A/N: Thanks to everyone who came along on this ride with me; the always encouraging and supportive members, old and new, of bsg_checkin, the faithful readers who've encouraged me to keep going, and my patient, long-suffering beta who never let me settle for less than my best.

Summary: As above, so below...the fight for humanity's survival continues, and the bit of Outlaw within us all does not die easily.

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"Sail our ships out on the open seas / cast away our fears and / All the years come and go / take us up, always up"

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Leo Patrouski huddled under the canvas lean-to with his new best friend. "Go ahead," he urged. "I didn't lip the spout or anything."

The skinny black-haired girl next to him snorted quietly. "Think we're past fear of cooties, Leo." She took the canteen, swallowed a measured sip, then handed it back.

"Yeah, I just—forget it." It had seemed like a normal thing to say, an old-normal thing, from before.

"Any idea how much longer we've got?" She nodded towards the med kit tucked inside his pack.

He wished Miss Laura hadn't been such a good tutor. Thanks to her, he could work the problem out in his head: four adults, two kids equaled five pills a day, six if the map took them close to a hot zone and he and Lisa took the whole 130 mg dose instead of half. They were down to covering thirty klicks a day, but the altitude was starting to slow them down. Their destination looked like it was about a hundred klicks northwest, but on the hand-drawn map, a hundred could be eighty or a hundred-twenty.

There were eighteen anti-radiation pills left.

"We've got enough. We'll make it." He didn't meet her eyes.

The soft, hushed words of the adults drifted towards them. The two men seemed to be arguing about something. Leo heard his dad say "Adama" twice. He looked out the opening at the men in faded blue clothes, their numbers still sewn on their breast pockets. His mom and Lisa's shared a canteen between them, interrupting the men from time to time.

"I knew him," he said with a touch of pride. "Him and his Old Lady."

"Yeah? You think they really did what people say?" Her hazel eyes lit up.

It was just a rumor they'd heard, scraps here and there, but maybe talking about it would keep his mind off how hungry he was. Leo had worked out the figures on their rations, too. He hoped the map was on the short side. Another three days, and…and nothing. We can't hunt, can't fish, everything's poison, pretty much. We just have to get there in under three days. He could hear Miss Laura now, showing him how to solve for the unknown.

Telling him numbers don't lie.

"I think so, yeah. Him and her both. And the rest of the club, I knew most of the guys pretty good. I can see them hijacking a battlestar." He grinned for the first time in two days. "They really were—are—that bad-ass. "

Lisa looked out at the adults, her gaze focused on her father. "He's not really a bad-ass, you know? He was in for—they said he stole money from his boss."

Leo shrugged. "He was pretty bad-ass when he had to be."

The fact they were sitting here, hurting but alive ,was proof enough of that.

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Leo had been pissed about missing the bike rally, although he wouldn't have missed a visitation day with his dad for anything. He just wished it hadn't been on the same weekend. There'll be other rallies, hon, his mom had said, and maybe the next one, or the one after, your father'll be with us.

He had just started to talk with his dad's cellmate's kid—Lisa played Warrior's Revenge too, although she wasn't even twelve yet—when they felt the first shockwaves. A guard came running out of the security pod, yelling about Cylons…most of the rest was a blur after they saw the smoke columns in the distance.

The older guard, the dude with a faded Viper tattoo on his arm, had hit the gate switches right before the power grid blew. People were yelling about armories and infirmaries. The next thing he knew, someone was handing his dad a couple of long guns and gesturing to the road that led away from the smoke. The older guard scribbled something on some paper and shoved it into Lisa's dad's hand, then they were all running towards the open gate.

It still didn't seem real until the guard said "Stay safe" and Leo's dad told him "Good hunting." The guard turned back to join the line of tan-uniformed men and women.

His dad explained later how half the prison was a medical facility, and the guards were doing their duty. Leo tried not to think about that. By now, the ones who stayed were probably dead.

But we're not, so far. Maybe it is only eighty klicks. Maybe less. The guard had just thrown coordinates on a scrap piece of paper. It could be off some.

There was a decent chance they'd make it. They'd gotten through two Cylon-heavy sites and three hot zones so far. Lisa's dad, Martin, had been almost as good as Leo's dad when it came to putting down toasters. He offered Lisa another swig from his canteen.

Zeus, I'm only thirteen. He held back a sniffle as he saw himself at the Roslin-Adama kitchen table again, cookies and books and a whiteboard full of problems.

Maybe it's under eighty klicks.

He and Lisa watched the adults sketch lines in the dirt, wipe them out with the toe of a boot, then start over. They were all nodding now, and his mom was smiling a little bit.

Lisa's mom took first watch while the others crowded under the lean-to. Leo took a last look up at the bit of black starry sky he could see through the clouds.

He hoped the rumors were true.

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It had been a little over eighty klicks after all.

They were into their third day. Leo's stomach had stopped growling the day before. Now he was just more tired than he'd ever been, and he felt like there was a tightening band around his head. Lisa was starting to drag, too. They all were. The headaches got worse the higher they went, and his jeans and jacket weren't much protection from the dropping temperatures.

Lisa's mom saw the scrap of fabric first, but Leo was the first one to recognize the cobalt-blue of the Caprica City Buccaneers jersey.

The tall, athletic man seemed to come out of nowhere, rifle in hand and a sharp-faced redhead next to him, equally armed.

"That's Sam Anders," he whispered to Lisa. "I saw him play once."

"Me, too," she whispered back. "My grandpa..." Her voice trailed off and they watched the adults exchange cautious greetings and information.

