Fic: Eschatos (BSG)
Title: Eschatos
Spoilers: through the end of season 3, obliquely for Razor
Rating: PG
Pairings: contains Adama/Roslin
Summary: Dying is more difficult this time.
Author's Notes: 4100 words. This fic contains season 4 speculation but no spoilers for unaired episodes. I'm unspoiled and I would very much like to remain so, please.
This is technically very belated birthday fic for runawaynun. She wanted fic about Laura Roslin before she died; I thought I might attempt a drabble. Then I remembered something danceswithwords said in her Razor commentary about Kara and time and apocalypse, and my brain-wheels went a-churning, and a month and a half and three complete re-writes later, this is the end product. Enormous amounts of gratitude go to gabolange for her patience and insight through all those drafts. You make me a better writer, my dear!
***
Ships, she has learned during this long and weightless journey, have individual rhythms. Somewhere in her files she has a report that explains the mechanical process: there are rotating drums and pistons driven by a tylium reaction, an endless internal cycle to keep the ships moving forward. Colonial One is a rapid but steady staccato, the Astral Queen bangs and echoes, Cloud Nine used to purr so softly it almost drowned out the vacuum, and Galactica, loudest of all, thrums and pulses as though alive.
"Think of it like the circulatory system," Captain Apollo had explained so long ago as he tutored her about flying and fighting. She was dying then, for the first time, and she learned to listen for the ships' heartbeats as a reminder of her own.
She's been throwing up all morning from the diloxin treatments, and when her captain comes to her, face full of concern, to announce Colonial One's engine trouble, Laura doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. She imagines cancer cells breeding in the tylium.
"We'll get her back in the air in no time, ma'am," Laird, the new deck chief, assures her as she casts a backward glance at the great, quiet vessel parked in Galactica's maintenance bay. But Tyrol is a Cylon locked in the brig, and the deck crew has been behind for weeks.
***
The visions are stronger on Galactica. Night after night she dreams of walking through brightly colored chess boards, the pieces moved by players she can't see. The boards are circular, each inside another, spinning. This one is red. Hera darts behind a knight, zigzags between pawns, while Laura, Sharon, and the Cylon who calls herself Caprica Six chase after her.
"This way," the child calls, beckoning them across the board. The white queen traps the black king. "Checkmate," Hera announces, and they all fall to the next board to begin again.
Laura looks at the pieces lined up on a backdrop of bright blue, waits for the first pawn to move. This board is smaller, spinning faster.
"We're getting closer to the center," the Six whispers, panicked.
Laura wakes with a start.
***
Dying is more difficult this time. Or rather, she thinks as the day's endless meetings blur together in her mind, living with the knowledge of death has become more difficult. Before, death had given her purpose, even vitality: she had a finite amount of time and so much to accomplish. Now, the way has become less clear, life harder to hold onto.
She likes to sleep on the inside of the rack, wedged between Bill and the wall. She splays one palm over his chest to feel his heart beat while Galactica herself pulses against Laura's back.
"Cottle had to sedate Kara today." Bill's voice is strained. "She's giving herself fits about what direction we're going. I don't know how she has any idea, locked in the brig, where we are."
"Mmm," Laura murmurs, relaxing into the rhythm of the ship, the propulsion through vacuum, the spinning of concentric chess boards. "She can feel it. She knows."
Kara knows. Kara the Cylon, though she insists she is not. Lee saw her Viper explode, yet here she is.
"She was dead. Who other than a Cylon could resurrect like that?" Laura had asked Bill the first time they argued about Kara's return. He had quirked an eyebrow and looked at her pointedly but did not reply.
Kara is a Cylon, must be a Cylon, and because she knows the way to go, the fleet jumps in the opposite direction. The map to Earth dissolved in the nebula-too many possibilities, impossible to plot, Lieutenant Gaeta tells her, and they lost their bearings when they jumped away from the basestars.
Together, she and Bill approve jump coordinates daily, but she no longer knows where they're going. For so much of this journey she's been so certain of the way. Now she's lost, and her time is running out.
"Maybe we should listen to her," Bill says softly.
The argument is familiar. He's always too willing to trust the people he cares about, and Laura fights him partly to temper that weakness.
"She's a Cylon, Bill," she replies. "Since when did we start taking navigational advice from Cylons?"
"Since when did you start ignoring information that would lead us to Earth?"
"Might lead us to Earth," she corrects. "More likely might lead us into an ambush."
She rehearses the arguments because she needs to say something to stall. She's been stalling for three weeks as she tries to gather her thoughts, tries to remember the way to lead; she's sure Bill knows she's doing it, and he doesn't push too hard as he fights her. Kara's advice is tempting: Kara offers a path, a direction, while Laura grasps at disappearing wisps of prophecies.
Laura closes her eyes and remembers the certitude that led her to split the fleet and go to Kobol, to attempt to steal an election, to use a loophole to reassume the presidency unelected after New Caprica. She had a destiny; she believed. She's less certain now, afraid in these quiet moments that she's leading all these people nowhere at all, that her death will accomplish nothing. She struggles with faith and doubt, tries to understand what the dreams and the scriptures are telling her. She's so very tired.
