It was good. This planet promised their people a chance at life. Its waving fields of grass, clear skies, and blazing sun embraced the weary travelers down from the heavens. The sun reached for Laura but couldn't warm her pale skin. The animals running across the fields were just a fuzzy haze to her eyes as she and Bill flew above them in a raptor. She was fading fast.

"So much… life," she whispered, the faintest smile on her lips. Earth would be a paradise and new beginning for her people but not for her. The Dying Leader had done her job, and there was peace in that.

"It's a rich continent. More wildlife than all the Twelve Colonies combined," Bill said, piloting the raptor into a tilt so that she could take in as much of the world as possible before the end. He couldn't ignore the unavoidable end now; there was a death rattle in her lungs with every breath she took. The raptor engines muffled that sound as they soared above the treetops, looking at their prize that had cost so much. She tried not to dwell on how much she wanted to live down on that planet, now that she had someone to share her life with. It wasn't meant to be and Laura wouldn't waste what she knew were her last precious moments with the man she'd come to love more than anything. Not when she knew the end had come. The pain was fading, and she struggled to take another breath. She pictured a cabin nestled in the mountains where two people would have lived. Her heart faltered knowing it would have been home because they'd have been together. The remaining strength left her body, and her hand fell to her side.

"Just looking for a quiet little place to build that cabin," Bill said, and the low rumble of his voice seemed to wrap around her. She'd always loved his voice, but it sounded distant. Then there was silence. Goodbye my love. She couldn't say it.

Laura Roslin died with one final thought: I'll be waiting for you, Bill.

…

Bill Adama didn't fight the stinging tears when he snatched up Laura's limp hand and searched but did not find a pulse. He allowed his tears to flow down his cheeks and splash onto her hand he grasped in his. Laura Roslin deserved to be mourned by the man who'd loved her more than anything. She was gone and he wouldn't deny his grief at losing such a vital part of himself. He already missed her. Holding her cold hand, he felt more physical pain than he'd ever experienced in life. His chest felt as if it had been ripped open. He gasped out short breaths.

She looked peaceful, he thought. She'd held on as long as she could for his sake, despite the pain. In return, Bill didn't give into bitterness or told her that he couldn't live without her. She'd known. Instead, his great act of love was to let her go and make her passing peaceful. His pained heart raged like a storm at the impossible dream of a real lifetime together. Had they once dreamed of walking hand-in-hand on Earth under the trees as he worked on their cabin? He slammed his mind closed on the heart-wrenchingly impossible vision of what a life might have been like if they'd only met sooner. For a brief moment, he saw a warm home and children with Laura's eyes. He wept. His body trembled with the weight of grief.

It suddenly hit him, like the force of a thousand explosions: he never said 'I love you.' The woman he considered the love of his life never heard him say the words. Realizing that felt like pouring salt on an open wound. They'd simply never been together as fully as they should have been.

One Colonial belief was that those married before the gods would be together for all the eternities. Laura had made him believe in things he couldn't understand or control, and he'd come to have faith in her. Without hesitation, he pulled the wedding band off his hand and slipped it on her finger. He prayed his first and last prayer, begging the gods he didn't know if he believed in to be reunited with Laura one day. He bent down and pressed a kiss to her hand. With infinite tenderness, he set her hand back on her lap and looked at Laura's peaceful face. We'd have been happy spending a lifetime together, he knew with certainty.

He dug a grave. Every time he drove his shovel into the dirt, his heart hammered harder in his chest. He had to pause and catch his breath often. It was well into the night by the time he'd finished digging. The body was placed gently in the grave. He carefully folded her hands, her left hand with the gold band shining on top. I'll find you, he swore. If there is something else, I'll find you.

…

Everybody knows that everybody dies. The universe follows her rules, and time stays its course. Laura Roslin chose to face death with bravery and grace. The knowledge that her life would be cut short had forced her to finally live, accepting the weight of humanity but being gifted with the love of a good man. And yet after slipping into a terrible and beautiful darkness, Laura bolted upright, gasping for air.

Her breaths came in sharp pants as her mind tried to grasp where she was, but she didn't understand what was going on. Shivering when cool air nipped at her skin, she looked everywhere around her. Her eyes wandered faster and faster until her head spun. Trepidation swelled through her as she took in the white walls, blue curtains, leather chair, and a discarded pair of heels. It all looked so clean, and felt so wrong.

