Authors Note: This started out as a series of drabbles - a response to what I saw on screen that needed to be captured. What I hadn't planned on was the story they told when I pieced them together. I hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: Battlestar Gallactica and it's associated characters and story do not belong to me. The way the words are put together below? That I do claim as my own.

They are all of them, just waiting it seems.

Waiting for happiness to stumble upon them; to live their lives.

Waiting to fall, for something, for someone.

They are all of them waiting to die.

We are all of us, just waiting, it seems.

He is not surprised when the call comes over the wireless. 'This is not a drill', the message reads, and a dark and guilty place inside of him feels relieved. He has been expecting this, because the war never ended. It just…stopped without victory or defeat, only retreat.

Complacent. Yes, that is what they'd become, complacent. Sooner or later you can't hide from the things you've done. He knows this for the truth; he's been trying for years.

The first weeks are a blur. Later, when she has a chance to slow down (is forced to, the bars to her cell clanging shut), she realizes that doesn't remember sleeping or eating or anything in between. She only remembers the decisions. She laughs bitterly (it echoes over the cool grey walls). Her life has become about making choices for everyone; she's spent the past five years avoiding making them for herself. Seven weeks; they have been the longest of her life. (She stops, maneuvers around the cot and continues pacing.) Has it really only been seven weeks?

She stops herself from calculating how many more she has left.

He is awake long before he opens his eyes. He hears Cottle grumble in the background; hears Saul come and go and return again, his voice increasingly anxious. The pain arcs across his chest. It burns and constricts and even that doesn't compare to the pain of his betrayal. He is weak, a fool - a liability. He does not belong in command. There is a reason it took the end of the worlds to get there.

His friend pleads for him to wake up and take over and it is only for his sake that he does. He has been betrayed, but not by everyone, not yet.

She wakes early, before the ship begins to stir, before the lights hum and flicker into artificial day. She awakes in her cramped couch and remembers, not for the first time, other mornings where she'd wake sprawled over a soft mattress with blankets twisted at her feet and feel a whisper of sunlight tracing her cheekbone. She misses sunlight. She misses sleeping in and sick days that aren't really and vacations. Oh gods, she misses vacations.

She feels the urge to bury under her covers, to disappear into their dark warmth. Gives in momentarily as the blankets slip over her head and her body sinks deeper into the crook of the couch. She tells herself, 'You need to get up,' and doesn't move. She breathes deeply, letting the warmth, the scent comfort her.

She promises herself that she will stay here for a moment, no longer. Until the now brushes away the before. Until the scent memory of freshly laundered sheets dwindles into nothingness. Until she can no longer hear the rustle and feel the cool weight of linen sliding against her skin.

The air suddenly feels heavy under the blankets, weighing her down and she jerks them off in a fit of claustrophobia. Her skin prickles at the sudden exposure and furious shiver shakes through her. Her body tenses. She should get up. Now.

Seconds pass, then minutes and she jerks when she awakes again, her heart beating rapidly in fear that she's lingered too long. The room is dark and silent beyond the curtain. There is still time to be lazy, to prepare for the day. She doesn't want to get up. She really, really doesn't want to. There is too much to do and face, the decisions too hard, just too much.

The rush of air from the ventilation system increases moments before the overhead lights hum into day.

She gets up: it's getting more difficult every day.

He should be grateful for what has been gained; all he feels is loss. It eats at him. He should be grateful; the hard decisions are no longer his to make. (Were they ever really his to make?) He still has his son, his best friend, his home; others have lost all that they love. He has his home filled with books and clothes and his rack; some have no place to lay their heads. (They have been working on that, the progress has been slow.) He should be grateful, but all he feels is loss (of his command of the fleet, of his president).

Bodies are far too fallible, too fragile, she thinks as she eases a lock of hair off his forehead. She has seen death before in her old life, lived it and breathed it as one by one those she loved slipped across the river.

In this new life, she has called it, ordered it even, watched as lives were discounted with the sweep of a whiteboard eraser. But until now, until this moment, it had never crossed her mind how violent it could be. How startling blood and bones and mangled flesh exposed are. How weak the body, how surreal it all is.