***
On a morning when the pain is particularly bad, Laura decides she's tired of things that don't end when they should. She died, yet she's still here. The world ended, yet there are a few thousand of them crammed into this handful of ships. All this has happened before and will happen again.
She remembers one of the last nights on Colonial One before the first time she came to Galactica to die. She was drinking tea with Billy, hers heavily laced with chamalla.
"Billy, what do you believe happens to someone when they die?" she had asked. She had made reassuring speeches, held the hands of grieving people as she prayed with them, picked up the pieces from the deaths of billions.
Billy had opened his mouth and then paused, and she expected him to tell her she wasn't dying yet, or that it didn't matter what he believed. "Nothing," he replied instead. "I believe when people die, that's just the end. There's nothing else."
These days she misses Billy desperately.
***
She's grateful that Galactica's brig is divided into separate cell blocks; she can't face all the prisoners at once. Kara is kept in the solitary cell that had been Baltar's, alternately raving about the way to Earth and sleeping in a drugged stupor. Chief Tyrol and Ensign Anders occupy another block, and Saul and Tory have the cells that were once Laura and Lee's. Saul stands at attention, repeating his name, rank, and serial number until he passes out; when he wakes he begins again. Tory stands up when Laura comes, moves toward the bars and whispers, "Madam President"; Laura always flinches.
Most of the time she goes directly to the high-security cell where they keep the Six.
"What's at the center?" Laura asks after the guards have left them.
These conversations are a game, both of them afraid of giving too much away and of learning what they don't want to know.
"You had the vision, too," the Cylon answers. "When you didn't come I wasn't sure you'd seen it."
"You're afraid of this center. Why?"
The Six stands, walks slowly toward the wall, runs a hand across the metal brace. "Time is cyclical. Everything that is happening now has happened before and will happen again. Life renews."
Laura knows this, finds it dizzying. She doesn't think she can keep dying over and over again. "But it's not always the same," she guesses. "Each cycle is a variation, moving closer to the center. What happens at the center?"
The Cylon turns, fixes her with wide, frightened eyes. "It ends."
"Ends," Laura repeats. She steps toward the Six. "What ends? The variations?"
"Everything. Time itself. It would be death." Her voice shakes. "It's unthinkable."
"All this has happened before and will happen again," Laura intones, realization dawning. "That's why Cylons resurrect. It's an imitation of cyclical time."
"Yes," the Six answers. "To die permanently, for everything to end-"
"Apocalypse," Laura says absently. She closes her eyes and listens for the throb of the ship, almost feels the spinning of chess boards. Something-she can't quite see what-slides into place. "But the word itself," she continues. "It doesn't mean death; it means revelation."
***
Laura is hooked up to an IV in sickbay when a knot of pilots enters, hovering around someone she can't see.
"I'm fine, okay? Go back to your posts," a voice insists. Sharon Agathon.
The pilots step away as Cottle moves in, and Laura watches Sharon hold her arm against her body at an awkward angle, blood on her face and pain in her eyes. Sharon explains the accident to Cottle: a nugget lost control of his Viper, crashed into Sharon's Raptor in the tube, just a sprain.
Cottle puts Sharon in the bed adjacent to Laura's and insists that she rest while he runs her x-rays. Half an hour later a nurse checks on them both and, apparently inadvertently, leaves the privacy curtain pulled back.
It's a plot of Cottle's, Laura suspects. Since the return of her cancer he's been eager once again to treat her with a transfusion of Hera's blood; Laura and the Agathons have emphatically refused. Cottle isn't giving up the notion easily and continues to look for opportunities to throw them together, just in case they change their minds.
There is no love lost between Laura and Sharon, but there has been a small shift lately towards something resembling civility. The shared visions have created a temporary truce.
They sit side by side for ten silent minutes before Laura breaks the ice. "I'm sorry about your accident, Lieutenant."
Sharon looks skeptical. "It's nothing," she says dismissively. "I just want Cottle to get back and wrap up my wrist so I can get the frak out of here."
Laura nods sympathetically. "I know the feeling. I seem to be spending far too much time here these days."
Sharon opens her mouth, then closes it. They sit in silence.
"May I ask you a question?" Laura says after a few minutes. There are things she can't discuss with the Six. If she's honest, she probably likes the blonde Cylon more than she likes Sharon, but Sharon she has learned, slowly and grudgingly, to trust.
Sharon shrugs. "Okay."
"Did you have a dream two nights ago?"
"With the spinning and the chess? Yes. I've had that one several times."
Laura nods. She wants to know more about shared visions, among oracles, among Cylons. She wonders whether this experience is unusual, yet she can't quite summon the courage to ask. "The Caprica Six is afraid of this vision," she says instead. "She thinks if we fall to the center time stops."
Sharon smiles faintly. "Of course she's afraid. They can't bear the thought of death. Of real, permanent death. They think it goes against God's will."
"They?" Laura asks, momentarily confused. "The Cylons?"
"The other Cylons," Sharon corrects.
"But not you?" Laura is surprised. She has seen enough of Sharon's actions in the past months to be confident of her loyalties, but she would not have expected Sharon to change her worldview as well.