His head was sluggish and he tried to remember if he'd taken his anti-rad pill this morning, or was that yesterday? His mind began to clear as soon as Anders took them inside a falling-down shack and pulled up a hidden door in the straw-covered floor. They made their way down the steel ladder and turned to take in the room.

Small but functional, there were stacks of cots and bedrolls, med kits and racks of automatic weapons, more racks of ammunition. And electric lights strung overhead. Friendly, mostly clean faces greeted them…actual, real smiles. Leo's mom gulped back a sob, then all the adults were talking at once.

"Hey, kid. Open this and help yourself to a protein bar. And your friend, too. You guys look hungry." Anders passed a small white barrel over to him. He and Lisa popped the seal together. When he saw the food bars, his throat started tightening.

It was the full pack of anti-rad meds, though, that made Leo shed his first tears since the attack.

Thank you, whoever did this. Thank you so much. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and wondered if the unknown saviors were still alive.

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Days had blurred into weeks: frantic runs and scrambles, impossible decisions needing to be made around the clock, a million things to think about, and always on the fly. Bill looked haggard most of the time, and Laura was sure she didn't look much better. They'd both made more of an effort today, though. It was a matter of respect, and they'd present their best to the fleet for this.

It was a strange crew, she reflected. Since the attacks, people had fallen into a semblance of order, a mix of bikers,civilians, and military shaking out into a single entity.

Survivors.

She tried not to think about the ships they'd lost. She had a list in her…their quarters with every name, each vessel they'd left behind.

And the names of the warriors who lay at her feet, covered with Colonial flags. Bill kept that list in his head, calling each man and woman by name as he led the funeral service with the priest on one side, Laura on the other. She stole a glance under her lashes during the final prayer. The Commander pips didn't look as incongruous on the leather cut as she'd feared. It was completely against military protocol...she didn't know a lot about the military but she knew that much.

Nobody had challenged him on it, though. A quick fleet-wide vote had put the Tauron Outlaws as lead crew, their president and his old lady at the head of the table, at least for now.One day, we'll need to have a government. I think I remember how to do that.

Bill was getting to the part of his speech they'd rehearsed in their quarters. The lines in his face had deepened as they debated over lies and truth, hope and despair. They had to have something to keep the exhausted, shell-shocked fleet going. And it was a powerful thought...she always felt herself relaxing just a fraction off her usual attack readiness when she imagined it.

"If we're going to sell this, we need to get a solid picture in our heads, Bill. It has to feel real," she'd said, curled in his lap in a thirty minute respite from official duties while Saul had the conn.

"Green. Has to have lots of stuff growing wild." He looked out the porthole into the black.

"Blue sky, and trees, mountain ranges," she said, mind running over ancient scrolls and their fables.

"Animals, birds…" He kissed her temple, one eye on the clock ticking away their time together. This was as "in the moment" as they ever got anymore. Maybe when this was all over...she didn't have an inkling of what that might even look like, and gave herself over to the fantasy he was weaving. Maybe they needed that as much as the fleet did.

She snuggled into his chest. They'd be back on duty in a few more minutes, but she was going to take as much from this as she could.

"There should be oceans, too. And freshwater rivers, and little streams in the mountains, water as clear as glass." She hummed and kissed him on the lips, a promise for their next break. "A spot where we can build a house, or a cabin...something."

He had been kissing her back like they had all the time in the world when Lee came in.

"Dad? Laura? It's time for the service."

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As she stood beside him, the words of the last prayer fading into the silence, their rehearsal fell away and she felt like she was hearing his speech for the first time.

Life here began out there.

She never thought she'd be listening to Bill Adama quote scripture like this, and she bit her cheek against a threatening nervous twitch of amusement. Maybe after they were back in their quarters... His words of their struggle and pain sobered her again, and she straightened to an almost military stance, her posture in sync with his.

There's a thirteenth colony of humankind out there, is there not? She felt him turn towards the priest.

Laura felt a trickle of sweat form under her leather cut as the priest, Elosha, said her part.

Yes. The scrolls tell us a 13th tribe left Kobol in the early days. They travelled far and made their home upon a planet called Earth, which circled a distant and unknown star.

She thought of sunshine, and a sky filled with clouds instead of raiders. It helped the implausible explanation go down easier. The people before her needed to see her believing this.

Believing in him.

When he got to the part about Outlaws stealing military secrets out from under the noses of the senior command of the Defense Department, she squirmed inside.

Well, they saw us steal a battlestar. Maybe military secrets about a mythic Earth won't be too much of a stretch.

He left the podium and began walking through the caskets. There were flickers of hope on a few faces at first, then a few more.

Refuge.

Tears began to trickle, then stream down her cheeks. She'd been looking for refuge long before the attacks. He had given her that; they'd given that to each other. By the gods, they'd give that to the rest of them. To what was left of humanity.

And if Earth wasn't real, they'd find somewhere and make it Earth.

-we shall find it, and Earth shall become our new home.

He returned to her side, back ramrod straight, and she could feel the crowd accepting what was coming from his heart. They would find some place, some safe place for them all. They'd put the fear and grief aside, and they'd go on, Cylons or not.

We can do this. As long as we're together, we can do this.

Laura's eyes shone with hope, tears now dry, as she added her voice to his, their hands gripped together.

"So say we all," he finished.

"So say we all."

"So say we all!"

It began as scattered shouts, then built to a roar, and she imagined the ship, the stars, the Cylons trembling in the face of their will, these last members of humanity.

She met Bill's eyes, and saw decades of hope shining in the blue. We will find a home, they said. We will go on, or die trying.

"All the way to the end," she whispered, then raised her voice, joining with the crowd.

Joining with him.

So say we all.

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The End