She releases her breath slowly, taking care not to inhale through her nose (death smells - another thing she hasn't known until this moment). She breathes and braces herself and wills herself to keep going, to ignore the panic, to keep it together. She is alive and he is dead. She never saw either one coming. Her heart dances around the envy, her brain steering her to more rational thoughts. She brushes away the tears and moves on.

It is what she does now.

Once she believed that democracy was just and the ability to choose an inalienable right. Now she doesn't know what she believes. Their choices since this began have been between bad and worse. Is it still just and good when choice means collective death?

She'd accepted her own death, had been ready to let go of the threads she was holding. Had accepted the words of Pythia, of the dying leader and prophecies and her own role to guide them all to Earth. And now she's being forced to accept life instead. Accept the things she cannot control. Hera. Baltar's Presidency. New Caprica.

Democracy is a luxury they can't afford anymore.

In the days following the New Caprican Founder's Day, Bill Adama finds his thoughts lingering on sunlight. The play of light and shadows, it's warmth as it rests on skin. It's brilliance as it bounces off silky waves of hair; enriches the color of pale eyes. It pervades his mind, casting light even into the gloom of CIC.

The gathering silence of the ship seems oppressive as more of his crew musters out, the lure of solid ground far too strong to resist. He thinks the sunlight makes the cylon threat seem dim. It is as if all of them, he included, have been seduced into antipathy. He thinks he should probably worry about that. He can't. He feels Saul's gaze on him and looks up to see the curiosity of his XO. He gives a subtle shrug as their eyes meet and glances briefly at the dradis.

It has been 3 days: he misses the sunlight already.

The cycle of time doesn't mean much in space. Day, night, a month, a year: they don't exist. Yet, they still rely on them to chart their days, their waking, eating, sleeping. Each moment traced in the familiar. They cling to it really, as they do all the trappings of what life was, once. It is easier than starting over, finding a new way to begin. And so, each day is measured by the revolution of a planet along its axis, along its path around a star they will never visit again.

This is how they measure the passage of time since, before.

It hurts. He thinks he should be used to it by now; losing people he loves. He is not used to it, cannot find acceptance, and cannot find peace. He is unable even to feel the numbness that others have used to move on. If possible, it just hurts more. It is a relief to crush the model ship with his hands, to feel the pain grate across his knuckles. That pain is tangible; he can control it, the other pain no balm can cure.

Gone. She is gone and with her the memory of his son dissolves even further. He can feel another piece of his control slip and crumble. If it were a dam, it would be crisscrossed with stress fractures: cracks seeping with moisture.

It won't take much now to blow the whole thing to hell.

She stills her shaking hands against her eyes, palms facing in and tries to breathe as the panic twists inside her chest, the knowledge of what is to come twining and mingling with it. She can feel it, the cancer, multiplying and growing wildly with each moment. Too small to be seen, it terrifies her more than the hard lump, the grim prognosis of the first time. It is small enough to fight. This had surprised her even when the diagnosis, delivered under a cloud of smoke, had not.

Earth has never seemed closer.

The thought carries her through a dozen reports and a handful of meetings as the day stretches out before her. She embraces the distraction the tasks provide, deals with them with ease. She doesn't falter or slow. Her gaze skips carefully around the room, avoiding reminders of those lost.

But after – after her work is done, she leaves with the clear intent of finding a shuttle and going home. Home, apparently, no longer means Colonial One. He finds her there, sitting stiffly on his couch wrapped in the dim glow of lamplight, files piled on his desk, and her gaze directed nowhere. He walks into the cabin and straight to the head, pausing and turning abruptly when her presence tickles his senses. She doesn't intend to tell him, but the words cross the distance all the same.

He pales, which she hadn't thought possible for someone with his skin tone. She wonders at it even as the words continued to escape. He doesn't say a word, just lowers himself beside her, his hand finding hers. They stare at each other, glassy eyed, holding tight as the evening ebbs away. The watch is almost spent before he tucks her arm under his and leads her back to her shuttle.

