Ghosts of the Past

by cliosmuse

Chapter 6

"So what am I looking at?"

They stood in a field in what had once been New Jersey. Across the water were the ruins of the city. It was late, by the time of this planet – that hour of night that's just barely morning. ("In the real dark night of the soul," wrote an author of Earth's Twentieth Century, "It is always three o'clock in the morning." He wrote about the city in the distance, wrote about the frivolous dreamers who lived there and their frivolous dreams.)

They'd taken the Raptor from the hatch where the others slept, and now its spotlight illuminated its wrecked and burnt-out cousin.

From behind him, she let out a surprised breath. "Lee, you can't expect me to believe you need me to tell you that."

He pushed a hand through long and unkempt hair (its length gave him years). Sighed. "No, I guess I can't, can I?" He gestured to it. "It's your bird. The one I saw explode, right?" He turned his head over his shoulder to search her eyes out. "Will you tell me what happened?"

She shrugged. "You've probably figured it out. Most of it doesn't matter. Just a few things. Just a few things really matter."

"So...." He paused, putting it all together in his head; giving it order. "I saw your Viper explode, and then somehow you were here." Looked for her nod; when he had it, he went on. "Here, where there'd been a holocaust of some kind. Where Sam, and Tigh, and Tory, and Tyrol, and" (voice catching just slightly) "Dee were." Another nod. "And then somehow they were on the Colonies, and you were back in the Fleet, flying beside me." He shook his head. "But the time discrepancy – years."

"Doesn't matter, Lee. That's not what matters."

"You – you saw them here. Spent time with them here."

"That's not what matters, either."

He turned around then, hands on his hips, frustration on his face (eyes ringed by dark circles; he hadn't slept, not really, since two nights ago, when, sated and happy, he'd held her in his arms). "Then what does matter, Kara?"

There was worry in her eyes. She nodded at the bird. "It's not just my Viper, Lee."

He tilted his head, a question on his face.

"There are bones, too."

He swallowed. "But –" A beat. A breath. "But they saw you. You saw them. You spent time with them." Another pause, and his face was serious and searching. "If you – if there had been a crash, how could that be?"

She bit her lip, swiped a stray tear from her cheek. "I don't remember everything yet, but I remember that. There wasn't a crash. I came back here, later." A long pause, then, and he wasn't sure she'd finish. But she did. "Lee, I shot myself. With the service weapon under my seat."

He closed his eyes, and the question he asked surprised her, made her catch her breath. He didn't express shock or disgust or fear. He seemed sad. "Why?"

She shrugged – realized he wasn't watching – said: "I didn't have anything to lose."

Opening his eyes, he took two long strides toward her, and then they were just inches apart (closer than they'd been since the airlock, when he'd pulled her to him, tight, said he couldn't lose her, said – it will be over before you know it). He lifted a hand; it hovered beside her cheek so that she could just barely, almost feel it. Whispering: "Is that how you felt on Galactica? When –" Couldn't finish.

She shook her head; her eyes were somewhere else, searching herself; her few tears had dried. "No. No, it was entirely different. That time I had too much to lose. That was about.... About learning to let go." A deep breath, and as much to herself as to him: "Because he was right. When you finally face it, it's beautiful. Become who you really are." She held out her arms to her sides, to the vast emptiness of the black world around them. "Leoben told me this was the space between life and death. I'm not sure why." She let out a nervous laugh. "So. Not often you meet a girl who's killed herself twice, right? You should consider yourself lucky, Adama."

His eyes didn't waver from hers; he followed her little steps back inch for inch. His voice was low: "I think it's safe to say I consider myself lucky." Blood pounded in his ears.

And then she wasn't backing away anymore, but leaning into him, clinging to him, her arms wrapped behind his, her fists clutching the fabric around his shoulders, her words spoken into his shoulder: "But I need you to tell me what it means to you."

Running a hand lightly over her back, he whispered in her ear: "I'm always having to prove myself to you, Kara. Have you ever noticed you never have to prove anything to me? Angel, ghost, devil, I don't care. It doesn't matter. You're Kara. Just like you said."

"I guess I just don't understand why."

"Because of what I keep telling you. I love you. And I meant what I said yesterday." (Had it really just been yesterday?) "This is my destiny, Kara. To be here with you. Until the end."

He felt her shift and imagined the little smile she pressed into his shoulder. A smile which became, in turn, a little laugh (the kind of Kara laugh he hadn't heard since – since before she died, at least). When she spoke, her voice was still low, but there was a different quality to it. "Lee? Listen, Lee. This is important. I don't feel any more pain. For the first time in my life, I don't feel any pain."

"Kara? I'm glad."

They stood like that until just before light broke.

***

And that was how they came to find themselves, later that morning, sitting alone together before a weatherworn tablet (bronze eagle of the long-devastated memorial after all these hundreds of years still in motionless flight nearby). They had stood unmoving for some time in that field where she'd died, until he convinced her to come to the Raptor, to close her eyes for just a while. But almost as soon as she was asleep on the floor of the vessel (clinging to him; so very different from just a few hours earlier, when they'd been on the floor of this same bird, right after she'd heard the shots that took Leoben's life) she was awake again, screaming: a nightmare.

In the first of the morning light, then, she'd flown him to this space, across the water from the Viper. The words on the tablets, she'd said, she'd carved long ago. They looked like the most ancient carvings from the most ancient tombs on Gemenon, faint traces of color just visible deep in the pockets of the grooves. They'd walked among the stones. She'd run her fingers over their lines. And then, she'd come to this one and stopped; backed away from it fast until her back hit the stone behind her hard enough to stun. And, not tearing her eyes from the stone, she'd crumpled to the ground.

He didn't think – just went to sit beside her. "Kara? What... what's wrong, Kara?" He touched her arm; withdrew his hand quickly but stayed close.

She shook her head, her eyes wide. "Lee... can't you see what this means? It's my fault, Lee. It's what the hybrid said, but I didn't understand it then. 'You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace....'"

He whispered the words that were chiseled deep into the stone, by her own hand: "You will lead them all to their end."

"And I did, Lee. I told Tyrol how to get to the Colonies. I drew maps, star charts. And they did come, Lee. They did come." She swallowed. "And the worlds ended. The worlds ended, Lee. And it was my fault."

***

end chapter 6

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