" A pleasant man with wild ash blond hair and wearing blue scrubs under his white coat extended a hand. "I'm Dr. Michael Robert. I specialize in internal medicine, so Dr. Cottle asked me to come over here and take a look at you. This is my assistant, Quinn Fabray."

"Hello, Blaine," Quinn said. She was smiling and her eyes were shining, and Blaine thought she had never looked more beautiful. He wanted to hug her, but she was at her job. It probably wasn't professional or something.

Dr. Robert was examining his chart. "You're Sagittaron?" he asked, his eyebrows raising in surprise.

Blaine nodded, and Kurt spoke up for him. "It's not a problem," he said. "He doesn't have issues with medicine." Blaine squeezed Kurt's hand in silent thanks and nodded.

"Hmm. It's a good thing you don't, because you're going to need a lot of it," Dr. Robert said. His frown deepened. "We'd better get him started on a course of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, and let's get some platelets into him as well. We're going to have to do some bone marrow testing in order to assess the extent of the damage, but given the extent of the exposure and the current symptoms being presented, I think it's best to act immediately."

Quinn was writing rapidly. "Is the granulocyte colony-stimulating factor intravenous or oral?"

"I'll show you in a few minutes." He was still studying the chart. "Kurt? You're Kurt, right?" he asked, looking at Kurt. "Can I talk to you? In private?"

Kurt looked down at Blaine hastily, and Blaine nodded. "All right." He stepped away with Dr. Robert, leaving Blaine with Quinn.

Quinn sat down beside him and took his hand. Her hands were cooler than Kurt's, but right now the coolness felt good against his fevered skin. "How are you feeling?" she asked gently.

"Lousy," Blaine managed to croak. "Really lousy."

"Well, Dr. Robert is a really good doctor," Quinn reassured him. "We'll get you feeling better. I looked up radiation sickness when they launched the rescue mission back to Caprica, and it's very treatable. It might be a rough couple of days, but we'll get you through, okay?" She leaned over and kissed Blaine on the forehead.

"Are you this affectionate with all your patients?" he managed to ask.

"No. Just the ones I thought were dead," Quinn said with a little laugh. "I'll try to put my bedside manner on better next time, but I'm so glad to see you."

Glad to see you, too, Blaine wanted to say, but he was suddenly very, very tired. Quinn saw his eyelids drooping.

"There's a sedative in your IV," she told him. "Get some sleep."

"Kurt…"

"He'll be here as soon as Dr. Robert is done with him, you know that. Go to sleep."

He did.

***

"Well, well, well. I've always thought the Cylons were remarkably incompetent, but this proves it. Either that or you're like a cockroach, and it was going to take a hell of a lot more than a nuclear bomb to take you and those tree trunks you call legs out." Sue Sylvester was standing at the infirmary door, leaning against the edge with her arms crossed.

"I should have known even Cylons couldn't stomp on you," Shannon shot back. "What happened? They took one look at your face and ran away?"

Sue broke first, smiling and stepping forward, and Shannon met her halfway. They embraced. Quickly, and Shannon wasn't under any illusions, but it was the end of the worlds. Miracles had to happen sometime.

And there were more miracles. Coming behind Sue was Will, who Shannon greeted much more enthusiastically, and several of the New Directions kids, including Mike Chang and Sam Evans- two of her guys. As she hugged them, she noticed a guy that she was pretty sure was Kurt's father slipping by, obviously headed in for Blaine and his son. But she forgot that in the warm press of New Directions and her guys, the warm embrace of family.

***

"So how long are they gonna keep you in here?" Puck asked.

"They want me here overnight," Lauren said. She had eight stitches in her head. "Something about a concussion."

"Bummer." Puck sat down on her bed. "I could stay tonight," he offered. "Sergeant Nowart said I could."

"How hard did you have to beg?"

Puck shrugged. "There were tears. So? Want me to stay?"

"No."

"What?" Puck sat up straighter. "Lauren, they said you're not going to be allowed to sleep much tonight. Don't you want some company or something?"