Days pass, and she's back in his quarters, soaking up the strength she finds there. The thought of returning to the courtroom repulses her. She wishes fervently that she'd carried through on the threat of an airlock as hatred wells and spills over her emotions. She wants to flee, play hooky from her life. Glancing at the clock, she tries to separate the 'I have to's' from the 'I wants'. The "have to's" have been forcing the "wants" aside for far too long. She always thought later would be time enough for indulgences.

Later will never come; she knows this now. Her borrowed time is dwindling to nothing. Tomorrow is the beginning of the end.

She tells him to do what's right for their people. He does.

It tastes like betrayal.

She's always felt; deep down at least, that love was a weakness. Now she is sure of it. It hurts and it burns, this feeling renders her emotions bare. Love is painful and sometimes she wishes she hadn't succumbed.

It would have been easier for both of them. They have worn each other down - the whetstone and the blade. His edges softening, dulling as hers sharpen, become razor thin. Love is eroding them. Soon there will be little left but dust.

They were at peace before, growing, sprawling, ignorant, but thriving.

They are at war now, shrinking, hardening, surviving only just.

The cylons were machines. Menacing creations. A dream of an easier life made nightmare. The cylons are no longer 'just' machines. They breathe and they dream and they bleed and they suffer and they die.

Human? No, not quite yet. The immortality, their endless cycle, rebirth and death the same. She hopes it will make a difference when they understand how easy it is to lose.

It is unexpected. This. Now. This feeling welling up inside of her, brimming, overflowing. She's not sure what to do with it. She's not sure that there's anything that she can do with it right now except, perhaps, accept it. And acceptance is something she struggles with. She accepts that life for her, for all of them, is clearly delineated between a time before, then, and now. But with each acceptance of something that is, there is a letting go of something that was.

This is one thing neither he nor she can let go of.

It should have been a miracle. Earth had been a rumor, a myth, a fairy tale told to children. Earth had been a lie. Admittedly given for the best of intentions: to provide hope and a reason to go on for a devastated population, but a lie nonetheless. But somehow Earth had become a truth. Somehow the lie, the myth, had become a reality. But like most myths and rumors, the reality was skewed, no paradise, no promised land, no gleaming cities or cabins by a stream waiting for them. Earth was desolate, destroyed, damaged. They found what they had fled from - no escape, no salvation.

True miracles did not exist.

Rage. It is racing through his veins, bubbling; boiling; burning. His fingers twitch at the wanting to give into it, to clench themselves so tightly to palm that knuckles will blanch. He likes the feel of it in his skin. So preferable to the hollow emptiness, the gasping despairs.

Rage has purpose; it has power and life in it. Rage makes him forget.

He likes the rage, feeds the low burning fire of it but carefully tempers it, will not let it become incendiary. It would be so easy. He has never let things be easy.

She wants to live just a little bit more than she's been allowed, that she's allowed herself to do these last years. She's done with being a martyr to the cause. She will have her moment of joy.

He nods to himself, the thin line of his mouth curling at the edges in grim satisfaction. He will wait. He will wait until she is gone; until she is dead. He no longer believes in her recovery or the lies he's told them both over and over again. She is going to die. There is no hope. Hope has faded and shriveled and died with the discovery of earth.

It had begun with a lie; he should have known that it would not end well. He doesn't remember how the idea had first sparked in his mind but knows it now for what it was: deceit and treachery. He had seen the despair, had felt it deeply. He had wanted to stand and fight but she… well… okay. If they had to run, if they could not fight, could not seek their revenge for the devastation wrought, then they needed something bigger to fight for.

He did not believe in it then, his pretty myth, his calculated gamble. But the words had come and gone before he had a chance to second guess - to look back and question the rightness of it. She had known it for a lie - had called him on it, even distrusted him for it. But then she had believed. And for the first time, he had believed - in her. Belief and faith were useless. The ancients had gotten it wrong - there was no salvation. Just more despair, more loss. He could not believe any more. He could not hope. Could not will himself to care what came next. Could not will himself to care less.

