Laura Roslin is not a happy camper.

The Promised Land sucks, it sucks bullets and she permits herself this small thing; to let her shock and disappointment bleed through as she utters the one word.

"Earth."

All around her, the faces of her companions reflect her sorrow and for a moment she allows herself to feel it, the enormity of it. That after all they've suffered. After all the loss and heartbreak, this is their reward; it is the cruelest of jokes, the bitterest of ironies. This wasteland is not what they'd set out to find when their worlds had been destroyed, not what they signed up for when they started their fateful journey across the heavens in search of the Promised Land.

She doesn't yet go beyond the plural, doesn't go from the communal to the personal. She knows that if she goes there, the weight of it will crush her, the weight of this, her failure.

Instead, she holds herself tightly as she stalks away from Bill and the rest of her companions, stalks towards the gunmetal grey shoreline, leaving them al behind rather than breaking down in front of them. Something bubbles inside of her, threatens to spill over, laughter or tears, she's not sure which.

Once she's a safe distance away, Laura stops for a moment, takes a deep breath, unclenches her rigid self control just a fraction. The air tastes like copper and ashes but underneath she can detect a different flavor, something rich and salty that reminds her of her youth and holidays by the sea on Caprica, and it is this she clings to as she continues her solitary march across the nuclear wasteland that is Earth.

When sorrow leaves and rage comes knocking, she welcomes it. She is angry, so angry; furious at the Gods. They used her as a plaything, gave her cancer and visions of redemption, fated her to die but plied her with the promise that her death would not be in vain, if only she would do their bidding.

They used her and abused her and she's borne it all, consoled by the knowledge that in the end it would all be worth it, that the loss of her own life would not be too steep a price to pay if it purchased her the survival of the human race, if it meant her people would be saved.

How noble, how arrogant and how ultimately futile.

When she hits the shoreline she turns left and just keeps walking. One glance behind her shows her companions are still rooted to the spot, Cylon and Human alike, all still staring ahead numbly, their hopes and dreams shattered. Bill looks to be coming out of it a little though, casting about him, probably looking for her, and Laura quickens her step, leaves the shoreline in order to lose herself amongst the ruins of this place.

As she walks, she curses the weakness in her limbs, the way her breath labors in her lungs, the tight, ever present band of pain across her chest, the queasy feeling in her stomach that never really goes away. The gods burdened her with cancer and made it seem like a gift, and then they played this stupid prank on her; her anger knows no bounds.

In the wake of her fury, thunder rumbles in the distance and lightning lights up the sky and when she feels the first fat spatters of rain on her face, she ducks into the nearest structure that seems halfway able to offer some shelter. Shivering, she wraps her arms around herself, ducks deeper into her jacket and surveys her surroundings.

The edifice she finds herself in looks to have been a temple of sorts, a holy place. There is the sketch of a nave, the vestiges of a raised dais, and the crumbling remains of a statue; a man, bearded and looking quite a bit like Gaius frakkin' Baltar during his trial, but with infinite love and compassion, rather than self-righteous arrogance, written on the stone visage. The statue is positioned to the back of the temple and every line in the architecture of this place leads towards it. In the heydays of this lost civilization, it would have been the centerpiece, the focus of worship.

And in that recognition, realization hits her hard. Before the destruction and devastation, before the end of all hope, the Thirteenth Tribe had worshipped a monotheist God, and Cylons had walked Earth's green pastures.

It brings her to her knees, this truth she's glimpsed before but has never fully acknowledged; it makes her close her eyes, forces the breath from her lungs, the strength from her limbs. She swallows convulsively, curses or prayers - or perhaps both - stuck in her throat; sucks in a huge breath and screams an inarticulate scream that rises to the rafters in a fury of grief, loud enough to shatter the heavens. She screams for her friends and family, all the people of the fleet, their Cylon allies even, earth and it's lost inhabitants. She screams and thinks that now that she's started, she might never stop, but in the end, when she feels her heart might just burst with the strain, her voice simply breaks, too frail after all, to articulate the full extent of her anguish.

In utter desolation, Laura takes a page from Bill's book, smashes her fist into the unforgiving stone beneath her, hard enough to break skin and shatter bone, stain the floor with her blood. All thought leaves her as agony crashes through her and in that moment of absolute clarity she sees, and in that seeing is broken and made anew.

Past the Opera House, past visions and prophecies and cancer and death, she sees, oh, how she sees now, and it is terrible, and it is beautiful.

When she finally opens her eyes, the grayness of the world has lifted, sunshine filters through the rafters, makes dust motes dance like fireflies around her. She lifts her face to the light, bathes in it like a ritual cleansing, until a small movement to her right catches her eye. There, in the shadows just beyond the light, she finds Billy and Elosha, her parents and her sisters, scores of Sixes and Eights, Emily and Adar and Maya; a host of known and unknown faces. This is not the small, intimate gathering that stood, waiting for her, on the other side of the river in her dream, these are the multitudes. Everyone she's lost, Human and Cylon both, before and during their long trek across the stars, all the names and numbers she's tattooed on her skin in invisible, indelible, ink.

Billy and Elosha, her parents and sisters move towards her and the multitudes follow. Laura kneels on the floor, human and frail, clutching her broken and bleeding hand to her heart, and stares and starts in wonder and awe as these specters of her past walk up to her and move through her like a benediction.

Still don't know anything about women, except that you make me proud

Told you the Ancients got a lot of things wrong

You did good, my sweet little girl

They each leave her a piece of themselves, her many dead; some small measure of strength, a trace of hope, a hint of laughter, a flash of sunshine reflecting off of Lake Caprica, a glimpse of golden eyes alight with mischief, the taste of Virgon Brew on a hot summers evening, a touch like a blessing on fevered skin.

She feels them, oh, how she feels them, they thrum in her blood, sing in her veins, they are beautiful.

They find her like that, Bill, Lee and Kara, after a frantic search.

They've hunted through the ruins of this Gods forsaken place for hours; have existed in a carefully controlled state of utter panic ever since they first discovered Laura, the President, the Prophet, went missing. They each, in their own way, need her; for love, for guidance, for forgiveness, and all three know they will not rest until they recover her, might never leave here again if they don't.

They find her, kneeling on the cold, stone floor of what looks to have once been a temple; kneeling like a ritual sacrifice, clutching a bleeding hand to her chest, face turned up to the light. They approach her silently, aware that something powerful happened here, not sure if it is their place to disturb her. Bill kneels beside Laura, carefully, and breathes her name and she slowly turns towards him. They, all three, gasp in wonder at the sight. There is a calmness in her face that is miles removed from the serene mask she is wont to wear. So much so that they wonder how they could ever have mistaken the mask for the real thing. The lines of her face have softened, her green eyes are luminous, her ethereal smile radiates peace.

Lee and Kara kneel beside the Admiral and , all three simultaneously reach out to touch her, needing that human connection, feeling as if she might just float away from them any second now if they don't anchor her to them. As their hands touch her, Laura's beatific smile alights on each of them in turn, lingering on the Admiral the longest.

"Take me home," she says, her voice unimaginably soft, hoarse and broken, and as consciousness leaves her and she crumples to the floor, her fractured family is there to catch her.