fic: the end
A/N: I've always wanted to do something like this. I took my top 3 ships and wrote a similar themed story for all of them. In this case it's 'what happened after they cut to black at the end'. Choose to read whichever you wish since I know not everyone ships the same ships as me (except probably Joy). Hope you enjoy :D
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1) heaven; jack & kate
In the end, everything is how it should have been before. It’s not the way they expected heaven to be, no angels, no clouds, no white pearly gates (but to be honest, neither of them really believed much in the concept anyway). Anything they want it to be is what it is. They live in a two story home, fall asleep in each other’s arms every night because there are no more emergency or late night surgeries, and drink their morning coffee together (milk and two sugars, thank you).
They talk long into the night, about her life and the things he missed. Sometimes she cries and he kisses the tears away, tasting every last one in the hope that he can help carry that pain for her. But he never regrets what he did, and she never asks him to.
Every time they make love is like the first time, everything seems new and exciting, and yet he knows every inch of her like it was just yesterday. Sometimes Kate forgets that for him, it really only was weeks since their last time. But that thought only makes her want him more; she begs him silently to fill that aching longing inside that burned within her for decades. His bruising kisses tell her just how much he wants her too.
She never can tell him about the morning after she stepped off the plane. She locked herself in the bathroom as wave after crippling wave of cramps ripped through her. And when it was over, after she realized she had lost the baby she didn’t even know she was going to have, she lay on the cold tile and cried until she fell asleep. She woke up in the hospital and all she could think about was how much she wished she was dead too. But Kate was a fighter, and she never let life drag her down like that again.
After awhile though, she notices a change in Jack, like he’s misplaced something and can’t remember where he’s put it. When she asks him about it, he simply asks, “How can I miss a son I never even really had?”
She knows he’s talking about David, but all she can think about is her own failed pregnancy. She swallows the lump that sits hard in her throat. Kate doesn’t know how to answer that.
It’s maybe a year after they’ve gotten there (although no one keeps track of time anymore) that she takes a pregnancy test. It’s positive, and she wonders how that can be possible here, but she doesn’t question it for more than a second before telling Jack. His face breaks into the widest grin she has ever seen, and when he wraps her in his arms, she feels the tears wet against her own cheek. She’s not sure if they are hers or his, but as she chokes back another sob, she can’t believe that she’s gotten yet another second chance.
Nine months later, when she cradles the small boy in her arms and kisses the soft brown hair atop his head, she suddenly knows this was the child she was always meant to have, the one that died before it had even had the chance to live. Jack sits beside her on the bed and kisses her temple. “We should name him David,” he says.
In the end, they don’t grow old together. They never have to worry about retirement or saving for college, mowing the lawn or paying taxes. But as Kate watches her son play duets with his dad on their grand piano, all of the painful memories just drift away.
2) the other side; kara & lee
In the end, he is all alone, so things haven’t really changed much. He’s sixty-three years old, and when he was in his thirties, he traveled as far as his legs could take him, up mountains, across rivers, until he reached the coast every time. And when he’d get there, he’d think of her (he’d always think of her). He could almost hear her telling him he was a frakking idiot for going this far and not seeing what was on the other side. But he was never the daring one, and with her gone, so was his courage. He turned back every time.
Eventually he returned and stayed near some of the smaller groups of people that had gotten off of Galactica. The children that knew him only from stories told by their parents started to refer to him as that creepy old man who lived on top of the hill, but Lee Adama preferred it that way. He knew not many of them would understand the turmoil that plagued his mind, how he struggled to find purpose in his daily life. How he tried but always failed to move on. After all, most of them had not suffered the kinds of losses that he had.
For over two decades he spent his life this way. Hunting, growing his own food, and building. Sometimes Helo and Athena would visit him, but as time wore on, old stories were no longer told and any common thread between them slowly unraveled. Some memories were just too painful to relive. It seemed that only Lampkin was able to understand, and while the man was unstable and infuriating at times, Lee couldn’t help but look inside his old friend and see himself. Neither of them was very happy, but at least they had each other, as the old saying goes (Lampkin would have called bullshit every time).
