![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Song of the Open Road
Author: elly427
Summary: Strong and content I travel the open road.
Rating: PG. Spoilers for the entire series up to Daybreak. Mostly gen with a little Kara/Lee.
Disclaimer: Absolutely not mine.
A/N: For my flist. Because I still think Lee got a happy ending. Title and poem are from Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road.
AFOOT and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
[][][]
"Today . . . is the first day of the rest of your life, Lee."
[][][]
He's got connections enough to make sure he gets the supplies he wants. He'd packed the survival gear onto the shuttles himself when they were moving to thebasestar and it comes to mind when Romo asks if there's anything he wants.
A spare pair of boots, a tarp, a bedroll, a bottle of water purification pills and a hiking bag. It's all he figures he'll need.
He doesn't tell anyone he's going, just lets himself be counted in the same group as the Agathons. He figures they'll be able to use his share of the supplies.
It's just before dawn when he rises and quietly folds his bedroll. If he stays any longer he'll stay forever, and he can't. His pack sits comfortably on his shoulders and he shifts it just a little so it's more balanced.
When he leaves, he doesn't look back.
[][][]
There is a lot to learn. He has six, no seven years as a scout, two half-year courses of survival training and a life time fondness for adventure stories. He's not sure it will be enough, but he hopes so.
Rubbing two sticks together is a lot harder than he remembers but he's only got twenty three matches and he's trying to save them for absolute emergencies.
On more than one occasion it takes him so long to get a good fire going he can barely wait for whatever he managed to trap or trick or scavenge that day to warm through before he tears into it with sharp teeth.
It makes him uncomfortable. He thought he'd left the rest of humanity to escape this sort of . . . barbarism. He doesn't like looking down at blood-stained hands greasy with barely rendered fat. He's already had too much blood on his hands.
The alternative, though, is starving to death so instead he gets better at setting up his kindling, figures out how to carefully wrap and carry a coal with him that he can fan and blow to life quicker than he can create friction.
He is learning.
[][][]
Most mornings he wakes and runs.
The grasses swish and sway around him and sometimes he closes his eyes and remembers pounding through the metal corridors of Galactica. It makes the sun on his skin and the plains around him all the more amazing when he opens his eyes again.
He wakes one morning to find a herd of four-legged horned animals at the edge of the trees he'd slept in. The problem with exploring, he thinks to himself with a grin, is having to name everything.
In the beginning he'd kept a notebook with short descriptions of everything he'd seen and found. He'd stopped, because it was ridiculous. He wasn't going to forget this and there's no one else around to read it.
The animals let him walk right into the middle of the herd, some coming close enough that they brush against him. Their gentle lowing and clicking noises are comforting, and he wanders among them for most of the morning.
[][][]
He purposely doesn't keep track of the days. It's a little freedom that he affords himself. He's gone from a life where his every hour was scheduled to this one, and he will take the simple pleasures where he can find them.
It's been weeks, maybe months when he trips and falls and his own voice is cracked and rusty from disuse when he curses the tree root. The sound echos across the savanna and he stops short. One more thing from his old life he no longer needs.
He spends the rest of the day singing out loud, sings every song he can remember or even half remember. He forgets entire stretches of lyrics of what were his favorite songs and it drives him nuts, knowing he'll never know what comes next.
At dusk his throat aches and his tongue is swollen and dusty. He switches to humming lullabies and falls asleep in the middle of one.
He hears singing in his dreams, a low, soft alto continuing on, filling in some of the words he had forgotten.
[][][]
He crosses paths with small groups of the locals but tries to avoid them as much as possible. He does watch them though, hidden in the grass. He figures out what they're eating without too much trial and error and it helps supplement his own meager ability to hunt and gather. He's a good shot but he only has his handgun and one extra clip that he doesn't want to waste.
He watches them though, and eh figures out which plants they're eating and learns to scavenge from the kill of the big cats between when they are done and the other scavengers arrive.
It's disgusting, it is, but most days his hunger overwhelms his revulsion, and the meat is still fresh when he gets to it. He thinks they were lucky to find such a lush planet, that Kara - or the hand of the gods, or -
And that way madness lies, so he sits and waits for the cats to slink away from their latest meal, sated and sleepy. He is smarter and faster and more clever than any other animal on this planet. He uses it to his advantage.
[][][]
So. He walks and runs and eats and sleeps. Some times he lays on his back in the grass, closes his eyes and lets the heat sink in. It's a good life. Not one he thought he'd ever have, but a life none the less.
[][][]
Mostly, he doesn't think. Doesn't think about anything. He doesn't think about his father or Roslin or the life he left behind. Doesn't think about Dee or how she would have loved it here, happy just to be alive and out of space, no longer on the run.
Doesn't think about Kara or the Kara who came back to him or the Kara who left.
He doesn't think beyond whether to head left, right or straight ahead in the morning, and whether to stop for the night in the shelter of this tree or the next. By the time the sun goes down and he's cooked whatever he's caught or scavenged that day he falls into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
No, Lee doesn't think about any of those things for weeks.
It takes a thunderstorm to get him to stop early one afternoon. Hours stretch out before him without the promise of forward motion to distract him. He huddles in low bushes and knows he can't risk setting up any poles so he wraps his tarp around him and waits.
The thoughts start to creep in insidiously and he's almost ready to get up and start walking again when lightening strikes close enough that the earth shakes and he is blinded.
You should never have let your father leave like that. Should have made him promise to come back.
"Frak!" he says out loud. No one answers. Of course no one answers. He doesn't know what he was expecting.
What the frak were you thinking, going off on your own?
He concentrates on not thinking, but the thoughts and the doubts and the regrets creep in. His mind whirls and races and he finds himself breathing hard, heart pounding.
You've doomed them all, insisting they split up and flying their only advantage into the sun. Idiot. Murder.
Water finds its way into his collar and the wind starts to pick up and really howl. He doesn't know how long he can go on like this and he squeezes his eyes shut.
You should have fought for her. Made her stay. You knew - you knew. What ever she was, it never made a difference, and you should have fought.
It's late, or early depending on how he looks at it, when he feels something warm by his side. He jerks awake from his half doze and her name is on his lips before he can stop himself. He remembers the dream, remembers sitting next to her on Kobol on a night something like this. He wants so badly for her to be beside him, for her hand to fall on his shoulder that he lets out a bark of laughter that sounds more like a sob by the time it makes its way out of his mouth.
He can't help himself, reaches a hand out and finds nothing but the rain-soaked earth. His laughter is more than a little hysterical and when it turns into tears, into great, body-wracking sobs he is almost grateful.
[][][]
This storm, like any other, passes and by first light he is on his way again, eyes swollen and sensitive to the breaking dawn. He feels oddly light, but still stops at midday to nap in the tall grass.
[][][]
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road
[][][]
The terrain starts to change, plains giving way to low rolling hills. The weather changes too, and he wishes he had thought to take a water-proof jacket.
[][][]
He heads towards the mountains because they're somewhere to go. He hadn't exactly been thinking literally when he'd told Kara he wanted to go climb mountains, but it seems like as good an idea as any.
The first uphill climbs stretch muscles he hasn't used in what feels like years. He looks down one day to find his entire body has changed. Bulky muscle has become long and lean. His skin is shades darker than it has ever been and his hair has bleached out in the sun. It's long enough that he can tie it back now, and between the ponytail and the beard he knows he looks ridiculous, but there's no one to see.