"My husband is going to die. My daughter, I am almost certain, is going to die. Everyone I care about in this life I have chosen is going to die. Why would I want to live forever?" Sharon's eyes rest on Laura's IV drip before turning to stare intently at the opposite wall.
Why indeed, Laura thinks, dropping her head back against the pillows behind her. They sit in silence. "Lieutenant," Laura continues after a moment, "do you believe time will stop if we reach this center?"
Sharon doesn't answer right away. "I believe," she says slowly, "that the cycle of time, the cycle of life, can stop. I don't know about this dream, but I do believe that I can die if I choose to."
Laura sits up, turns to look at Sharon. "A Cylon could choose not to resurrect?" she asks incredulously. This information seems terribly important, but Laura can't process it yet.
"You believe in your scriptures," Sharon continues. "You believe Athena was an immortal god, yet she chose to end her life for the love of humanity."
"Athena was not a Cylon," Laura says sharply, then almost laughs as she remembers Sharon's call sign.
Sharon's smile is ironic. "Perhaps not. But a Cylon could still choose to die. And if my daughter is the shape of things to come, as I and you and the Cylons all believe, one day we may all find mortality."
Hera and her role is among the topics they don't talk about, and Laura decides not to push it. "And what would happen if a Cylon died permanently, by choice?" she asks, shifting the subject. "Would that make time end, like in the dream?"
"I don't know," Sharon replies. "Just any Cylon? I doubt it. Athena didn't stop time with her death, and you think she was a god."
"Hmm," Laura murmurs, relaxing again against the pillows. "But she did point the way to Earth."
***
The evenings after the diloxin treatments are miserable. Laura sits on the couch, shivering through layers of blankets, sipping chamalla tea for her nausea. The Book of Pythia lies open across her lap.
"And the lords anointed a leader to guide the Caravan of the Heavens to their new homeland," she reads, the words swimming across the page, echoing in her memory. This was her prophecy.
She turns pages at random, her head too fuzzy and her body too weak to manage careful study. "And the body of each tribe's leader was offered to the gods in the Tomb of Athena. And the Tomb was sealed until such time as it shall be required. And the Arrow of Apollo will open the Tomb of Athena and point the way to Earth. And Earth shall be the destiny of the people."
She closes her eyes and can almost see Kobol, can feel the rain and cold, the hope and certainty. She had been so sure. She hasn't been able to pray in months-since New Caprica, since Baltar, since the last time she was dying.
In a familiar vivid flash, she's standing on a ridge catching her breath. She recognizes the voices, recognizes the place: Kobol.
"I think those are the Gates of Hera," Sharon says. "If I'm right, that's the spot where your gods supposedly stood and watched Athena throw herself down o¬nto the rocks below out of despair over the exodus of the thirteen tribes."
Laura blinks several times before she recognizes Bill's quarters. Not a vision but a memory, she realizes as she grips the back of the couch to counter the disorientation. "The Gates of Hera," she whispers aloud, "lead to the Tomb of Athena, which leads to Earth."
She takes a sip of tea and grimaces at the bitterness of the drug tinged with the bile at the back of her throat. Again she turns the pages of the book, fighting to concentrate. "And the leader suffered a wasting disease and would not live to see the people's destiny."
Suddenly she wants Bill to come back. He'll try to get off early, she thinks, because he hates to leave her alone when she's sick. She imagines him sitting with her, telling her about his day, as if they were ordinary people. She imagines him relating a funny story, some amusing piece of gossip about Gaeta or Hot Dog. They haven't laughed in weeks, and sometimes she wonders if she ever will again.
Bill has another hour left in CIC, and Laura lets her eyes drop back to the page. "And the leader embraced death as the true path. And in death the leader brought the people to their destiny."
***
"Checkmate," Hera says, and they fall from blue into blinding yellow.
Laura jerks awake, gasping. The air is close and stifling, and the thin mattress of Bill's rack not solid enough. She scrambles over him as he grunts awake.
"Laura? Y'okay?" he calls sleepily as she stumbles into the head, splashes cold water on her face.
He stands behind her and gathers her hair out of her eyes. She grasps the hard, cold metal of the sink for a long moment before relaxing back against him.
"You want to tell me about it?" he asks.
"No," she replies, as always. She never tells him, and he never pushes too hard to know. She knows he fears the visions almost as much as he fears the cancer.
He wraps his arms around her and hides his face in her neck, as though if he doesn't let go he'll be able to keep her. He holds on too tight and wants too much from her, but she lets him take what he needs. He's lost so many people recently-Lee, Kara, Saul-and soon she'll be gone, as well.
She didn't expect this relationship to happen, never meant for it to happen. Ever since Kobol and especially after New Caprica, there had been something between them, hovering just beyond the range of topics she allowed herself consciously to think about. Then she was dying again, and he asked her to stay.
She looks at the two of them in the dull mirror in the head, his arms holding tight and his chin scratching against her neck. They fit well, she thinks; they're an attractive couple. She enjoys sharing time with Bill, sharing a bed with Bill. It's an indulgence she never should have allowed herself, but it's far too late to let go now. She's frightened sometimes by how much she cares for him, by how much he cares for her. Last time, he wouldn't let her die, and part of her was so relieved. Once again, he's begun the constant litany, silent but unmistakable, begging her not to leave him. It's a sweet and tempting song, and it could ruin everything.