Looking down, she realized she'd been asleep in an unfamiliar bed. That thought alone sent her heart pounding in her chest, along with the horrible nagging sense that she wasn't supposed to be here. She expected to find herself on a boat carrying her to the Shore, to Elysium, to her final rest. There, she'd finally be reunited with her family, with the sisters she'd never stopped missing and her parents whom she'd loved. Most of all, she'd comforted herself in the knowledge that she'd wait for Bill to join her one day, never to be parted again. This too clean and very lonely room wasn't what she'd been promised. She felt robbed.

Her senses soaked in everything around her. Without thinking, Laura ran a hand through her hair and gasped. She clutched at long red curls, tangled with sleep, but very real. She began to notice the lack of pain anywhere in her body, as if the agony she'd lived with had melted away leaving her body equal parts foreign and familiar. In this body, her heartbeat was strong and steady. Her lungs expanded with air freely without feeling like a knife was being plunged into her. She felt good. Her hands moved down from her hair, across the soft skin of her neck, further down her body, and carefully pressed and prodded her tender flesh. No tumor. Wrenching her shaking hands away from her body, she looked around the room again confirming that she was very much alone. Still, she had to try.

"Bill!" she called out, praying to the Lords of Kobol that somehow, he would answer. "Bill!" she yelled out again, her voice thick with tears. Pushing herself out of the bed, she stumbled through the room, searching for anyone. She collapsed against a wall when it became clear she was very much alone and very overwhelmed.

Keep calm and figure out the facts, she mentally kicked herself and forced her breathing back under control. Pushing off the wall, she walked through the room. Her senses were firing, barraging her with information. There was a trace of fresh linen and lemon, and it smelled crisp; clean, but the nice kind of clean that didn't mean sterile, but fresh. She felt too used to stale and sterile smells. Her fingers traced the designs of carved wood furniture, too solid and detailed to be illusions. What she had expected and she was seeing were warring in her mind, trying to rationalize this strange and unwelcome experience. Laura stopped when her hand trailed over the face of a journal, one she hadn't used in years but unforgotten. She fiddled with the worn red bookmark ribbon that stuck out before slipping her fingers between the pages. Opening the book, she read the scrawled ink, which marked a date from sixteen years before the Fall. She snatched her hand away as if it had been burnt and read the date again. The last entry, written in fresh looking ink, was sixteen years before the Fall.

None of this made sense, but it was her writing there. The familiar loops and slants that formed her messy cursive were sprawled out on the page, rambling on about being on Picon and detailing a day long past. It sparked something in the back of her mind, a distant memory not quite forgotten, and she looked around at the room once again. She remembered this hotel room. She slipped over to the window and shoved the fabric of the curtains to the side.

Picon before the Fall.

The sight of the planet overwhelmed her, and she felt light-headed for a few seconds. The sun broke over the horizon, and blazing light spilled into the room. People jogged along the boardwalk. Birds cawed and soared above the sprawling sands. Bright cobalt sky stretched out above her, so different from the inky black of space. It was stunning.

A warmth rose in the back of her eyes. This couldn't be the afterlife. Laura felt certain of that. It felt too much like the Twelve Colonies she remembered. The sting of tears transformed into a white hot rage coursed through her as she sank down onto the bed she'd awoken in. Is my life some sort of plaything for the gods? She demanded as she recoiled against everything that was happening. She'd done her job; she didn't want any more riddles. Her heart longed for her family and for Bill.

"All this has happened before, and all this will happen again," she whispered, the line summoned from the Sacred Scrolls, the only answer her mind seemed willing to supply. Surrounded by the unexplainable and puzzled by the impossible, something in Laura warned her that those sacred words were true. "Frak that," she growled.

She brought her knees up to her chest to curl into a ball. Tears finally spilled freely from her eyes, and she moved to brush them away, but her arm bumped into something in her bed. Frowning, she searched under the covers and pulled out a book. A choked sob tore from her throat. Searider Falcon. Their book. It even had the same burn marks from where it had been damaged.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she hugged the book to her. It was a small shred of proof. She might suddenly be in a time that looked and felt like the years before the Fall, but she'd lived a life beyond that. She knew it. She let her mind relax and made a promise to herself to keep going and to find him again.