She would die. Sooner rather than later, and he had to make a choice whether the moments in between were worth it. Hope was gone, but maybe…. He smiled at the airlock window, his gaze shifting past the metal bulkhead to blackness of space beyond. His shoulders settled in relief and he nodded again. He could love. He could love her. He would hold her and love her until she was no more and then... and then he too would be no more.

She was right - he was afraid to live alone; but he isn't afraid to die that way.

Love is different here; at the end of the worlds; at the end of her world. It's not as if she's never fallen for someone – she has: she's fallen for lust, she's fallen for passion, and yes for power too. But she's never simply fallen. Not in this slow, gentle manner, like this, never. And if she tries to pinpoint the moment of her descent, tries to understand its origins, she can't. She realizes it's impossibility.

Voluntary blindness - it is their gift to each other. He does not speak of the loss and the rage that accompanies each pill tossed, each treatment missed, each cough and moment slowed. He cannot make her fight for him.

She does not voice the disgust, the overwhelming disappointment that accompanies each empty bottle, each surreptitious sip of the flask, each late night stumble into bed. She cannot make him fight for them.

She finds him sitting in the dim light of his quarters, a book lying haphazardly across his knees as he strokes the spine, the emboldened lettering, without looking at it. His gaze is focused on the painting of the first cylon war and he allows her only a flicker of his attention when she enters.

She follows his line of sight and shudders. She finds she cannot bear the grim devastation pictured - the mortality, the dark soul of warfare. The fallen solider at the feet of the battered machine. She wishes it were that easy, that the lines of right and wrong could be so easily drawn. She lays her bag at her feet, abandons her heels and pads slowly towards him, afraid of the shell of the man she will find. At her steps, he turns his head, his eyes following reluctantly behind. They are moist, sad, filled with emotion. Her breath catches in her lungs and stalls. She stifles the cough that follows.

"Oh Bill," she sighs and melts into the couch beside him.

He smiles then, curls his hand around her waist, leaning in and pressing a kiss to her hairline. "I'm here," he whispers, "You and me, alright? We do this together." She feels herself nod, blink back tears.

"Okay," she breathes, pushing aside the questions, the doubts, and gives in.

It is never quiet in Sick Bay. The equipment hums and clicks and beeps.

Voices murmur and whisper, rising occasionally in grief and panic, falling in sorrow, ebbing to cries and moans when pain overrides rational thought. She doesn't really notice it anymore. It is the more immediate sounds, the ones she probably shouldn't be aware of, that occupy her thoughts: the sound of her own ragged inhalations, the whisper of air through her breathing tube, the beat of her own heart. It has all come down to this, the slow descent of her body into nothingness.

In the intervals when there is no one else around, when the dosage of the pain medication eases enough for full consciousness without the unremitting pain, she begins the process of disassembling her life.

Moments, thoughts, and actions considered then put away. There is little else left for her to do.

It is in this process that she realizes that her life is a string of broken threads. And that each thread ends in death. It is harder and easier to bear that this last death will be her own.

Time is running out.

They have laid their burdens to rest; fought their last battles. They have set aside the denial and the fear. Life is the stroke of his thumb on her skin and the whisper of her breath in his ear. They have learned to embrace the small moments, the ones that occur in between all else.

He sits beside her and holds her too cool hand and murmurs in her ear of the scene before them. Her breath is shallow; she has to fight to stay awake, to breathe. They choose not to waste what's left with panic; instead seek the joy of the other.

She wants to make him promise her to keep living after she is gone. He will do it if she asks. But that is not who she is, so she bites back the words and focuses on giving him something good to hold on to in the bleakness that will follow.

He sits beside her in the evenings; the cool stone sending a creeping chill up his back even as the fading sun traces warm fingers across his face. He keeps himself too busy to dwell on the grief most of the time. But in this limbo of day he allows her memory to creep upon him. Sometimes he lets himself picture her presence beside him, in the warm glow of the setting sun. Sometimes he talks to her; sometimes he hates her for leaving.

He doesn't know what to believe, if there is more in the next life, after. He wants there to be more, because of her, and all the rest who've been lost. But even now he isn't sure.

He is still waiting.