She closes her eyes against the image in the mirror, tries to replace it in her mind with anything else: the ships of the fleet, the star signs of the colonies in the night sky, the solid ground of Earth. She's getting closer. She'll find Earth. She'll die.
***
The last time they fall, it's different. Laura recognizes the field from the Tomb of Athena, the star signs of the Colonies shining close and bright above them. They're no longer spinning.
"Dear God," the Six breathes, her face ashen. Hera finally stops running, and Sharon scoops her up. Laura feels something like peace.
A figure walks toward them, grinning a little irreverently. "Hey, Madam President."
"Captain Thrace?" Laura is a little startled.
"It's time," Kara says, holding her hand out to Laura.
"No!" cries the Six.
"Bring Hera," Kara says to Sharon.
There is a path leading out, away from the chess boards, a straight path disappearing in the distance. Laura looks back and sees the revolving colors behind them, is startled to recognize the pattern. "That way," Kara says, and Laura begins to walk. She leads the way as the others follow: Sharon and Hera, Kara, the reluctant Six, Galactica and the rest of the fleet.
***
Bill has an early shift, and Laura gets up with him, is in her temporary office before five. What she needs is not among her working files, so she makes her way to the hangar deck in the quiet early morning, asks Specialist Figurski to let her onto her ship.
They're not working on Colonial One today, and it's deafeningly silent, the engines still and the noise of the hangar deck shut out as she moves further from the hatch. She's never heard her ship at rest before, she realizes. The engines take a while to warm up and shut down; she's never waited for the quiet when they've docked on Galactica. She didn't go aboard when it was parked on New Caprica until it was once more humming for her, primed to leave that place behind. Her ship should be in motion, and she finds the stillness stifling.
Her office smells musty, and a small layer of dust coats her desk. She moves to the file boxes lining the wall, quickly locates what she seeks. She leans against the wall and eases herself down to sit on the floor. Laura's been weaker the past few days. She tries not to be self-conscious about the way her clothes gape and hang on her too-thin frame, about the chunks of hair she finds on their pillow each morning.
She opens the file, and the images from the Temple of Five spill across her lap. The mandala from her dream is scattered across a dozen photographs. She seems to see the wheels spinning, concentric chess boards representing time itself. She shuts her eyes and fights a wave of nausea. The diloxin, she thinks, gives physical form to her terror at the idea of playing this role over and over for eternity.
She picks up the next image. The mandala is on the floor of the temple. A path leads away from it, toward the giant pillar in the center, hard geometrical lines in contrast to the frenzied spinning. The path envelops the mandala; the pillar dwarfs it.
Suddenly there's a flash of light, and Laura feels like she's falling. The room swims, and she's standing at the center, the mandala swirling around her. The path leads out, long and straight. Once again, Kara Thrace stands there, holding out her hand.
"It's time," Kara says.
"It has to be me?" Laura asks hesitantly.
"The first, the leader," Kara answers. "Yes, Madam President, it has to be you." She pauses and smiles. "There's nothing so terrible about death."
Laura takes Kara's hand, feels it warm and strong in her own. "Will you," Laura begins, turning to look at Kara. "The fleet, and-" She won't let herself single out Bill. "You'll take care of them," she asks.
Kara nods, squeezes her hand. "I will. Now this way."
Laura releases Kara's hand and steps away from the spinning mandala, out onto the path beyond.
***
She wakes on a gurney, people bustling around her. She hears Bill shouting, hears Jack Cottle shouting, smells antiseptic and cigarette smoke: the unmistakable scent of sickbay.
"Bill?" Her voice sounds raspy and far away to her own ears.
His hand grips hers, and she feels him lean in close. "It's okay, Laura. It's going to be okay," he whispers.
"Kara. She's not a Cylon." She tries to open her eyes against the bright light. "We need-"
"Shhh," Bill soothes, "we can talk about it later." She feels his hand against her cheek. On her other side, rubber-clad hands yank up her sleeve, prick her arm with a needle.
"No, now." She forces her eyes open, sees his face floating above her, flashes of Cottle's white hair and white coat. "It's important, Bill. We have to listen to Kara. We have to follow her. Promise me."
"Laura, we don't need to decide this right now."
"Promise me, Bill."
He opens his mouth to protest again, but then concedes. "I promise." Another time he would have fought her-despite having argued in favor of following Kara for weeks-but not now.
"All right," she says. The drugs are starting to lull her back to peace. The noise of sickbay fades away, and she can hear only Galactica, her pulsing slow and steady, in time with Laura's own breath.
***
The next morning they jump to the first of Kara's coordinates, and Laura's the sickest she's been since the last time she died. Cottle released her from sickbay, but she's been ordered to stay in bed; Bill's quarters are empty, dark, and quiet.
She feels the jump: the familiar, uncomfortable sensation of the body pulled away stomach-first. For a moment afterwards, everything is utterly still, and Laura wonders if she's died without realizing it. Then they begin to move again, forward and purposefully, and she can feel every ship in the fleet singing through her veins, all of her people making their way to their new life. She closes her eyes and smiles. Now it's time.