At sixty-three years old, Lee is certain that the end is nearing for him. He’s finding it more and more difficult to climb out of bed, his joints ache constantly to the point of near agony, and his heart feels weak. And maybe all of this was curable back in the day when technology and medicine were still around, but that was in the past, and he finds that he can’t dwell on that too much anymore. Maybe he’s just given up on caring period.
He’s on the edge of sleep when he sees her in the corner of his eye.
“Kara?” He moans in the dark.
She drifts silently to him, sitting on the edge of his bed. “It looks like one of us survived to live that bright and shiny future,” she said in typical Kara fashion. Even as an angel or a figment of his mind, she was just as snarky, and she never knew when to make a joke.
“It wasn’t much of one without you,” he replied honestly. Her face crumples just a bit then. She’s trying not to cry; even after over three decades apart and his vision shot to hell, Lee can see that.
She bends down to kiss him, but it’s not like it was before. It’s soft like a ghost, but tingles with an electricity that he had long forgotten, and suddenly he feels young again. He reaches up to his own face and finds that he is.
“It’s time for us to go,” she says as he sits up.
“Go where?”
“You’ll see.”
And as Kara leads the way, Lee can only smile. It seems his hotshot pilot is back in the driver’s seat.
In the end, they go to the coast, and when they get there, they take a boat to the other side. And suddenly Lee knows it was never about a lack of courage, he just couldn’t bear to make the journey without her.
3) night of desirable objects; peter & olivia
In the end, he’s sitting on a dock fishing. But he’s not alone. And that’s really the surprising part isn’t it?
The water on the lake is so still, so quiet, and as a younger man he would have done anything to break that silence. He would have done anything to distract himself from the pain. Instead, he helped the young boy by his side cast the rod, and smiled softly as the child giggled at the ripples it made in the water. To Peter, it reminded him of an aftershock, that every action had a consequential reaction, and its damage could go on and on and on. See, that was the story of his life; he was the action.
He was the reason why he and his own son were dressed in black today.
But he couldn’t dwell on that for long. He could already feel the tears burning in his eyes, and he couldn’t lose it here, not now with his son sitting beside him. Instead he simply reeled in his line, checked to see if his lure, the night of desirable objects, was secure, and cast it back in the water.
“Hey Daddy?” His son whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Why do we have to be quiet?” His eyes bore down on Peter inquisitively. They’re green just like his mother’s.
“We don’t want to scare the fish away. You wanna catch a fish right?”
The boy nodded, and focused hard on his line as if by staring at it he could will the fish towards the hook. Peter leaned down to kiss the top of his head, stroking absently at the hair at the nape of his neck.
It was then that he heard the footsteps on the dock, but he didn’t have to turn to know who it was.
She sat down beside him silently, still in her clothes from the funeral. Her blond hair was secured tightly in a bun, but under the surface of her calm façade, he felt the sadness emanating off her in waves. He knew she was trying to remain strong for him. When she turned to him with red-rimmed eyes and saw his blue eyes mirroring back the same emotions that she was trying so hard not to portray, he saw her shift into soldier mode, trying so desperately to carry the weight of his burden.
“Hey Charlie, baby?” Olivia said.
“Yes Mommy?” Charlie asked, tearing his eyes away from the water.
“You know your dad and Grandpa used to fish together.” She gazed at Peter then out of the corner of her eye. He was fighting back tears.
“Really?” Charlie asked excitedly. “Did you catch lots of fish Dad?”
Peter took a shaky breath and looked down to his son. “Oh yeah. One time we went out, we came back with seven fish and your grandpa made me dinner every night for a week.”
“Grandpa must have loved you a lot then,” Charlie said matter-of-factly before turning back to his fishing pole.
And with that, Peter’s first tears since his father’s death began to fall. Olivia pulled him close, and kissed him softly on the temple, and as he closed his eyes, savoring the feeling of her touch, he remembered that without Walter, none of them would have been here right now. Without Walter, who knows what kind of life he would have lived?
In the end, he still isn’t sure about everything and at times he still feels lost, but he finally knows where he belongs. And as his son catches his first fish, and his wife wraps her arms around him later that night, he can only be thankful for all the chances he was given by the man he could finally call “Dad”.