[][][]
It takes three days to reach his first peak. When he finally gets to the top, he's so full of joy and energy and life that for one moment he wants her there with him so badly he can't breathe.
He'd thought he was over her being gone, had decided that he'd gotten over that years ago when she first disappeared into the storm that she maybe never came back from.
He just misses her sometimes, like in moments like these when all of the running and the fighting and the fear seems like maybe it was worth it, and he just wishes she could be here to feel it too.
[][][]
He's halfway up the rock face when he hears her.
"You're an idiot."
He almost lets go. Almost, but he knows he was the one who fashioned the rudimentary climbing gear and he doesn't want to put it through unnecessary tests or strain. He's not ready to die.
Not yet.
He lets go with one hand and reaches up for the next crevice.
The breeze feels like her sigh along his cheek. He has to concentrate so he doesn't close his eyes and start remembering.
He ignores her, can't shake his head to clear her voice but wants to. Instead he concentrates on his breathing, on hand over hand until he finally finds the top. He hauls himself up and over and rolls to his back, lets his legs dangle over the edge.
"Are you happy?" He blinks.
"Lee," she says and he sighs and closes his eyes. He doesn't want to not see her next to him.
"I'm alive, Kara. I'm alive."
It's not an answer, and they both know it. She's not real, though, so that makes things a little better. He rolls to his feet and continues the climb.
[][][]
There are easier paths he could have taken, he thinks as he eases along the narrow edge of a cliff face. A particularly strong breeze throws him and his pack off balance just enough that he is left clinging to the wall with his finger nails.
This is stupid. Stupid and dangerous and he is likely going to fall to his death, and if not today then tomorrow. Or worse, he will fall or trip and break his leg and then die a slower, more painful death before something lithe and quiet sneaks up on him and eats him alive.
Part of him, the part he hoped he left behind on Galactica, feels sorry for himself that no one will ever know and no one will ever care about the tragic end of Lee Adama.
It takes him a second before he snorts out loud at the thought.
Idiot, he thinks, and this time she doesn't even have to be there to say it.
The bleating of the mountain goat, so close and so loud, makes him scramble hard, his feet sliding against smooth rock. The two of them stop and stare at each other before the goat shakes his head in his general direction and all but flounces away, over terrain Lee could never hope to scale.
His laughter is loud and rings against the cliff face, and he inches his way forward.
He still chooses the hardest route to the summit.
[][][]
The top of another mountain, wind in his hair and in his beard.
He stands at the edge of a cliff, the highest point he can reach and closes his eyes, lets his body sway with the wind.
In his ear he hears "Jump."
He freezes, every muscle clenching. The air swirls around him, lifts his hair and his clothes and he almost feels like he is being lifted up, up, up.
He takes a breath, then another, finds he is on his tip toes, leaning forward, ready for flight once more.
He opens his eyes and the view is spectacular, dizzying, terrifying.
He takes a step back,
He hears her voice again, full of joy and relief. "Good. That's enough of that."
She's right. He finds his way down the mountain and mostly sticks to the lower passes after that.
[][][]
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
[][][]
He walks. Walks and walks, and his pace is steady through mountains, then jungles, then fertile river deltas.
He reaches a body of water so great that he sits down at the edge and stops thinking.
Stops wondering if his father is still alive, if Laura is, if Gaius Baltar made it, if Ellen and Tigh are finally happy.
He stops and sits and looks out over the water and stays there for hours, well past sundown, well past when he knows he needs to find shelter and light a fire. Instead he sits and listens to the waves crash against the shore.
He needs to make a decision, needs to decide. The last place he saw Kara was this continent. He knows vaguely where he is thanks to the maps in his pack. He knows enough to know this isn't a lake. If he crosses here, if he leaves this land, he leaves her behind.
"You're being stupid."
"Am I?" He doesn't know.
"You've got the smarts, and the knowledge from the Colonial Scouts."
He doesn't ask how she knows about that.
"I-" he starts.
Her tone is soft, almost like he's never heard from her. "Lee. You're being ridiculous. I know you. You can't stop yet. You're not ready to stop yet."
And he knows he isn't. He's just not sure he's ready to let go of her yet.
[][][]
That night he dreams of New Caprica, dreams of making love to her on the soft, sandy earth, dreams of her eyes and her hair and her breasts, all lit by the moonlight.
She sighs his name as she comes and rests her head on his chest, just where his heart beats under his skin. Her hand flexes in time to the rhythm on his waist, and his arms pull her closer, closer and closer until she becomes a part of him, a part of his body, and there is nowhere that they are not joined.
He wakes suddenly, hands and mouth full of sand from sleeping on the beach. He can't shake the image or the feel of their merged bodies. He knows what it means and he can't believe he's still that much a romantic, still that much in love with her.
[][][]
The next day he starts his boat.
He wasn't lying to her, he really does want to sail the oceans. While he's an able sailor thanks to his mother's insistence at lessons at the yacht club, he's no engineer.
He manages to cobble together something that's closer to a catamaran than he ever imagined being able to build out of two hollowed tree trunks and bamboo that had cut his hands to ribbons when trying to weave it. It's more than he ever anticipated being able to build, and he silently thanks Romo for adding the small ax to his take.
The day he finishes, the night before he leaves, he builds the biggest fire he's built so far. He wishes he had some part of her to burn, to remember, but he doesn't.
Instead he sits close enough to the flames that the soles of his boots start to melt. The heat closes one of the holes and he laughs out loud at his idiotic fortune when he discovers it. A good omen, he hopes.
His sleep is sound like it hasn't been since before the colonies ended.
[][][]
The morning of launch he wakes with the dawn, watches it colour the world he has known so far. He brews his last cup of algae coffee and then buries the ashes of his fire.
The sea is calm as he pushes the boat from shore. It's like all of the luck he never had in his entire life is coming home to roost.
[][][]
Being on the open water is exhilarating after he gets used to the idea that he's not going to sink. His tarp makes a better sail than expected and he and the ship move like he hasn't since he was in space.
Still, he stays close enough to the coast that he thinks he could swim if something happened to the boat, and close enough he can make it to shore when storms come up unexpectedly. Every two or three days he finds a harbour and pulls everything to shore so he can sleep and eat and find more water.
It's hard work but it's good work. Sailing is enough like flying that once he gets into it he almost finds it relaxing.
A breeze whips around him and blows his hair into his face and he'd swear he hears laughter, loud and rolling on the wind.
[][][]
He loses any sense of the passing of days on the ocean. It's easier than walking and he finds he doesn't miss the exercise.
The ocean changes colour, grey-green to azure blue, blue like he's never seen in nature, blue that's nothing like the seas on Caprica or Picon.
He decides to head for shore and stay a while. He navigates between islands that are nothing more than rocks shooting up from the sea and others that seem big enough to be land.
[][][]
The land here is even more lush that the continent he left. Trees and vines grow thick and wild and make it hard to move too far inland.
There are more mountains here too, but the thought of climbing them makes his knees and his back ache. He laughs out loud at that. Apollo, scourge of the cylon raiders, too tired to walk up a hill, felled by his own body.