"No." She saw the look on his face and softened. "Look, Puckerman. I'm not making any statement, okay? Just… I didn't even know you guys were up here, and I'm not just talking about New Directions. I'm talking about the entire frakking Fleet. I need a night just to… to get it, you know? This is crazy."

Puck nodded. "All right." He was hurt, and she knew that she should care, but she just didn't feel it. All she saw was a man- definitely not a boy anymore but a man- sitting across from her, looking confused and alone. She patted his hand.

"Come back tomorrow and we'll talk more," she promised. "Just give me some time tonight."

"All right." Puck slid off the bed. He hesitated, and Lauren suspected he was going to kiss her, but fortunately, he thought better of it. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She watched him go, wishing she felt more. But the whole thing- everything, from the fact she was sitting in an infirmary bed on a spaceship to the fact that Puck was alive to the fact that there were over forty thousand people here- all of it felt unreal. Like a movie she was watching instead of a life she was living. She didn't believe that having the whole night to think would even begin to help her process it all, but she'd been wrong before.

She lay back in her bed and closed her eyes.

***

Kurt was lying beside him. His eyes and nose were both red, and Blaine was pretty sure that meant that whatever news Dr. Robert had given him wasn't good, but Kurt refused to talk about it. All he would say was that Blaine would get better. Blaine had a feeling that it wasn't going to happen.

He wanted to. He'd wanted to survive back on Caprica, but now that feeling was intensified to the point of pain. Because Kurt wasn't in Elysium, Kurt was here. If he died, Kurt wasn't waiting for him anymore. If he died, he would be waiting for Kurt instead. He could- he'd wait until the end of time if he had to- but he'd really rather not.

His limbs were heavy and he was ridiculously tired. His throat felt a little better and he'd stopped vomiting, but he felt bloated and he still had no appetite. He still felt dirty and disgusting, even after the decontamination shower and trading his filthy clothes for a hospital gown. That was one way he could be sure Kurt was in love with him, he thought with a touch of amusement. Despite the horrendous infirmary attire he was sporting, Kurt was lying beside him, stroking his hair very, very gently, and singing "Blackbird." Blaine just listened, at peace. He'd never expected to hear Kurt sing again in this world.

"Kurt?"

"Mmm?"

"Can you sing 'Blackbird' for me one more time?"

"I can sing it as many times as you want," Kurt said, kissing Blaine's forehead gently. "I'll sing it on constant repeat if it makes you happy."

"No. That's… that's okay. Just one more time."

"All right." Kurt took a deep breath, but Blaine managed to turn his head and stop him.

"Not now," he said. It took Kurt a bit, but Blaine saw the precise moment that comprehension dawned.

"Oh, no. No, no, no…" Kurt sat up, shaking his head. "You're going to make it through this, Blaine. I know it. I believe in you. You can't die on me. Not again."

"Not planning on it," Blaine said. "Just… in case.

"Blaine-"

"When I thought you were dead, that song made me feel close to you again. It made me feel like you were there with me. I just… if I die, I want…." He couldn't quite say it. Instead, he caught Kurt's hand and tugged him down. Kurt understood and came down for the kiss. It was gentle and tender, nothing like their kisses used to be, but everything that Blaine wanted in a kiss right now. Kurt lingered for a long time, then broke away and snuggled down next to Blaine. "Mind if I stay here tonight?"

"You don't have anywhere to be?"

"The polls opened. The campaign is over." Kurt shrugged. "Besides, Tom said I'd be useless just flitting around listening to the results."

"Flitting?"

"His exact words might have been 'acting like a neurotic head case'," Kurt admitted.

Blaine smiled and nestled closer. He was warm and he was as comfortable as he was going to get. "I love you."

"I love you, too."

***

"Hey Lauren. How are you feeling?"

It was night, technically. The infirmary was quieter, but there was still activity and light. Lauren looked up from the book she was reading to see Quinn standing at her bedside, smiling. Given how many ups and downs they'd always had, Quinn smiling at her was just a weird feeling.

"I'm okay," Lauren said. "Head still hurts."