"Yes! Absolutely! That is the only sane thing to do here—exactly that, run. We leave this solar system and never look back... I can dance... I will exercise the authority of this office until I am unable to do so, so if you want to stage a coup, you're gonna have to come over here and arrest me... You know, sometimes I think that you've got ice water in those veins, and other times I think you're just a naïve little school-teacher... I'll be back in a few days and perhaps we can maybe talk more about that night... We're not a civilization anymore, we are a gang, and we're on the run, and we have to fight to survive... I gave the access codes to the Cylons... It's perfect. We traded one nuked civilization for another... You didn't think you were gonna take off without me Admiral, did you?... Earth is a dream. One we've been chasing for a long time. We've earned it. This is Earth…"

"So much… life..."

As the memories ebbed and flowed away, she noticed something as her fingers moved across the cover of the book. She looked down at a large and worn gold band on her finger. She'd never worn a gold band. The only time she'd ever seen one adorn her finger was in her visions with Elosha on the Basestar; Bill had placed his own wedding band on her hand when she died. Her heart knew that Bill had placed this band on her finger.

"I love you," she'd told him. He'd been the only man she'd ever really loved.

She buried her face in the pillow, clutching the book to her. The raw emotion pulsed through her even as questions began to rise to the surface of her mind. Where was he at this time? Could she change the future? Would the attacks still happen?

Everything felt real. Real enough to accept. Real enough that it felt like she had never left. This was Picon before the Fall. She was standing on one of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. She was living in the past. This was her memory, but it was also reality. Somehow, she wasn't dead. She repeated these facts in her head like a mantra. But what could she do?

The entire Cylon holocaust wasn't high on her 'live through it again' list. But if she had a chance to save people like Billy, then she was going to take it. If she had the opportunity to find Bill, she'd grab it.

…

She had been gone for an hour, a day, or longer. It didn't seem to matter. Time stretched and yet didn't seem to pass at all. The sun set, sending long shadows across the shifting grass. Bill fell asleep, Laura now long dead, and when he awoke he found himself standing on a ship he hadn't seen in over forty years. It wasn't real, Bill could tell. It was an in-between space between dreams and reality.

Bill Adama's eyes examined the hard metal surfaces. He suppressed a shudder when he saw the examination tables where Cylons had experimented on humans. This was the ship that had created the first Hybrid, and where he completed his last mission at the end of the First Cylon War. He remembered the otherworldly voice reverberating around the room.

All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

He edged forward toward the basin in the center of the room. Once it had contained the Cylons' first Hybrid. The humidity was oppressive, and sweat gathered along his brow. Instinctively, his hand moved toward his hip and he grabbed the gun from its holster. The sidearm felt cool and familiar in his grasp.

He stood over the basin, holding his gun tighter when he saw the hybrid still there. He'd been long gone by the time Adama had arrived during his mission at the end of the First Cylon War. The Hybrid opened his eyes and looked up at Adama with a curious expression.

"You've returned, William Adama," he said. Bill didn't jump; he was too well-trained to allow a display of emotion in front of an enemy. He quickly brought his sidearm up and took aim. Keep the tactical advantage, his training told him.

"Is this a dream?" Bill asked.

"Yes." The Hybrid's piercing gaze bore into Adama's frosty blue eyes. "And, no," he said, chuckling softly at his riddle. He tilted his head to the side. "Do you remember what I told you the last time you were here?"

"You weren't here," Bill pointed out. The Hybrid chuckled again and continued speaking to Adama as a grandfather might speak to his child.

"I still spoke to you, and you heard me," the Hybrid explained. "All of this has happened before…"

"…and all of this will happen again," Bill finished, remembering.

"And so it must happen again. I've seen the jealous god rolling back the wheel of time. Just as I saw the Prophet guide her people to Earth."

"Don't you dare talk about her," Bill snarled, gripping his gun tighter while his heart thundered in his chest.

"Did you make the most of loving her?" The Hybrid challenged. Adama felt his heart constrict in his chest when he thought about the question.

"No," he admitted softly.

"There are always things left unsaid and undone," the Hybrid rasped. "Even so, in your time humanity earned their survival, and that must be honored. Laura, the Prophet who never lost her soul, proved their worth."

"I'm not interested in riddles," Bill snapped. He turned to walk away.