Spoilers: through the end of season 3, obliquely for Razor
Rating: PG
Pairings: contains Adama/Roslin
Summary: Dying is more difficult this time.
Author's Notes: 4100 words. This fic contains season 4 speculation but no spoilers for unaired episodes. I'm unspoiled and I would very much like to remain so, please.
This is technically very belated birthday fic for runawaynun. She wanted fic about Laura Roslin before she died; I thought I might attempt a drabble. Then I remembered something danceswithwords said in her Razor commentary about Kara and time and apocalypse, and my brain-wheels went a-churning, and a month and a half and three complete re-writes later, this is the end product. Enormous amounts of gratitude go to gabolange for her patience and insight through all those drafts. You make me a better writer, my dear!
***
Ships, she has learned during this long and weightless journey, have individual rhythms. Somewhere in her files she has a report that explains the mechanical process: there are rotating drums and pistons driven by a tylium reaction, an endless internal cycle to keep the ships moving forward. Colonial One is a rapid but steady staccato, the Astral Queen bangs and echoes, Cloud Nine used to purr so softly it almost drowned out the vacuum, and Galactica, loudest of all, thrums and pulses as though alive.
"Think of it like the circulatory system," Captain Apollo had explained so long ago as he tutored her about flying and fighting. She was dying then, for the first time, and she learned to listen for the ships' heartbeats as a reminder of her own.
She's been throwing up all morning from the diloxin treatments, and when her captain comes to her, face full of concern, to announce Colonial One's engine trouble, Laura doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. She imagines cancer cells breeding in the tylium.
"We'll get her back in the air in no time, ma'am," Laird, the new deck chief, assures her as she casts a backward glance at the great, quiet vessel parked in Galactica's maintenance bay. But Tyrol is a Cylon locked in the brig, and the deck crew has been behind for weeks.
***
The visions are stronger on Galactica. Night after night she dreams of walking through brightly colored chess boards, the pieces moved by players she can't see. The boards are circular, each inside another, spinning. This one is red. Hera darts behind a knight, zigzags between pawns, while Laura, Sharon, and the Cylon who calls herself Caprica Six chase after her.
"This way," the child calls, beckoning them across the board. The white queen traps the black king. "Checkmate," Hera announces, and they all fall to the next board to begin again.
Laura looks at the pieces lined up on a backdrop of bright blue, waits for the first pawn to move. This board is smaller, spinning faster.
"We're getting closer to the center," the Six whispers, panicked.
Laura wakes with a start.
***
Dying is more difficult this time. Or rather, she thinks as the day's endless meetings blur together in her mind, living with the knowledge of death has become more difficult. Before, death had given her purpose, even vitality: she had a finite amount of time and so much to accomplish. Now, the way has become less clear, life harder to hold onto.
She likes to sleep on the inside of the rack, wedged between Bill and the wall. She splays one palm over his chest to feel his heart beat while Galactica herself pulses against Laura's back.
"Cottle had to sedate Kara today." Bill's voice is strained. "She's giving herself fits about what direction we're going. I don't know how she has any idea, locked in the brig, where we are."
"Mmm," Laura murmurs, relaxing into the rhythm of the ship, the propulsion through vacuum, the spinning of concentric chess boards. "She can feel it. She knows."
Kara knows. Kara the Cylon, though she insists she is not. Lee saw her Viper explode, yet here she is.
"She was dead. Who other than a Cylon could resurrect like that?" Laura had asked Bill the first time they argued about Kara's return. He had quirked an eyebrow and looked at her pointedly but did not reply.
Kara is a Cylon, must be a Cylon, and because she knows the way to go, the fleet jumps in the opposite direction. The map to Earth dissolved in the nebula-too many possibilities, impossible to plot, Lieutenant Gaeta tells her, and they lost their bearings when they jumped away from the basestars.
Together, she and Bill approve jump coordinates daily, but she no longer knows where they're going. For so much of this journey she's been so certain of the way. Now she's lost, and her time is running out.
"Maybe we should listen to her," Bill says softly.
The argument is familiar. He's always too willing to trust the people he cares about, and Laura fights him partly to temper that weakness.
"She's a Cylon, Bill," she replies. "Since when did we start taking navigational advice from Cylons?"
"Since when did you start ignoring information that would lead us to Earth?"
"Might lead us to Earth," she corrects. "More likely might lead us into an ambush."
She rehearses the arguments because she needs to say something to stall. She's been stalling for three weeks as she tries to gather her thoughts, tries to remember the way to lead; she's sure Bill knows she's doing it, and he doesn't push too hard as he fights her. Kara's advice is tempting: Kara offers a path, a direction, while Laura grasps at disappearing wisps of prophecies.
Laura closes her eyes and remembers the certitude that led her to split the fleet and go to Kobol, to attempt to steal an election, to use a loophole to reassume the presidency unelected after New Caprica. She had a destiny; she believed. She's less certain now, afraid in these quiet moments that she's leading all these people nowhere at all, that her death will accomplish nothing. She struggles with faith and doubt, tries to understand what the dreams and the scriptures are telling her. She's so very tired.