"That's normal," Quinn said, like she knew it all. "I brought you your medicine." She extended a paper cup of pills. Lauren took it from her and knocked them back, taking them dry.

"Did you want some water?"

Lauren shook her head.

"Okay." Quinn shifted. "Blaine's doing better." She waited for Lauren to ask for more details, but Lauren just stared at her. But instead of picking up the telepathic messages to just go away, Quinn smiled. "He's doing a lot better. I know the symptoms have been brutal, but there really is a good chance he's going to make it now that he's getting medicine."

"Great." Lauren picked up her book.

Quinn cocked her head. "Don't you care? You were down there with him. You must have gotten close." Lauren shrugged, and Quinn frowned. "Well, either way, him surviving would be a gift from the Gods."

"No, it would be result of him getting medicine. That's what medicine is for, to save lives. You should know that, if you're a doctor now."

"I'm not a doctor," Quinn demurred.

"But you're on your way to being one. And you're giving Blaine medicine, not praying for him."

"Actually, I'm doing both."

Lauren rolled her eyes. "Whatever."

Quinn gave one of her little, incredulous laughs that she used when she wanted people to know they were idiots for not agreeing with her. "How can you even think that? If there ever was a miracle, it was that you and Coach Beiste and Blaine survived and got up here."

"A miracle?" Lauren asked incredulously, putting her book down in her lap. "You think this is a frakking miracle?"

"Well, yes," Quinn said. "What else would it be?"

"What else would it be? Let me tell you something, Fabray. Being one of the last hundred people left alive on a nuked out planet is not a miracle. Watching your friends get blown to smithereens is not a miracle. Stepping over decaying bodies while you search for food and going into armories with dead guards and watching toasters walking over it all and seeing mass graves and getting radiation shots each day and funerals for thirty-eight people and no funerals for Sean or Anthony and leaving their bodies to rot on the ground is NOT A MIRACLE!" Her hands clenched hard around the bed rails. "So don't talk to me about frakking miracles, Fabray. Maybe they exist, but Caprica wasn't a miracle. It was hell."

Quinn looked like she was about to cry. "Lauren…."

"Get out of here." Lauren took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. It wasn't working. She felt exposed, "Get out."

"Do you need-"

"I don't need anything! Just leave me alone."

"Quinn." Dr. Robert interrupted them. "It's time to move on to the next patient." He was standing over by Blaine's bedside.

"I'm coming," Quinn said, and then turned back to Lauren. "I don't care what you say. I'm not saying it was easy for you, but I do know that every time I see Kurt, it's a miracle."

"I'm sure Kurt would agree," Lauren said sourly. Quinn glared at her one more time and left to help Dr. Robert. Lauren could hear Dr. Robert giving her instructions about injections and colony whatevers, and when she looked, Dr. Robert handed Quinn a needle. Quinn injected the medicine into the drip bag, and he patted her on the shoulder with something that looked like pride. They pulled the curtain and stepped away, and the infirmary seemed to quiet down a little more.

She missed Caprica. Lauren wouldn't have thought it possible. She'd hated every moment of Caprica, but now it felt weird to be sleeping in a bed instead of a nest of blankets on a classroom floor. She wasn't alone, but Anthony and Sean were dead, and Blaine was in another bed, struggling. Beiste wasn't even in the room- maybe not even on the Galactica. She had no idea where Anders was, and she'd heard people saying that Cavil was a Cylon.

Frakked up was all she'd known for the past nine months, but this was frakking up what she was used to. And that didn't even bring Puckerman into the equation.

Lauren knew they'd wake her up at some point, but right now, sleep was appealing. Not just because her body was exhausted, but because it was an escape. She closed her eyes and let herself drift away.

She did wake up, not because someone was shaking her to make sure she was still alive, but to the sound of the long, flat beep of a monitor. She heard the commotion of doctors running, low urgent voices and somebody crying. Even before she pried her eyes open, she knew what was happening.

Blaine was dead.