"Then I shall speak plainly for you, my child. In the end the Twelve Colonies of Kobol were still lost. Your culture was abandoned. Your names were forgotten and your story was lost. History laid no blame at your feet but learned no lesson. On Earth, Colonial and Cylon alike died. Starvation, exposure, disease…"

"That's enough!" Rage coursed through his veins. He couldn't even contemplate the potential that they'd failed in the end. A split-second decision later and he found himself pulling the trigger. Nothing happened.

"If you think this is a dream, what makes you think you can kill me?" The old man's voice didn't contain any anger at the attempt against his life. His voice was calm and gentle, perhaps even a little amused.

"If this is a dream then leave me alone."

"It's a dream, a memory, and a warning," the Hybrid spoke. "This has all happened before, and now… now it must happen again. You must go back."

"I'm not interested in any of this." Bill shook his head. "And, I'm not interested in reliving the past." Even as he said it, he wondered if that was the truth. Laura.

"What if you saw her again?" The Hybrid locked gazes with Adama again. Bill opened his mouth to snap out a response, but the words didn't come. The pain in his chest from his aching heart consumed him. He'd give anything to see her again.

"The jealous god will rewind time. But you have another chance. It was earned." The Hybrid closed his eyes, and the room began to fade around them. "Remember and learn because this will be the end of the line."

…

His eyes snapped open. Heart pounded against his chest, and it felt like someone had shot him with adrenaline as he tried to breathe steadily. The Hybrid's words continued to ring in his ears as he looked around. The walls were the unmistakable metal of a Battleship. The space he was in was small, and a narrow mattress laid under him—a bunk. He ran his hands over the blankets, it felt solid and real.

His narrowed eyes took in his surroundings with military precision. There were books on the shelf above his head, pictures in frames, and some papers. He carefully picked up a framed photo; he'd always kept this one with him on his different duty assignments. Zak and Lee were smiling into the camera as a toddler and young boy. It was one of the last pictures taken before everything had irrevocably broken down in his marriage to Carolanne. That led him to his next picture: his wedding photo. A lump formed in his throat as his thoughts turned to a different woman than the one in the photo. Constant heartache had rung him out until he was dry and no more tears could come. He felt raw, the anguish fraying his nerves and making it hard to process what was going on. He replaced the frames on his shelf, turning the one of Carolanne upside down.

Taking a deep breath, he swung his legs out of the bunk and stood up. His gaze swept through the darkened room, and he noticed the figures sleeping in their own bunks. His eyes widened in recognition. He knew these people; Lt. Reed, Lt. Oliver, Lt. Grayson… he paused. He didn't remember the rest of their names.

All of this will happen again, the Hybrid had told him. The familiar surroundings spoke to the truth of such a statement, and he braced himself against a wall and remembered. This was where he used to live; the typical officer's quarters on a Battlestar. But he should be on Earth. He felt pain in his heart but noticed his muscles didn't ache from age or how he'd buried her. That act had taken every bit of strength he had.

Now he was living in a memory from long ago. His mind drifted back and fixated on the words of the Hybrid. What if you saw her again? He'd give anything to see Laura Roslin again.

His heart felt like someone had ripped it right out of his chest. He remembered dirt covering her face as he buried her. His body trembled with the effort it took not to break down right there, but William Adama was a soldier. He fell back on his training. It told him what to do: stay alive, gather intel, strategize, and strike. He moved over to his locker, the sight distantly familiar to him. He opened it.

His uniform was there. The patch on it told him he was stationed on the Battlestar Universal. The rank insignia informed him he was a major. This was sixteen years ago.

...

Sixteen years before the Fall of the Colonies, somewhere in deep space, a Cylon burst through the surface of the ooze his body was encased in. He sucked down a gulp of air and looked around. Familiar faces surrounded him, and he scrutinized each one. But when he closed his eyes, he saw destruction and blood. He remembered his centurions falling before him, and the Final Five standing with humanity. They'd thought they'd won, but as John Cavil looked around, laughter burst from his chest. He'd always had this little ace up his sleeve.

...

Author's note: It has been years since I've done any creative writing, and this is my first fanfic. I'm very excited about the story but warn that it will be long. Give me a few chapters to dust off my very rusty skills, and i promise to try and give you a good story.