***
On a morning when the pain is particularly bad, Laura decides she's tired of things that don't end when they should. She died, yet she's still here. The world ended, yet there are a few thousand of them crammed into this handful of ships. All this has happened before and will happen again.
She remembers one of the last nights on Colonial One before the first time she came to Galactica to die. She was drinking tea with Billy, hers heavily laced with chamalla.
"Billy, what do you believe happens to someone when they die?" she had asked. She had made reassuring speeches, held the hands of grieving people as she prayed with them, picked up the pieces from the deaths of billions.
Billy had opened his mouth and then paused, and she expected him to tell her she wasn't dying yet, or that it didn't matter what he believed. "Nothing," he replied instead. "I believe when people die, that's just the end. There's nothing else."
These days she misses Billy desperately.
***
She's grateful that Galactica's brig is divided into separate cell blocks; she can't face all the prisoners at once. Kara is kept in the solitary cell that had been Baltar's, alternately raving about the way to Earth and sleeping in a drugged stupor. Chief Tyrol and Ensign Anders occupy another block, and Saul and Tory have the cells that were once Laura and Lee's. Saul stands at attention, repeating his name, rank, and serial number until he passes out; when he wakes he begins again. Tory stands up when Laura comes, moves toward the bars and whispers, "Madam President"; Laura always flinches.
Most of the time she goes directly to the high-security cell where they keep the Six.
"What's at the center?" Laura asks after the guards have left them.
These conversations are a game, both of them afraid of giving too much away and of learning what they don't want to know.
"You had the vision, too," the Cylon answers. "When you didn't come I wasn't sure you'd seen it."
"You're afraid of this center. Why?"
The Six stands, walks slowly toward the wall, runs a hand across the metal brace. "Time is cyclical. Everything that is happening now has happened before and will happen again. Life renews."
Laura knows this, finds it dizzying. She doesn't think she can keep dying over and over again. "But it's not always the same," she guesses. "Each cycle is a variation, moving closer to the center. What happens at the center?"
The Cylon turns, fixes her with wide, frightened eyes. "It ends."
"Ends," Laura repeats. She steps toward the Six. "What ends? The variations?"
"Everything. Time itself. It would be death." Her voice shakes. "It's unthinkable."
"All this has happened before and will happen again," Laura intones, realization dawning. "That's why Cylons resurrect. It's an imitation of cyclical time."
"Yes," the Six answers. "To die permanently, for everything to end-"
"Apocalypse," Laura says absently. She closes her eyes and listens for the throb of the ship, almost feels the spinning of chess boards. Something-she can't quite see what-slides into place. "But the word itself," she continues. "It doesn't mean death; it means revelation."
***
Laura is hooked up to an IV in sickbay when a knot of pilots enters, hovering around someone she can't see.
"I'm fine, okay? Go back to your posts," a voice insists. Sharon Agathon.
The pilots step away as Cottle moves in, and Laura watches Sharon hold her arm against her body at an awkward angle, blood on her face and pain in her eyes. Sharon explains the accident to Cottle: a nugget lost control of his Viper, crashed into Sharon's Raptor in the tube, just a sprain.
Cottle puts Sharon in the bed adjacent to Laura's and insists that she rest while he runs her x-rays. Half an hour later a nurse checks on them both and, apparently inadvertently, leaves the privacy curtain pulled back.
It's a plot of Cottle's, Laura suspects. Since the return of her cancer he's been eager once again to treat her with a transfusion of Hera's blood; Laura and the Agathons have emphatically refused. Cottle isn't giving up the notion easily and continues to look for opportunities to throw them together, just in case they change their minds.
There is no love lost between Laura and Sharon, but there has been a small shift lately towards something resembling civility. The shared visions have created a temporary truce.
They sit side by side for ten silent minutes before Laura breaks the ice. "I'm sorry about your accident, Lieutenant."
Sharon looks skeptical. "It's nothing," she says dismissively. "I just want Cottle to get back and wrap up my wrist so I can get the frak out of here."
Laura nods sympathetically. "I know the feeling. I seem to be spending far too much time here these days."
Sharon opens her mouth, then closes it. They sit in silence.
"May I ask you a question?" Laura says after a few minutes. There are things she can't discuss with the Six. If she's honest, she probably likes the blonde Cylon more than she likes Sharon, but Sharon she has learned, slowly and grudgingly, to trust.
Sharon shrugs. "Okay."
"Did you have a dream two nights ago?"
"With the spinning and the chess? Yes. I've had that one several times."
Laura nods. She wants to know more about shared visions, among oracles, among Cylons. She wonders whether this experience is unusual, yet she can't quite summon the courage to ask. "The Caprica Six is afraid of this vision," she says instead. "She thinks if we fall to the center time stops."
Sharon smiles faintly. "Of course she's afraid. They can't bear the thought of death. Of real, permanent death. They think it goes against God's will."
"They?" Laura asks, momentarily confused. "The Cylons?"
"The other Cylons," Sharon corrects.
"But not you?" Laura is surprised. She has seen enough of Sharon's actions in the past months to be confident of her loyalties, but she would not have expected Sharon to change her worldview as well.