He takes a vacation, finds a beach with a natural breakwater and a lagoon and teaches himself to spear fish. It's a long, slow process, but he is patient enough to let the fish come to him, to get close enough to nibble on his worm-like toes before he strikes.
His first catch is from a school of something silver and slow moving. When he finally pulls his cobbled-together spear from the water with a flopping body on the other end, he throws his head back and shouts to the sky like a wild man, does a celebratory dance. He is Lee Adama! Conqueror of nature! Hunter of fish! Master of the sea and the land!
That is, of course, the exact moment the fish flops off the end of his spear and struggles away, too quick for his stunned hands.
[][][]
He stays a long time at the beach. The wide-leafed plants at the edge of the sand provide shelter and there's food enough.
He swims naked in the water, lies on the beach and suns himself. The last of his space-pale skin evens out with the rest of his tan. It's almost exactly what he'd pictured himself doing once everything was over, doing nothing but what ever he wants.
Sometimes he lies on the beach or in the warm, shallow water. He thinks about her and touches himself, spends what feels like hours thinking about her lips, her mouth, that curving spot where her breasts met the rest of her torso, of her teasing eyes and how she'd felt around him that night on New Caprica, how she would have felt that night in her apartment on Caprica, how he would have touched her that drunken day in the bunk room, in the raptor if he hadn't stopped her, or in her cell after she returned.
It almost feels like sacrilege as he thrusts lazily into his fist and imagines it's her wicked mouth but she can't be here with him, as much as he wishes she could.
Besides, it's just one more way to remember, and he thinks she might even appreciate it. Then he closes his eyes and it is her mouth around his cock, wicked and warm and so godsdamned perfect.
He comes, comes and gasps and arches, and once he's done he lies in the sun, panting.
It's perfect here. Almost.
[][][]
He stays on the beach longer than he's stayed anywhere else, but after what might be years the soles of his feet feel itchy and every day he finds himself exploring further and further.
The day he does too far to make it back to the beach, the day he finds himself sleeping huddled under a tree during the nightly rainstorm, he decides it's time to go.
In the morning he has his entire campsite packed up in an hour and he whistles as he heads inland.
[][][]
He goes where he wants, follows the path of least resistance for the most part. He wanders without aim, stops when he's tired or the spot looks like a good place to stay a while. He follows a goat path through the rugged hills and follows the natural trails through the woods.
He crosses through the last mountain pass as the sun breaks through the clouds overhead. He stops and takes a breath and surveys the land and water before him.
It's a good place, something inside him tells him, and it's a voice he learned to trust years ago, the first time he sat in a viper.
Besides, his knees ache and his back is stiff. He's ready when her voice says "Seriously, Lee. What are you still trying to prove?" and he laughs, loud and joyous, like before she was gone.
"Nothing," he says, and spreads his arms to the sunlight. "Nothing at all."
[][][]
He tries to build a house, something permanent, but his construction skills, frankly, suck. The third time the tentative frame crashes down around him he gives up.
He finds a cliff close by with caves that stay dry even as the ocean crashes below. The view is stunning and the pathway is only treacherous when it rains.
He settles his bedroll near the back and sweeps the dried animal droppings out the front before he reconsiders and decides to use them for fuel.
The first night he stays there he catches an unsuspecting sea bird that had the misfortune to land on his front step. It tastes salty and fishy and he learns his lesson.
[][][]
No dreams, those first few nights, and that's what convinces him it's a good place. When they do start they are of Kara and his brother and his father and his mother, and they are all happy. An even better place, he decides.
[][][]
He still wanders, still goes out and about and left and right, sometimes for what must be weeks. He tries to keep track of how long he's been gone with marks on small branches he carries but he inevitably forgets to mark them and loses track. It still doesn't feel important.
He always finds his way back to his little home. The salt air and the breeze feel like peace to him, even if it's something he can't explain.
[][][]
It doesn't occur to him to be lonely until the day he turns a corner and finds a small group of colonials trooping in the direction of his valley.
His first thought is to turn around, to turn and run before anyone spots him, before anyone recognizes him.
He's in the midst of doing just that when a Leoben appears through the trees on his left. The other - man, Lee supposes he owes the cylon that much - freezes much as Lee had, but relaxes much quicker.
Leoben makes his way through the brush quickly and quietly.
"Adama," he says once he is standing before him.
He nods; there's no use in denying it, even though part of him suspects it means his end.
Instead of the blow Lee expects, Leoben grins. His hand finds Lee's shoulder and his grip is firm but not tight.
"God has blessed us here, then, to find you." Lee shakes his head at that, his own faith still a nebulous thing.
"Come. The others will be excited to see you."
It's on Lee's lips to refuse, to refuse and slip back to his home, to pack up every sign and every trace and start his journey again.
Then he thinks he hears her, chiding. "Lee. You're lonely."
The wind whips around both of them, sudden and warm, and Lee watches the way the other man closes his eyes and smiles.
"Come with me," Leoben says, squeezing Lee's shoulder before he turns and sets off.
Lee hesitates until the wind pushes at his back. Then he follows.
[][][]
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever
I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)
[][][]
Someone makes the mistake of asking him what he calls this valley, and he says "Delphi" since he's been thinking about that night, and all the nights that followed it, in Kara's apartment, since he arrived here and dreamed about it. After that first, fraught night (and even during it, if he is honest, and he is trying to be these days ) he was happy there with her and Zak, and so was she.
The young woman frowns - she couldn't have been more than 13 when the cylons struck - and mutters that they are trying to start fresh. Lee realizes there will be no New Caprica on Earth, but it's too late to stop Delphi from sticking.
[][][]
The feel of people near makes him feel antsy after all this time. He feels like it's his own fault, since he proved they could live here.
He stays mostly to himself, except when he can't, and when his hip pops out of joint and needs to be reset, he can't.
Mitchell is the closest thing they have to a doctor and his son Machaon comes daily to make sure he hasn't done something stupid like get out of bed while he mends.
"I'm past those days," Lee says, and realizes at the same moment that he's old now, for their people.
Mac binds his hip and empties his make-shift bed pan and shows no sense of embarrassment.
[][][]
His hip has long healed, only twinging when a storm is bearing down.
He's halfway along his favorite mountain trail when the chest pains hits.
"You're an idiot" and even despite the pain and the fear he might be dying, he is so glad to hear her voice despite the intervening years.
"I thought I'd left you," he wheezes, bends over and tried to catch his breath as he clutches his chest. He had. He hasn't heard her for so long.
"Lee," she says, chiding, and he hears "I've never been gone."
"You're okay," she says instead and he thinks he feels a gentle weight on his shoulder, her hand soft and soothing.
When he looks up he sees two of the teenagers from the settlement rushing up the path towards him. He closes his eyes and tries to catch his breath.
[][][]
"No more exploring alone," Mac says to him as he puts his self-fashioned stethoscope away.
"Sure," Lee says, still breathing hard.
"I mean it," Mac says, and Lee hears Kara laugh.
[][][]
Weeks, months later he dreams of her, the first time in a long time.
Her hair is down to her waist, golden and loose in the sunlight.
She laughs when he sees her, turns tail and runs across the savanna.
He gives chase, smiling the entire time.
[][][]
He wakes, wheezing like a man of his age shouldn't be. For a brief moment he wishes he had agreed to move closer to the others, but he hadn't, so instead he sits with his feet dangling over his cliff, breathing hard and rubbing his chest.