***

The funeral was small- only the Resistance, New Directions, Thrace, Agathon, Dr. Robert, and Tom Zarek, of all people. Kurt told Shannon bitterly that Blaine had told him that if he did die he wanted Brother Cavil to do the ceremony, which said a lot about how sick Blaine had been that he hadn't heard. They stood in an airlock for the final rites, administered by a priest that had never met Blaine and didn't know the first thing about him. But then, at least Blaine was getting a funeral. It was more than they'd been able to do for Sean or Anthony.

"Does anyone want to say anything?" the priest asked when he concluded his short service. Everyone looked at Kurt.

Kurt was wearing black and had tears streaming freely down his face. But Shannon wasn't surprised when he stepped forward and took a deep breath. "There's a lot I could say about Blaine," he said. "But Blaine was someone who expressed himself best through performing and through song. So, if I may, I'd like to sing a song for Blaine. He asked…" Kurt's voice broke, and for a moment Shannon thought it was all over, but he pulled himself back together. "Blaine asked for me to sing this song one more time for him, and I know that this is what he meant." He began singing "Blackbird," his voice emotional and resonating in the airlock.

He faltered, a few stanzas in. Shannon had known he would, and wished she could step in to help him. She didn't need to. Anders stepped up beside Kurt, asked permission with a glance, and then added his voice to the song. Bolstered by the show of support, Kurt strengthened his voice, and the two of them sang the song as a duet. Shannon didn't even bother to try to hide the fact she was crying, and neither did anyone else.

When the song was done, Kurt took a step back. His father gripped his hand, and Tom Zarek put a hand on his shoulder. It was good to know that the kid at least had people to keep an eye on him.

"Anyone else?" the priest prompted.

"Yeah," Shannon stepped forward. "I'll take a shot."

All their faces turned to her. "You know," she began, "when you think about it, it's kind of amazing. The worlds have ended and there's only a handful of us left, and we're standing here at this kid's funeral and there are over thirty people here who knew him pretty well. They loved him enough to come to a funeral, even when, from what I hear, there's a lot of other important stuff going on. And that's saying something, not only about the world, but about the kind of person that has this many people coming to his funeral.

"With as much death as we've all seen, it's easy to get used to it. Blaine never did. He was horrified every time he saw a body. I know you're thinking that doesn't make a very good soldier, and yeah, he wasn't one, but it makes a good person. And that's what Blaine was. He was a good person. He held on to his humanity when they were trying to knock it out of him. He might not have ever taken out a all that many Cylons, but shooting isn't the only kind of strength, and I'm proud of him for what he did. I'm proud of all my guys- all my kids. Anthony, Sean, Lauren-" her eyes flicked to her sole survivor, who smiled grimly back at her, "and Blaine. You guys all did what was asked of you, which is more than should ever be asked of anyone, and I couldn't be prouder."

When the funeral was over and the coffin had been ejected out into space, she stood by the airlock, watching the others leave. Kurt left first, swiftly, flanked by his father and Zarek. Others followed their lead, talking in low, respectful voices or staying silent. Mike stopped as he walked by her, taking his arm from Tina's shoulders long enough to hug Shannon. Sam stopped as well, quietly introducing his wife Rya. Finn lingered a little longer with his mother and Rachel, talking to Anders. Quinn had lost her graceful composure and was crying, and Dr. Robert had an awkward arm around her.

"How are you doing?" Will asked Shannon.

Shannon shrugged. "I'm hanging in there. I've been ready for this one, Will. It's been a long time coming."

"That doesn't make it any easier."

"No," Shannon said with a sigh, "it doesn't. It's kind of unbelievable that I just have time to sit down and think about it though, you know? That there's no Cylons on me or anything. I didn't have that yet with the other two."

"So all three are going to hit you at once."

"Yeah." Something trembled inside her. "I'm gonna have to find a good place to hole up and cry for a while."

"Well," Will said, "on the Cybele there's a room with a yellow door. And there are two spare bunks in it, at least until the Fleet finds Earth. If you and Lauren want them, they're yours."

Shannon smiled down at Will and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "I missed you, you know."

"Yeah. I missed you, too." Will hugged her back. "Don't die on me again any time soon, okay? I'm not sure I can handle Sue without you, now that you're back."