"My husband is going to die. My daughter, I am almost certain, is going to die. Everyone I care about in this life I have chosen is going to die. Why would I want to live forever?" Sharon's eyes rest on Laura's IV drip before turning to stare intently at the opposite wall.
Why indeed, Laura thinks, dropping her head back against the pillows behind her. They sit in silence. "Lieutenant," Laura continues after a moment, "do you believe time will stop if we reach this center?"
Sharon doesn't answer right away. "I believe," she says slowly, "that the cycle of time, the cycle of life, can stop. I don't know about this dream, but I do believe that I can die if I choose to."
Laura sits up, turns to look at Sharon. "A Cylon could choose not to resurrect?" she asks incredulously. This information seems terribly important, but Laura can't process it yet.
"You believe in your scriptures," Sharon continues. "You believe Athena was an immortal god, yet she chose to end her life for the love of humanity."
"Athena was not a Cylon," Laura says sharply, then almost laughs as she remembers Sharon's call sign.
Sharon's smile is ironic. "Perhaps not. But a Cylon could still choose to die. And if my daughter is the shape of things to come, as I and you and the Cylons all believe, one day we may all find mortality."
Hera and her role is among the topics they don't talk about, and Laura decides not to push it. "And what would happen if a Cylon died permanently, by choice?" she asks, shifting the subject. "Would that make time end, like in the dream?"
"I don't know," Sharon replies. "Just any Cylon? I doubt it. Athena didn't stop time with her death, and you think she was a god."
"Hmm," Laura murmurs, relaxing again against the pillows. "But she did point the way to Earth."
***
The evenings after the diloxin treatments are miserable. Laura sits on the couch, shivering through layers of blankets, sipping chamalla tea for her nausea. The Book of Pythia lies open across her lap.
"And the lords anointed a leader to guide the Caravan of the Heavens to their new homeland," she reads, the words swimming across the page, echoing in her memory. This was her prophecy.
She turns pages at random, her head too fuzzy and her body too weak to manage careful study. "And the body of each tribe's leader was offered to the gods in the Tomb of Athena. And the Tomb was sealed until such time as it shall be required. And the Arrow of Apollo will open the Tomb of Athena and point the way to Earth. And Earth shall be the destiny of the people."
She closes her eyes and can almost see Kobol, can feel the rain and cold, the hope and certainty. She had been so sure. She hasn't been able to pray in months-since New Caprica, since Baltar, since the last time she was dying.
In a familiar vivid flash, she's standing on a ridge catching her breath. She recognizes the voices, recognizes the place: Kobol.
"I think those are the Gates of Hera," Sharon says. "If I'm right, that's the spot where your gods supposedly stood and watched Athena throw herself down o¬nto the rocks below out of despair over the exodus of the thirteen tribes."
Laura blinks several times before she recognizes Bill's quarters. Not a vision but a memory, she realizes as she grips the back of the couch to counter the disorientation. "The Gates of Hera," she whispers aloud, "lead to the Tomb of Athena, which leads to Earth."
She takes a sip of tea and grimaces at the bitterness of the drug tinged with the bile at the back of her throat. Again she turns the pages of the book, fighting to concentrate. "And the leader suffered a wasting disease and would not live to see the people's destiny."
Suddenly she wants Bill to come back. He'll try to get off early, she thinks, because he hates to leave her alone when she's sick. She imagines him sitting with her, telling her about his day, as if they were ordinary people. She imagines him relating a funny story, some amusing piece of gossip about Gaeta or Hot Dog. They haven't laughed in weeks, and sometimes she wonders if she ever will again.
Bill has another hour left in CIC, and Laura lets her eyes drop back to the page. "And the leader embraced death as the true path. And in death the leader brought the people to their destiny."
***
"Checkmate," Hera says, and they fall from blue into blinding yellow.
Laura jerks awake, gasping. The air is close and stifling, and the thin mattress of Bill's rack not solid enough. She scrambles over him as he grunts awake.
"Laura? Y'okay?" he calls sleepily as she stumbles into the head, splashes cold water on her face.
He stands behind her and gathers her hair out of her eyes. She grasps the hard, cold metal of the sink for a long moment before relaxing back against him.
"You want to tell me about it?" he asks.
"No," she replies, as always. She never tells him, and he never pushes too hard to know. She knows he fears the visions almost as much as he fears the cancer.
He wraps his arms around her and hides his face in her neck, as though if he doesn't let go he'll be able to keep her. He holds on too tight and wants too much from her, but she lets him take what he needs. He's lost so many people recently-Lee, Kara, Saul-and soon she'll be gone, as well.
She didn't expect this relationship to happen, never meant for it to happen. Ever since Kobol and especially after New Caprica, there had been something between them, hovering just beyond the range of topics she allowed herself consciously to think about. Then she was dying again, and he asked her to stay.
She looks at the two of them in the dull mirror in the head, his arms holding tight and his chin scratching against her neck. They fit well, she thinks; they're an attractive couple. She enjoys sharing time with Bill, sharing a bed with Bill. It's an indulgence she never should have allowed herself, but it's far too late to let go now. She's frightened sometimes by how much she cares for him, by how much he cares for her. Last time, he wouldn't let her die, and part of her was so relieved. Once again, he's begun the constant litany, silent but unmistakable, begging her not to leave him. It's a sweet and tempting song, and it could ruin everything.