Dawn breaks and he slowly feels himself begin to relax. The warm rays are comforting and he lets himself drift with the sounds of the waves.
He feels someone sit next to him, feels them gather him close, arms pulling him into soft, rich curves.
"You need to stop." He doesn't say anything, just takes long, deep breaths of her.
"I mean it, Lee. It's too soon. You're barely fifty. It's too soon."
He nods, rubs his face against her familiar neck. "I know," he says. "It seems like too soon. But a man's heart can only be broken so many times."
He feels dampness in his hair. He suspects it's the ocean breeze, but he is lulled by the feel of her breath under his heart, by the sound of her heart.
"Too young," she says and gathers him closer to her.
"I never expected to live this long," he replies and drifts back to sleep.
Three of the settlement children find him about to slip off the cliff. They drag him back and one runs to get her parents.
[][][]
He's alone less often after that. Someone always manages to drop by each day, whether to drop off fresh game or ask for his advice.
It annoys him at first. He spent years on his own, without any regard for the opinion of others. Having people ask his council and demand his opinion is irritating at first.
But he comes to realize, as he talks, that he has knowledge, and it was never his intention to strand his people on Earth without the means to get by.
A man comes to see him, tall, broad shouldered, stout. He sits and looks out at the ocean and doesn't speak for a while. Lee likes him already.
"You knew my father," he says, scraping a rock against another in his hands like a nervous habit. "Hot Dog. Brendan."
Lee nods for him to continue.
"He died, a long time ago. Fever. Something he caught from the animals we were trying to tend. But before that, at night, when I was scared, he used to tell me stories. Stories about pilots, about the deck crew, about life on Galactica."
Lee nods around the sudden lump in his throat, looks out over the water.
"I want you to know I'm going to tell those stories to my children. My wife - well, I think she's pregnant, if her hormone swings and cravings are any indication." The boy smiles, and Lee can't hide his smile in return.
"You - you and what you and all the other pilots did, well." He pauses, then pitches the rock over the cliff edge. "You'll be remembered, you and what you did. We'll see to it."
Lee nods. He doesn't have words. Neither does Nick, who levers himself up from the ground and heads back down the ridge.
[][][]
Nicky's words make him restless, make him ready. He heads for the hills again, climbs mountains just to say he can, ancient as his bones feel.
He comes back with scrapes and bruises and more often than not broken bones. Mac clucks his tongue when he limps back into the village again, but doesn't try to warn him off.
"Too much stress, the wrong distribution of vitamins for too long, I'd guess. You probably managed to eat something poisonous enough along the way that it did some damage to your cardiovascular system, but we'll never know for sure." Mac presses his fingers to the pulse in Lee's wrist and shakes his head subtly.
Lee doesn't say anything, too antsy to set out again.
"If I tell you to move down with the rest of us, to stay still, that's just going to encourage you, isn't it?" Lee can't help but grin wide, and he sees Mac fight his own grin even as he rolls his eyes.
"Be more careful," the other man admonishes and Lee nods obediently, like he used to with Cottle.
[][][]
He dreams more, now. Some nights he wakes in the middle of them and gasps for air, thinks he's on a failing ship.
Laura. His father. Dee. Zak. Kara. It becomes a mess in his mind and in those moments he can no longer tell what he dreamed and what he lived.
He wakes one night to find himself at the edge of the cliff, rain pelting down and stinging his skin. His mind is blissfully empty and for a moment, for a moment he thinks of staying there, on the edge, until his tired legs give out.
But some part of his fuzzy mind remembers making a choice, years ago, Kara's voice in his ear and breath dancing on his skin. He steps back and curls into a wet ball on his pallet.
[][][]
The fever is unavoidable. He shivers and shakes and sees what feels like anyone he ever met before the fall parade through the cave in front of him. Mac's wife bathes his forehead as her husband tries to feed him teas and herbs. He wants to tell them not to bother, but he is still a fighter, still scared of what lies beyond despite everything. Maybe because of everything.
He doesn't hear her voice at all, and it could be that's what pulls him through.
[][][]
Even after his recovery the fever leaves him weak, leaves his bones unsettled. He gets halfway up his favorite trail before he has to sit and catch his breath.
He never meant for it to end like this. He thought something bigger, something more than his frail body would lead to his end. He wants, desperately, for one long moment, to be like those he loved, sacrificing for something more than this, a life well lived.
Instead he catches his breath as he leans against a rock, then heads back towards his home.
His exploration is done. He expects his days are approaching the same.
[][][]
It's quiet and dark but something wakes him. He gets to his feet and it's not the struggle it has been for the past little while.
He wanders outside and the moon is so bright he can see every detail on her face, of her body.
"I'm ready," he says and stands tall, stands they way he hasn't since that time he dropped awkwardly from the cliff side on the previous continent and crunched some precious, vital bone. It's true; he can feel himself leaving, and he wonders if this is what it was like for her.
She looks at him, face open and curious. He's never seen her with this kind of clarity, with this absence of fear. He wishes he recognized it earlier. She's with him now in the same way she has been his entire life, but even he can tell this time is different.
He feels her hand on his skin, on his face, for the first time in years. Decades.
"Are you?" she asks, but it's less of a question than it should be.
He nods and feels her nails scrape gently along the line of his suddenly-shaven jaw.
"I'm done," he says. "There's nothing left. Not without you." She grins and it breaks into a smile and her eyes are luminous and it all gathers and spins and rolls and she is so bright he can't see her, except he can, Kara, hair short like the first time he met her, shoulders back and mouth wide and grinning, waiting for him.
"Okay," she says, and her arms find him and wrap themselves around him, pulling him on.
Lee surrenders, like he never has before, and her laughter fills him up completely.
[][][]
Coda:
They find his body the morning after. He is sitting just outside his home, and for a second they think he is asleep.
Mac's fingers feel for a pulse, but there's nothing there but skin warm from the sun and a smile on the man's face.
They close his eyes and wrap him up in the tarp he carried will him on his wandering. A fitting shroud.
His body burns and the back of Mac's neck prickles at the laughter that seems to dance around them when Lee is finally released to the air and to whatever else is waiting for him.
They spread his ashes on the sea and along the trails he loved so much.
His journey continues.
[][][]
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all
that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Author: elly427
Summary: Strong and content I travel the open road.
Rating: PG. Spoilers for the entire series up to Daybreak. Mostly gen with a little Kara/Lee.
Disclaimer: Absolutely not mine.
A/N: For my flist. Because I still think Lee got a happy ending. Title and poem are from Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road.
AFOOT and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
[][][]
"Today . . . is the first day of the rest of your life, Lee."
[][][]
He's got connections enough to make sure he gets the supplies he wants. He'd packed the survival gear onto the shuttles himself when they were moving to thebasestar and it comes to mind when Romo asks if there's anything he wants.
A spare pair of boots, a tarp, a bedroll, a bottle of water purification pills and a hiking bag. It's all he figures he'll need.
He doesn't tell anyone he's going, just lets himself be counted in the same group as the Agathons. He figures they'll be able to use his share of the supplies.
It's just before dawn when he rises and quietly folds his bedroll. If he stays any longer he'll stay forever, and he can't. His pack sits comfortably on his shoulders and he shifts it just a little so it's more balanced.