"I don't know how you managed this long," Shannon agreed. "Come on. Let's go see this room of yours."

Will grinned and started leading her towards the docking bay. "Welcome home, Shannon."

As they left, she looked over her shoulder and saw Anders, still talking to a few others. He lifted a hand in a silent gesture, and she nodded back. Maybe she should have said more, but this wasn't a goodbye. The fight wasn't over. Only this time, they had more people, more help. This time, they finally had a chance.

Ruined hope was worse than no hope at all. But hope fulfilled… that was a blessing beyond compare. Shannon closed her eyes and smiled. They'd lost a lot of people, but they were here, and that was something.

***

"I've been to a lot of funerals the past nine months," Puck said, "but they haven't felt like that."

Lauren nodded silently, looking down over the landing bay. She and Puck were sitting on the catwalk, legs dangling off the edge and leaning on the railing. It would be so easy to just fall if that railing wasn't there, but Lauren knew if it wasn't, she'd be sitting way back.

"Kurt wasn't looking so good, though," Puck said when Lauren didn't speak.

Lauren shrugged. "That's one way to put it."

"I can't imagine what he's going through." Lauren looked at Puck in surprise, but Puck was staring down at the landing bay. "I mean, he was just… I guess he was coming to terms with Blaine being dead. Then he gets Blaine back, just for a bit, and he dies anyway."

"Would have been kinder if Blaine had died on Caprica," Lauren said.

Puck glared at her. "That's not what I said."

"No. But it's what you meant." She sighed. "And you're right. It would have been. And that's the problem with you and me. Well, one of them."

"What is?"

"I thought you were dead," Lauren said. "And you thought I was. We're still fighting. You're a Marine. One of us is going to die."

Puck didn't answer her right away. Finally, he just said, "Yeah." He turned his gaze back to her. "You were always a badass, you know. Strongest chick I've ever met. But you got even stronger down there. You've changed."

"You, too."

"Don't get me wrong," Puck added hastily. "You're still the hottest girl I know. But…"

"Yeah. 'Frakked up' isn't the right description, but it's the closest I've got," Lauren finished for him when Puck wouldn't say the words. "You live for nine months thinking there are about a hundred survivors left, watching corpses burn and shooting toasters, and it does things to you. You get… harder. Or you break. One or the other."

"Blaine broke, didn't he?"

"Almost."

Puck nodded once and then leaned back on his hands. He'd only gotten better looking in the past nine months. His face had a new leanness to it, but more than that, it had a maturity that hadn't been there the last time Lauren had seen him. Which promptly went away at his next question. "So, down there on Caprica, were you getting laid?"

Lauren snorted. "Hardly. How about you? How many are there up here?" Puck looked guilty, but she nudged him with her shoulder. "Come on, Puckerman. Fess up or I'm just going to assume you lost your dick to the toasters."

"Haha. Not that many, actually. One."

"One?" Lauren arched an eyebrow. "Who?"

Puck had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "The XO's wife."

Lauren burst out laughing. "You're disgusting!" she said when she could speak again. "Seriously, Puckerman. You never will change, will you?"

"You know I'd drop her in a heartbeat," Puck said.

Lauren shook her head. "Don't. At least, not for me. If I want you again, I'll call and you'll come running."

"Yeah." Puck sighed. "Is that how we're leaving it, then?"

"We're not leaving anything," Lauren said. "But yeah. Right now, that's all I can handle. I think that's all you can handle. We ever get someplace safe, get the Cylons off our backs and get past the death-at-any-minute thing, then we'll talk."

"Is that a promise?" Puck asked.

Lauren extended her hand. "Absolutely." Puck took her hand and they shook on it.

She didn't want love right now, and she definitely couldn't handle romance. She wasn't bothered by the thought, either. Right now, there were other things to think about. But it was nice to sit next to Puck again, and it was nice just to listen to his inane chatter about the Marines and the Fleet in general. Even though she didn't want to think it, Lauren couldn't shake the feeling that she had finally come home.