She closes her eyes against the image in the mirror, tries to replace it in her mind with anything else: the ships of the fleet, the star signs of the colonies in the night sky, the solid ground of Earth. She's getting closer. She'll find Earth. She'll die.
***
The last time they fall, it's different. Laura recognizes the field from the Tomb of Athena, the star signs of the Colonies shining close and bright above them. They're no longer spinning.
"Dear God," the Six breathes, her face ashen. Hera finally stops running, and Sharon scoops her up. Laura feels something like peace.
A figure walks toward them, grinning a little irreverently. "Hey, Madam President."
"Captain Thrace?" Laura is a little startled.
"It's time," Kara says, holding her hand out to Laura.
"No!" cries the Six.
"Bring Hera," Kara says to Sharon.
There is a path leading out, away from the chess boards, a straight path disappearing in the distance. Laura looks back and sees the revolving colors behind them, is startled to recognize the pattern. "That way," Kara says, and Laura begins to walk. She leads the way as the others follow: Sharon and Hera, Kara, the reluctant Six, Galactica and the rest of the fleet.
***
Bill has an early shift, and Laura gets up with him, is in her temporary office before five. What she needs is not among her working files, so she makes her way to the hangar deck in the quiet early morning, asks Specialist Figurski to let her onto her ship.
They're not working on Colonial One today, and it's deafeningly silent, the engines still and the noise of the hangar deck shut out as she moves further from the hatch. She's never heard her ship at rest before, she realizes. The engines take a while to warm up and shut down; she's never waited for the quiet when they've docked on Galactica. She didn't go aboard when it was parked on New Caprica until it was once more humming for her, primed to leave that place behind. Her ship should be in motion, and she finds the stillness stifling.
Her office smells musty, and a small layer of dust coats her desk. She moves to the file boxes lining the wall, quickly locates what she seeks. She leans against the wall and eases herself down to sit on the floor. Laura's been weaker the past few days. She tries not to be self-conscious about the way her clothes gape and hang on her too-thin frame, about the chunks of hair she finds on their pillow each morning.
She opens the file, and the images from the Temple of Five spill across her lap. The mandala from her dream is scattered across a dozen photographs. She seems to see the wheels spinning, concentric chess boards representing time itself. She shuts her eyes and fights a wave of nausea. The diloxin, she thinks, gives physical form to her terror at the idea of playing this role over and over for eternity.
She picks up the next image. The mandala is on the floor of the temple. A path leads away from it, toward the giant pillar in the center, hard geometrical lines in contrast to the frenzied spinning. The path envelops the mandala; the pillar dwarfs it.
Suddenly there's a flash of light, and Laura feels like she's falling. The room swims, and she's standing at the center, the mandala swirling around her. The path leads out, long and straight. Once again, Kara Thrace stands there, holding out her hand.
"It's time," Kara says.
"It has to be me?" Laura asks hesitantly.
"The first, the leader," Kara answers. "Yes, Madam President, it has to be you." She pauses and smiles. "There's nothing so terrible about death."
Laura takes Kara's hand, feels it warm and strong in her own. "Will you," Laura begins, turning to look at Kara. "The fleet, and-" She won't let herself single out Bill. "You'll take care of them," she asks.
Kara nods, squeezes her hand. "I will. Now this way."
Laura releases Kara's hand and steps away from the spinning mandala, out onto the path beyond.
***
She wakes on a gurney, people bustling around her. She hears Bill shouting, hears Jack Cottle shouting, smells antiseptic and cigarette smoke: the unmistakable scent of sickbay.
"Bill?" Her voice sounds raspy and far away to her own ears.
His hand grips hers, and she feels him lean in close. "It's okay, Laura. It's going to be okay," he whispers.
"Kara. She's not a Cylon." She tries to open her eyes against the bright light. "We need-"
"Shhh," Bill soothes, "we can talk about it later." She feels his hand against her cheek. On her other side, rubber-clad hands yank up her sleeve, prick her arm with a needle.
"No, now." She forces her eyes open, sees his face floating above her, flashes of Cottle's white hair and white coat. "It's important, Bill. We have to listen to Kara. We have to follow her. Promise me."
"Laura, we don't need to decide this right now."
"Promise me, Bill."
He opens his mouth to protest again, but then concedes. "I promise." Another time he would have fought her-despite having argued in favor of following Kara for weeks-but not now.
"All right," she says. The drugs are starting to lull her back to peace. The noise of sickbay fades away, and she can hear only Galactica, her pulsing slow and steady, in time with Laura's own breath.
***
The next morning they jump to the first of Kara's coordinates, and Laura's the sickest she's been since the last time she died. Cottle released her from sickbay, but she's been ordered to stay in bed; Bill's quarters are empty, dark, and quiet.
She feels the jump: the familiar, uncomfortable sensation of the body pulled away stomach-first. For a moment afterwards, everything is utterly still, and Laura wonders if she's died without realizing it. Then they begin to move again, forward and purposefully, and she can feel every ship in the fleet singing through her veins, all of her people making their way to their new life. She closes her eyes and smiles. Now it's time.