When he leaves, he doesn't look back.
[][][]
There is a lot to learn. He has six, no seven years as a scout, two half-year courses of survival training and a life time fondness for adventure stories. He's not sure it will be enough, but he hopes so.
Rubbing two sticks together is a lot harder than he remembers but he's only got twenty three matches and he's trying to save them for absolute emergencies.
On more than one occasion it takes him so long to get a good fire going he can barely wait for whatever he managed to trap or trick or scavenge that day to warm through before he tears into it with sharp teeth.
It makes him uncomfortable. He thought he'd left the rest of humanity to escape this sort of . . . barbarism. He doesn't like looking down at blood-stained hands greasy with barely rendered fat. He's already had too much blood on his hands.
The alternative, though, is starving to death so instead he gets better at setting up his kindling, figures out how to carefully wrap and carry a coal with him that he can fan and blow to life quicker than he can create friction.
He is learning.
[][][]
Most mornings he wakes and runs.
The grasses swish and sway around him and sometimes he closes his eyes and remembers pounding through the metal corridors of Galactica. It makes the sun on his skin and the plains around him all the more amazing when he opens his eyes again.
He wakes one morning to find a herd of four-legged horned animals at the edge of the trees he'd slept in. The problem with exploring, he thinks to himself with a grin, is having to name everything.
In the beginning he'd kept a notebook with short descriptions of everything he'd seen and found. He'd stopped, because it was ridiculous. He wasn't going to forget this and there's no one else around to read it.
The animals let him walk right into the middle of the herd, some coming close enough that they brush against him. Their gentle lowing and clicking noises are comforting, and he wanders among them for most of the morning.
[][][]
He purposely doesn't keep track of the days. It's a little freedom that he affords himself. He's gone from a life where his every hour was scheduled to this one, and he will take the simple pleasures where he can find them.
It's been weeks, maybe months when he trips and falls and his own voice is cracked and rusty from disuse when he curses the tree root. The sound echos across the savanna and he stops short. One more thing from his old life he no longer needs.
He spends the rest of the day singing out loud, sings every song he can remember or even half remember. He forgets entire stretches of lyrics of what were his favorite songs and it drives him nuts, knowing he'll never know what comes next.
At dusk his throat aches and his tongue is swollen and dusty. He switches to humming lullabies and falls asleep in the middle of one.
He hears singing in his dreams, a low, soft alto continuing on, filling in some of the words he had forgotten.
[][][]
He crosses paths with small groups of the locals but tries to avoid them as much as possible. He does watch them though, hidden in the grass. He figures out what they're eating without too much trial and error and it helps supplement his own meager ability to hunt and gather. He's a good shot but he only has his handgun and one extra clip that he doesn't want to waste.
He watches them though, and eh figures out which plants they're eating and learns to scavenge from the kill of the big cats between when they are done and the other scavengers arrive.
It's disgusting, it is, but most days his hunger overwhelms his revulsion, and the meat is still fresh when he gets to it. He thinks they were lucky to find such a lush planet, that Kara - or the hand of the gods, or -
And that way madness lies, so he sits and waits for the cats to slink away from their latest meal, sated and sleepy. He is smarter and faster and more clever than any other animal on this planet. He uses it to his advantage.
[][][]
So. He walks and runs and eats and sleeps. Some times he lays on his back in the grass, closes his eyes and lets the heat sink in. It's a good life. Not one he thought he'd ever have, but a life none the less.
[][][]
Mostly, he doesn't think. Doesn't think about anything. He doesn't think about his father or Roslin or the life he left behind. Doesn't think about Dee or how she would have loved it here, happy just to be alive and out of space, no longer on the run.
Doesn't think about Kara or the Kara who came back to him or the Kara who left.
He doesn't think beyond whether to head left, right or straight ahead in the morning, and whether to stop for the night in the shelter of this tree or the next. By the time the sun goes down and he's cooked whatever he's caught or scavenged that day he falls into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
No, Lee doesn't think about any of those things for weeks.
It takes a thunderstorm to get him to stop early one afternoon. Hours stretch out before him without the promise of forward motion to distract him. He huddles in low bushes and knows he can't risk setting up any poles so he wraps his tarp around him and waits.
The thoughts start to creep in insidiously and he's almost ready to get up and start walking again when lightening strikes close enough that the earth shakes and he is blinded.
You should never have let your father leave like that. Should have made him promise to come back.
"Frak!" he says out loud. No one answers. Of course no one answers. He doesn't know what he was expecting.
What the frak were you thinking, going off on your own?
He concentrates on not thinking, but the thoughts and the doubts and the regrets creep in. His mind whirls and races and he finds himself breathing hard, heart pounding.
You've doomed them all, insisting they split up and flying their only advantage into the sun. Idiot. Murder.
Water finds its way into his collar and the wind starts to pick up and really howl. He doesn't know how long he can go on like this and he squeezes his eyes shut.
You should have fought for her. Made her stay. You knew - you knew. What ever she was, it never made a difference, and you should have fought.
It's late, or early depending on how he looks at it, when he feels something warm by his side. He jerks awake from his half doze and her name is on his lips before he can stop himself. He remembers the dream, remembers sitting next to her on Kobol on a night something like this. He wants so badly for her to be beside him, for her hand to fall on his shoulder that he lets out a bark of laughter that sounds more like a sob by the time it makes its way out of his mouth.
He can't help himself, reaches a hand out and finds nothing but the rain-soaked earth. His laughter is more than a little hysterical and when it turns into tears, into great, body-wracking sobs he is almost grateful.
[][][]
This storm, like any other, passes and by first light he is on his way again, eyes swollen and sensitive to the breaking dawn. He feels oddly light, but still stops at midday to nap in the tall grass.
[][][]
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road
[][][]
The terrain starts to change, plains giving way to low rolling hills. The weather changes too, and he wishes he had thought to take a water-proof jacket.
[][][]
He heads towards the mountains because they're somewhere to go. He hadn't exactly been thinking literally when he'd told Kara he wanted to go climb mountains, but it seems like as good an idea as any.
The first uphill climbs stretch muscles he hasn't used in what feels like years. He looks down one day to find his entire body has changed. Bulky muscle has become long and lean. His skin is shades darker than it has ever been and his hair has bleached out in the sun. It's long enough that he can tie it back now, and between the ponytail and the beard he knows he looks ridiculous, but there's no one to see.
[][][]
It takes three days to reach his first peak. When he finally gets to the top, he's so full of joy and energy and life that for one moment he wants her there with him so badly he can't breathe.
He'd thought he was over her being gone, had decided that he'd gotten over that years ago when she first disappeared into the storm that she maybe never came back from.
He just misses her sometimes, like in moments like these when all of the running and the fighting and the fear seems like maybe it was worth it, and he just wishes she could be here to feel it too.
[][][]
He's halfway up the rock face when he hears her.
"You're an idiot."
He almost lets go. Almost, but he knows he was the one who fashioned the rudimentary climbing gear and he doesn't want to put it through unnecessary tests or strain. He's not ready to die.
Not yet.
He lets go with one hand and reaches up for the next crevice.
The breeze feels like her sigh along his cheek. He has to concentrate so he doesn't close his eyes and start remembering.
He ignores her, can't shake his head to clear her voice but wants to. Instead he concentrates on his breathing, on hand over hand until he finally finds the top. He hauls himself up and over and rolls to his back, lets his legs dangle over the edge.
