LINDSEY

Lindsey sits on the dock, leaning forward, searching for her reflection in the dark water. In the darkness, she can barely make out the lighter patches of wave where her pale blonde hair is reflected. The water doesn't hold still long enough to reflect the stars that dust the heavens over her head.

She smiles gently, digging her fingernails into the wooden boards that support her weight. She hums the refrain of a song she can barely remember, softly, deep in her throat, so no one else can hear. Her bare feet splash in the water, spotting the edges of her ragged shorts.

Late evening sounds carry out to her; laughter, shouting, talking. The sweet aroma of frying fish on the balmy night breeze tickles her nose. Humming a little bit louder, she rocks back and forth slightly. She likes to come out here late at night, enjoys her solitary communes with the night sky. It's a good way, she thinks, to remember.

She'd said that she would remember, and she has.

"Chou No Michiyuki," Grissom said to Sara on that long-ago afternoon. "It's a Japanese dance. It means "Journey of the Butterflies." Young lovers, forbidden to marry, commit suicide. The next spring, they're reborn as butterflies. Touching, don't you think? Tragic, but with that silver lining on the horizon. I saw it performed in Los Angeles once." He'd paused, his fingers gliding over hers, and hadn't said anything for a while.

Lindsey smiles to herself, thinking of that. The memory of a gunshot echoes in her mind, and she pictures the blood that must have sprayed over Sara's white cheek. She remembered how Warrick and Nick and Greg had rushed to the place she'd been standing, torn apart by something lost that they could have saved. In the end they'd left them there, two more bodies left behind in the exodus to the coast.

No one had spoken after that, except for Nick asking her in a gravelly voice to please stop singing. She had never sung that song again. Grissom had taken the advice in the lyrics and then stolen the song- she knew that as soon as she stopped singing it, she would lose it forever. Half wishing she could remember those words, he pictures Grissom and Sara reborn as butterflies. If she concentrates hard enough, she can feel the wind under her own fingertips, and hopes that one day she's lucky enough to get a butterfly death.

She won't. She knows it. Even death has changed now. When someone died, they were wrapped in a blanket and rowed out to one of the deep places to be slipped into the waves. Maybe she'll be reborn as a fish. At least she could tell the other fish that she knew the last butterflies.

A splash somewhere to her right attracts her attention, and she turns her head in the direction of the sound. Giggling, a teenager pulls her boyfriend up out of the water. Their forms are silhouetted for a moment against the bright yellow door of someone's living space, and the smile slowly ebbs away from Lindsey's face.

She can't remember the feel of solid ground beneath her feet. They've been living on this floating city for twelve years. Twelve long years of an entire species forsaking land and learning to live on the sea.

The Things had taken over the major continents, avoiding water where they could. Even after all this time, no one knew where they had come from, although there were rumors of a government experiment gone wrong. Doors were opened that should have stayed shut, people whispered. Reasons aside, it had been impossible to fight them. Three fourths- at the least- of the human population had been wiped out in the first year. The lucky ones tied their boats together into the drifting metropolises of the oceans, the new Venices. The Pacific Islands became the last refuges for mankind, the last untouched land in what had been their world. Very few people actually lived on the islands themselves; what little land there was was devoted to farming. But you could get close to them without danger, and sometimes it was enough.

There were missions to the mainlands, in search of relics of the lives that they'd lost, or survivors, or supplies. They didn't always come back. Sometimes, Lindsey was tempted to take ship with the brave ones, for better or for worse, just to feel the dirt between her toes again. To lay her hands on the bark of a tree, and be shaded from the sun by the branches arching over her.

Her mother would be heartbroken if she went back, though. Catherine still lived by her rule of never regretting, never looking back. She could barely walk, but she accepted her life and dealt with it as best she could. Of course, Warrick helped. He'd often joked that they would have made a perfect pirate couple; he with his one eye, she with her mangled leg. The desperation that had tinged the first few years on the water had faded from their voices, leaving calm acceptance in its wake. She wasn't sure what they would have done without each other. She wasn't sure she wanted to think about it.

They all lived together on half of a salvaged barge; Catherine and Warrick and herself, Nick and Greg, the Robbins family and David. David had married Doc Robbin's eldest daughter not long after they'd sailed out to sea. The doctor was getting older now, but still sailed from city to city, tending to people's injuries as best he could.

In the beginning, Nick had somehow gotten his hands on a small sailboat. For years, he sailed all over, up and down the coast, from village to town to the largest cities. He scoured the islands and came perilously close to the coasts of the Americas, searching for his family. He had even braved the dangerous Drake Passage, navigating the waters between the tip of South America and Antarctica quickly and successfully, but his search of the Atlantic had also proved fruitless. He hadn't come back the man he'd left, but he did his best to hide it.

Flicking a bit of seaweed with her toe, she sighs. You couldn't help but notice Nick, his face tanned and lined by long hours in the sun and salt wind, scanning the horizon every time he thought no one was looking. She wanted to tell him that they'd find each other again, someday, but she didn't know the words to that song.

"Hey, beautiful." Startled, Lindsey looks up into Greg's smiling eyes. She gives him a small smile in return before looking back out to sea. She feels him settle himself down beside her and leans into his arm as he wraps it around her thin shoulders.

"Whatcha thinking?"

She shrugs, delicately, breathes in the warm salt-scented air.

"Sandy the aurora's rising behind us, the pier lights our carnival life forever," she sings softly. "Oh, love me tonight, and I promise I'll love you forever…" she lets the note drift away, running her hand along the sunbleached wood as Greg leans toward her and leaves a trail of soft kisses on her shoulder.

"I love you too, babe." Greg stopped wondering a long time ago where Lindsey learned all of her songs. She knows bits and snippets of so many that it's entirely possible to carry on a conversation with her. He wonders instead if their daughter will speak normally or only with songs, as her mother does. He can't remember the last time he heard Lindsey construct a sentence of her own, although he tries. He remembers an angry little girl running out of a morgue, his younger self unaware at the time that the furious streak that had crossed his path would become the woman he loved more than anything. He thinks about what might have happened if nothing had changed. They wouldn't have had their beautiful child, or another one on the way.

Pulling Lindsey closer to him, he decides that he doesn't care. They watch the stars revolve through the sky together, each lost in their thoughts of the past. One of Lindsey's hands snakes into his, the other cradling the bump of her stomach as they turn their faces towards the dawn. Towards the future.

FIN.

Author's Notes:

This started out as a one-shot, random drabble thing, and grew into something slightly bigger. While I am a GS shipper, and this has slightly GS overtones, it wasn't particularly meant to be that way. Swear.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed- you guys really kept this going 

"Balalu-aye spins on his crutches, says leave if you want, if you want to leave," is an excerpt from the Paul Simon song "Rhythm of the Saints."

"Sandy, the aurora is rising behind us/ the pier lights our carnival life forever/ Oh, love me tonight, and I promise I'll love you forever" is an excerpt from the Bruce Springsteen song "4th of July, Asbury Park."