"Are you happy?" He blinks.
"Lee," she says and he sighs and closes his eyes. He doesn't want to not see her next to him.
"I'm alive, Kara. I'm alive."
It's not an answer, and they both know it. She's not real, though, so that makes things a little better. He rolls to his feet and continues the climb.
[][][]
There are easier paths he could have taken, he thinks as he eases along the narrow edge of a cliff face. A particularly strong breeze throws him and his pack off balance just enough that he is left clinging to the wall with his finger nails.
This is stupid. Stupid and dangerous and he is likely going to fall to his death, and if not today then tomorrow. Or worse, he will fall or trip and break his leg and then die a slower, more painful death before something lithe and quiet sneaks up on him and eats him alive.
Part of him, the part he hoped he left behind on Galactica, feels sorry for himself that no one will ever know and no one will ever care about the tragic end of Lee Adama.
It takes him a second before he snorts out loud at the thought.
Idiot, he thinks, and this time she doesn't even have to be there to say it.
The bleating of the mountain goat, so close and so loud, makes him scramble hard, his feet sliding against smooth rock. The two of them stop and stare at each other before the goat shakes his head in his general direction and all but flounces away, over terrain Lee could never hope to scale.
His laughter is loud and rings against the cliff face, and he inches his way forward.
He still chooses the hardest route to the summit.
[][][]
The top of another mountain, wind in his hair and in his beard.
He stands at the edge of a cliff, the highest point he can reach and closes his eyes, lets his body sway with the wind.
In his ear he hears "Jump."
He freezes, every muscle clenching. The air swirls around him, lifts his hair and his clothes and he almost feels like he is being lifted up, up, up.
He takes a breath, then another, finds he is on his tip toes, leaning forward, ready for flight once more.
He opens his eyes and the view is spectacular, dizzying, terrifying.
He takes a step back,
He hears her voice again, full of joy and relief. "Good. That's enough of that."
She's right. He finds his way down the mountain and mostly sticks to the lower passes after that.
[][][]
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
[][][]
He walks. Walks and walks, and his pace is steady through mountains, then jungles, then fertile river deltas.
He reaches a body of water so great that he sits down at the edge and stops thinking.
Stops wondering if his father is still alive, if Laura is, if Gaius Baltar made it, if Ellen and Tigh are finally happy.
He stops and sits and looks out over the water and stays there for hours, well past sundown, well past when he knows he needs to find shelter and light a fire. Instead he sits and listens to the waves crash against the shore.
He needs to make a decision, needs to decide. The last place he saw Kara was this continent. He knows vaguely where he is thanks to the maps in his pack. He knows enough to know this isn't a lake. If he crosses here, if he leaves this land, he leaves her behind.
"You're being stupid."
"Am I?" He doesn't know.
"You've got the smarts, and the knowledge from the Colonial Scouts."
He doesn't ask how she knows about that.
"I-" he starts.
Her tone is soft, almost like he's never heard from her. "Lee. You're being ridiculous. I know you. You can't stop yet. You're not ready to stop yet."
And he knows he isn't. He's just not sure he's ready to let go of her yet.
[][][]
That night he dreams of New Caprica, dreams of making love to her on the soft, sandy earth, dreams of her eyes and her hair and her breasts, all lit by the moonlight.
She sighs his name as she comes and rests her head on his chest, just where his heart beats under his skin. Her hand flexes in time to the rhythm on his waist, and his arms pull her closer, closer and closer until she becomes a part of him, a part of his body, and there is nowhere that they are not joined.
He wakes suddenly, hands and mouth full of sand from sleeping on the beach. He can't shake the image or the feel of their merged bodies. He knows what it means and he can't believe he's still that much a romantic, still that much in love with her.
[][][]
The next day he starts his boat.
He wasn't lying to her, he really does want to sail the oceans. While he's an able sailor thanks to his mother's insistence at lessons at the yacht club, he's no engineer.
He manages to cobble together something that's closer to a catamaran than he ever imagined being able to build out of two hollowed tree trunks and bamboo that had cut his hands to ribbons when trying to weave it. It's more than he ever anticipated being able to build, and he silently thanks Romo for adding the small ax to his take.
The day he finishes, the night before he leaves, he builds the biggest fire he's built so far. He wishes he had some part of her to burn, to remember, but he doesn't.
Instead he sits close enough to the flames that the soles of his boots start to melt. The heat closes one of the holes and he laughs out loud at his idiotic fortune when he discovers it. A good omen, he hopes.
His sleep is sound like it hasn't been since before the colonies ended.
[][][]
The morning of launch he wakes with the dawn, watches it colour the world he has known so far. He brews his last cup of algae coffee and then buries the ashes of his fire.
The sea is calm as he pushes the boat from shore. It's like all of the luck he never had in his entire life is coming home to roost.
[][][]
Being on the open water is exhilarating after he gets used to the idea that he's not going to sink. His tarp makes a better sail than expected and he and the ship move like he hasn't since he was in space.
Still, he stays close enough to the coast that he thinks he could swim if something happened to the boat, and close enough he can make it to shore when storms come up unexpectedly. Every two or three days he finds a harbour and pulls everything to shore so he can sleep and eat and find more water.
It's hard work but it's good work. Sailing is enough like flying that once he gets into it he almost finds it relaxing.
A breeze whips around him and blows his hair into his face and he'd swear he hears laughter, loud and rolling on the wind.
[][][]
He loses any sense of the passing of days on the ocean. It's easier than walking and he finds he doesn't miss the exercise.
The ocean changes colour, grey-green to azure blue, blue like he's never seen in nature, blue that's nothing like the seas on Caprica or Picon.
He decides to head for shore and stay a while. He navigates between islands that are nothing more than rocks shooting up from the sea and others that seem big enough to be land.
[][][]
The land here is even more lush that the continent he left. Trees and vines grow thick and wild and make it hard to move too far inland.
There are more mountains here too, but the thought of climbing them makes his knees and his back ache. He laughs out loud at that. Apollo, scourge of the cylon raiders, too tired to walk up a hill, felled by his own body.
He takes a vacation, finds a beach with a natural breakwater and a lagoon and teaches himself to spear fish. It's a long, slow process, but he is patient enough to let the fish come to him, to get close enough to nibble on his worm-like toes before he strikes.
His first catch is from a school of something silver and slow moving. When he finally pulls his cobbled-together spear from the water with a flopping body on the other end, he throws his head back and shouts to the sky like a wild man, does a celebratory dance. He is Lee Adama! Conqueror of nature! Hunter of fish! Master of the sea and the land!
That is, of course, the exact moment the fish flops off the end of his spear and struggles away, too quick for his stunned hands.
[][][]
He stays a long time at the beach. The wide-leafed plants at the edge of the sand provide shelter and there's food enough.
He swims naked in the water, lies on the beach and suns himself. The last of his space-pale skin evens out with the rest of his tan. It's almost exactly what he'd pictured himself doing once everything was over, doing nothing but what ever he wants.
Sometimes he lies on the beach or in the warm, shallow water. He thinks about her and touches himself, spends what feels like hours thinking about her lips, her mouth, that curving spot where her breasts met the rest of her torso, of her teasing eyes and how she'd felt around him that night on New Caprica, how she would have felt that night in her apartment on Caprica, how he would have touched her that drunken day in the bunk room, in the raptor if he hadn't stopped her, or in her cell after she returned.
It almost feels like sacrilege as he thrusts lazily into his fist and imagines it's her wicked mouth but she can't be here with him, as much as he wishes she could.
Besides, it's just one more way to remember, and he thinks she might even appreciate it. Then he closes his eyes and it is her mouth around his cock, wicked and warm and so godsdamned perfect.
He comes, comes and gasps and arches, and once he's done he lies in the sun, panting.
It's perfect here. Almost.
[][][]
He stays on the beach longer than he's stayed anywhere else, but after what might be years the soles of his feet feel itchy and every day he finds himself exploring further and further.
The day he does too far to make it back to the beach, the day he finds himself sleeping huddled under a tree during the nightly rainstorm, he decides it's time to go.
In the morning he has his entire campsite packed up in an hour and he whistles as he heads inland.
[][][]
He goes where he wants, follows the path of least resistance for the most part. He wanders without aim, stops when he's tired or the spot looks like a good place to stay a while. He follows a goat path through the rugged hills and follows the natural trails through the woods.
He crosses through the last mountain pass as the sun breaks through the clouds overhead. He stops and takes a breath and surveys the land and water before him.
It's a good place, something inside him tells him, and it's a voice he learned to trust years ago, the first time he sat in a viper.
Besides, his knees ache and his back is stiff. He's ready when her voice says "Seriously, Lee. What are you still trying to prove?" and he laughs, loud and joyous, like before she was gone.
"Nothing," he says, and spreads his arms to the sunlight. "Nothing at all."
[][][]
He tries to build a house, something permanent, but his construction skills, frankly, suck. The third time the tentative frame crashes down around him he gives up.
He finds a cliff close by with caves that stay dry even as the ocean crashes below. The view is stunning and the pathway is only treacherous when it rains.
He settles his bedroll near the back and sweeps the dried animal droppings out the front before he reconsiders and decides to use them for fuel.
The first night he stays there he catches an unsuspecting sea bird that had the misfortune to land on his front step. It tastes salty and fishy and he learns his lesson.
[][][]
No dreams, those first few nights, and that's what convinces him it's a good place. When they do start they are of Kara and his brother and his father and his mother, and they are all happy. An even better place, he decides.
[][][]
He still wanders, still goes out and about and left and right, sometimes for what must be weeks. He tries to keep track of how long he's been gone with marks on small branches he carries but he inevitably forgets to mark them and loses track. It still doesn't feel important.
He always finds his way back to his little home. The salt air and the breeze feel like peace to him, even if it's something he can't explain.
[][][]
It doesn't occur to him to be lonely until the day he turns a corner and finds a small group of colonials trooping in the direction of his valley.
His first thought is to turn around, to turn and run before anyone spots him, before anyone recognizes him.
He's in the midst of doing just that when a Leoben appears through the trees on his left. The other - man, Lee supposes he owes the cylon that much - freezes much as Lee had, but relaxes much quicker.
Leoben makes his way through the brush quickly and quietly.
"Adama," he says once he is standing before him.
He nods; there's no use in denying it, even though part of him suspects it means his end.
Instead of the blow Lee expects, Leoben grins. His hand finds Lee's shoulder and his grip is firm but not tight.
"God has blessed us here, then, to find you." Lee shakes his head at that, his own faith still a nebulous thing.
"Come. The others will be excited to see you."
It's on Lee's lips to refuse, to refuse and slip back to his home, to pack up every sign and every trace and start his journey again.
Then he thinks he hears her, chiding. "Lee. You're lonely."
The wind whips around both of them, sudden and warm, and Lee watches the way the other man closes his eyes and smiles.
"Come with me," Leoben says, squeezing Lee's shoulder before he turns and sets off.
Lee hesitates until the wind pushes at his back. Then he follows.
[][][]
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever
I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)
[][][]
Someone makes the mistake of asking him what he calls this valley, and he says "Delphi" since he's been thinking about that night, and all the nights that followed it, in Kara's apartment, since he arrived here and dreamed about it. After that first, fraught night (and even during it, if he is honest, and he is trying to be these days ) he was happy there with her and Zak, and so was she.
The young woman frowns - she couldn't have been more than 13 when the cylons struck - and mutters that they are trying to start fresh. Lee realizes there will be no New Caprica on Earth, but it's too late to stop Delphi from sticking.
[][][]
The feel of people near makes him feel antsy after all this time. He feels like it's his own fault, since he proved they could live here.
He stays mostly to himself, except when he can't, and when his hip pops out of joint and needs to be reset, he can't.
Mitchell is the closest thing they have to a doctor and his son Machaon comes daily to make sure he hasn't done something stupid like get out of bed while he mends.
"I'm past those days," Lee says, and realizes at the same moment that he's old now, for their people.
Mac binds his hip and empties his make-shift bed pan and shows no sense of embarrassment.
[][][]
His hip has long healed, only twinging when a storm is bearing down.
He's halfway along his favorite mountain trail when the chest pains hits.
"You're an idiot" and even despite the pain and the fear he might be dying, he is so glad to hear her voice despite the intervening years.
"I thought I'd left you," he wheezes, bends over and tried to catch his breath as he clutches his chest. He had. He hasn't heard her for so long.
"Lee," she says, chiding, and he hears "I've never been gone."
"You're okay," she says instead and he thinks he feels a gentle weight on his shoulder, her hand soft and soothing.
When he looks up he sees two of the teenagers from the settlement rushing up the path towards him. He closes his eyes and tries to catch his breath.
[][][]
"No more exploring alone," Mac says to him as he puts his self-fashioned stethoscope away.
"Sure," Lee says, still breathing hard.
"I mean it," Mac says, and Lee hears Kara laugh.
[][][]
Weeks, months later he dreams of her, the first time in a long time.
Her hair is down to her waist, golden and loose in the sunlight.
She laughs when he sees her, turns tail and runs across the savanna.
He gives chase, smiling the entire time.
[][][]
He wakes, wheezing like a man of his age shouldn't be. For a brief moment he wishes he had agreed to move closer to the others, but he hadn't, so instead he sits with his feet dangling over his cliff, breathing hard and rubbing his chest.
Dawn breaks and he slowly feels himself begin to relax. The warm rays are comforting and he lets himself drift with the sounds of the waves.
He feels someone sit next to him, feels them gather him close, arms pulling him into soft, rich curves.
"You need to stop." He doesn't say anything, just takes long, deep breaths of her.
"I mean it, Lee. It's too soon. You're barely fifty. It's too soon."
He nods, rubs his face against her familiar neck. "I know," he says. "It seems like too soon. But a man's heart can only be broken so many times."
He feels dampness in his hair. He suspects it's the ocean breeze, but he is lulled by the feel of her breath under his heart, by the sound of her heart.
"Too young," she says and gathers him closer to her.
"I never expected to live this long," he replies and drifts back to sleep.
Three of the settlement children find him about to slip off the cliff. They drag him back and one runs to get her parents.
[][][]
He's alone less often after that. Someone always manages to drop by each day, whether to drop off fresh game or ask for his advice.
It annoys him at first. He spent years on his own, without any regard for the opinion of others. Having people ask his council and demand his opinion is irritating at first.
But he comes to realize, as he talks, that he has knowledge, and it was never his intention to strand his people on Earth without the means to get by.
A man comes to see him, tall, broad shouldered, stout. He sits and looks out at the ocean and doesn't speak for a while. Lee likes him already.
"You knew my father," he says, scraping a rock against another in his hands like a nervous habit. "Hot Dog. Brendan."
Lee nods for him to continue.
"He died, a long time ago. Fever. Something he caught from the animals we were trying to tend. But before that, at night, when I was scared, he used to tell me stories. Stories about pilots, about the deck crew, about life on Galactica."
Lee nods around the sudden lump in his throat, looks out over the water.
"I want you to know I'm going to tell those stories to my children. My wife - well, I think she's pregnant, if her hormone swings and cravings are any indication." The boy smiles, and Lee can't hide his smile in return.
"You - you and what you and all the other pilots did, well." He pauses, then pitches the rock over the cliff edge. "You'll be remembered, you and what you did. We'll see to it."
Lee nods. He doesn't have words. Neither does Nick, who levers himself up from the ground and heads back down the ridge.
[][][]
Nicky's words make him restless, make him ready. He heads for the hills again, climbs mountains just to say he can, ancient as his bones feel.
He comes back with scrapes and bruises and more often than not broken bones. Mac clucks his tongue when he limps back into the village again, but doesn't try to warn him off.
"Too much stress, the wrong distribution of vitamins for too long, I'd guess. You probably managed to eat something poisonous enough along the way that it did some damage to your cardiovascular system, but we'll never know for sure." Mac presses his fingers to the pulse in Lee's wrist and shakes his head subtly.
Lee doesn't say anything, too antsy to set out again.
"If I tell you to move down with the rest of us, to stay still, that's just going to encourage you, isn't it?" Lee can't help but grin wide, and he sees Mac fight his own grin even as he rolls his eyes.
"Be more careful," the other man admonishes and Lee nods obediently, like he used to with Cottle.
[][][]
He dreams more, now. Some nights he wakes in the middle of them and gasps for air, thinks he's on a failing ship.
Laura. His father. Dee. Zak. Kara. It becomes a mess in his mind and in those moments he can no longer tell what he dreamed and what he lived.
He wakes one night to find himself at the edge of the cliff, rain pelting down and stinging his skin. His mind is blissfully empty and for a moment, for a moment he thinks of staying there, on the edge, until his tired legs give out.
But some part of his fuzzy mind remembers making a choice, years ago, Kara's voice in his ear and breath dancing on his skin. He steps back and curls into a wet ball on his pallet.
[][][]
The fever is unavoidable. He shivers and shakes and sees what feels like anyone he ever met before the fall parade through the cave in front of him. Mac's wife bathes his forehead as her husband tries to feed him teas and herbs. He wants to tell them not to bother, but he is still a fighter, still scared of what lies beyond despite everything. Maybe because of everything.
He doesn't hear her voice at all, and it could be that's what pulls him through.
[][][]
Even after his recovery the fever leaves him weak, leaves his bones unsettled. He gets halfway up his favorite trail before he has to sit and catch his breath.
He never meant for it to end like this. He thought something bigger, something more than his frail body would lead to his end. He wants, desperately, for one long moment, to be like those he loved, sacrificing for something more than this, a life well lived.
Instead he catches his breath as he leans against a rock, then heads back towards his home.
His exploration is done. He expects his days are approaching the same.
[][][]
It's quiet and dark but something wakes him. He gets to his feet and it's not the struggle it has been for the past little while.
He wanders outside and the moon is so bright he can see every detail on her face, of her body.
"I'm ready," he says and stands tall, stands they way he hasn't since that time he dropped awkwardly from the cliff side on the previous continent and crunched some precious, vital bone. It's true; he can feel himself leaving, and he wonders if this is what it was like for her.
She looks at him, face open and curious. He's never seen her with this kind of clarity, with this absence of fear. He wishes he recognized it earlier. She's with him now in the same way she has been his entire life, but even he can tell this time is different.
He feels her hand on his skin, on his face, for the first time in years. Decades.
"Are you?" she asks, but it's less of a question than it should be.
He nods and feels her nails scrape gently along the line of his suddenly-shaven jaw.
"I'm done," he says. "There's nothing left. Not without you." She grins and it breaks into a smile and her eyes are luminous and it all gathers and spins and rolls and she is so bright he can't see her, except he can, Kara, hair short like the first time he met her, shoulders back and mouth wide and grinning, waiting for him.
"Okay," she says, and her arms find him and wrap themselves around him, pulling him on.
Lee surrenders, like he never has before, and her laughter fills him up completely.
[][][]
Coda:
They find his body the morning after. He is sitting just outside his home, and for a second they think he is asleep.
Mac's fingers feel for a pulse, but there's nothing there but skin warm from the sun and a smile on the man's face.
They close his eyes and wrap him up in the tarp he carried will him on his wandering. A fitting shroud.
His body burns and the back of Mac's neck prickles at the laughter that seems to dance around them when Lee is finally released to the air and to whatever else is waiting for him.
They spread his ashes on the sea and along the trails he loved so much.
His journey continues.
[][][]
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all
that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
Pastoral and revivifying and whanot. Whitman was also the most fitting of choices. (Which, obviously, you are already aware of!)
From:
no subject
Glad you liked it! And Whitman! Yes.
From:
no subject
Thanks. I am loving these stories.
From:
no subject
And the post-finale stories were what got me through this past week. Oh, show.
From:
no subject
*smooches*
I love the rhythm of this, of Lee's days, and how he finds a modicum of peace, even while carrying his broken heart with him. (I'll tell you that I've been thinking of something along these lines - i.e. Lee carries on - though my story's sort of the short, dark, bitter version. ;0P) I love Nicky, rememberer of heroes. I love Lee's reason for calling it Delphi. And I love his peaceful departure. Thank you for giving this Lee some kind of resolution.
From:
no subject
I would love love love to read your version. I thnk Lee needs as many endings as fandom can afford him.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Lee founded Greece. A little early but he did. :)
From:
no subject
And as for Greece, well, it's the obvious place to send him, right? ;)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I'm glad it was affecting, tara. (Also, I am finally at the point where your icon makes me laugh and laugh.)
From:
no subject
Just lovely work!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
This was really nice, a little heartbreaking, but fitting.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
(Also, your icon. Le sigh.)
From:
I love the last line
thank you. this was beautiful
From:
Re: I love the last line
From:
no subject
I'm so moved.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
This actually made me cry.
Because that's kind of how I pictured Lee going off to explore.
That was immensely beautiful. Need to go and pull myself together now.
From:
no subject
Thanks for reading!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
And I think Lee had Kara with him for the rest of his life, no matter where he was and what he did. I do! It makes the finale that much more palatable to me.
From:
no subject
Phenomenal work :')
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Just ripped my heart out of my chest, so beautifully done.
His loneliness just wrecked me, and her voice accompanying him made me ache.
This is exquisitely, lushly gorgeous - Brava.
Absolutely the best piece of post-finale fic I've read.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
*needs more tissues*
From:
no subject
*offers tissues*
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
And Nicky - I worried it was a little too pat, but I wanted someone else to remember for Lee when he was gone. Oh show! So many great, unexplored characters!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject