He finds her sitting by the fountain in the town square, one shapely foot dangling in the water, bare legs toned and bronzed, her satchel on the rim of the fountain beside her, a book in her lap. Her head is thrown back, her eyes are closed and a small smile curls the corners of her mouth. Her hair has grown back just as gloriously as it was before and cascades down her back in a riotous mess of curls, shining copper in the late afternoon sun.

To him she had always been beautiful in her Presidential armour but here, like this, she is at her most breathtaking, clad in sunlight and a simple red dress much like the one she wore on New Caprica that day they got high on booze and weed and each other.

He smiles as he approaches her, sneaks up on her and lands a kiss on her upturned nose. Her eyes open, those gorgeous green eyes that will forever hold him spellbound; the luminous smile that breaks across her face as she takes him in puts the sun to shame and his chest swells with pride that it is him who put that smile there.

"Hey teach, can I carry your bag?" he whispers and she giggles as she holds out the bag with an imperious gesture. How she can manage to giggle and look imperious at the same time is beyond him but she pulls it off with grace to spare. He takes the bag but does not let go of her hand; instead he bends over with a flourish and kisses it, mapping the delicate tracery of veins on the back with the tip of his tongue and looking at her mischievously. She returns the look with a sultry one of her own and pulls him in for a quick kiss.

"How was your day?" she asks as she releases him and he sits beside her. As she speaks, her eyes rove across the bustling town square. He follows her gaze, taking in the sight of their people just strolling along, selling their wares at fruit stalls and pastry stands, going about their day to day business. His eyes return to her; she looks so pleased at the sight before her it takes his breath away.

Soon, they will get up and maybe buy some fruit and walk through the winding streets of their settlement to their new home. Their modest abode is set right at the outskirts of town, against the edge of the forest. There are no mountains, except in the distance, nor is there a clear glass lake but there is a small brook running along the edge of their garden and there's a porch and a fire place and most importantly, there's them and it is their home. The cabin they talked of it is not, but then again, the cabin was always a metaphor for everything they fancied they wanted but could not have anyway. They will walk there and maybe have a cup of tea on the porch and perhaps he'll read to her or maybe she will read to him, then, later this evening, Kara and Lee will be over for dinner. It will be a nice, normal evening one of many in the latter days of two not so normal lives.

But all that is for later, for now he's content to just here and bask in the feeling of the sun shining down on his face and her sitting right beside him.

"Had a good one, nothing too exciting, made a run up to the Galactica, Sharon and Kara are doing a fine job." The two of them alternate command of the Battlestar, as she patrols the heavens, watching over them. "How was school today?" he asks, battling a sudden wave of nostalgia. He wouldn't trade what they have for anything but sometimes, he misses the old girl. It's a good thing Sharon and Kara know enough to feign needing his advise every once in a while so he can go up and visit.

Laura slips her arm through his and leans against him and begins to fill him in on the progress of her students, and he can't help but smile as she excitedly tells him how well they are all doing, how the schoolhouse is overflowing with kids courtesy of the baby boom they experienced some nine months after they settled, how well Hera and Nicky are doing.

"Future Leaders of their generation?"

"Who knows? The world is their oyster, they can be anything they want to be, both of them, all of them, isnĀ“t that the most wonderful thing?"

"Yeah, it is," he replies, looking at her profile, limned in sunlight. The fact that she, this creature of such poise and strength, chooses to be with him stuns him sometimes. He still can't quite believe it, mostly late at night, when she lies sleeping in his arms; it is then that doubts and fear assail him. He will find himself holding her tighter than usual, tighter than necessary, clutching her so desperately he's sure to leave bruises on her fair skin. It's as if he is afraid she will flit away if he relaxes his grip, that he'll wake up and she will be gone, consumed by the cancer after all, or dead from D'Anna's bullet, the overdose Cranach gave her or a million other things. On other nights he will wake as if from a nightmare and find himself almost shying away from her for some unnamed reason. He will loosen his grip, look down on her and see her changing face and hold his breath. Sometimes, when the moon lights the planes of her face just so, when darkness gathers in the hollows below those wide cheekbones, he will see the alienness of her. Sometimes when starlight bathes her features in an otherworldly glow, he will see the Goddess the Thirteenth Tribe worshipped; but always it is just for a fleeting moment and always, always she will morph back into Laura Roslin - the woman, his love - Laura Roslin in all her fallible human glory, and he will clutch her to him again and he will sleep, secure in the knowledge that his love is safe in his arms.

He throws her a sideways glance, here, in the sun drenched central plaza of their new homeland and Laura smiles as if she can read his thoughts. She squeezes his arm and he reaches out, rubs circles into the back of her hand where it rests in the crook of his elbow, tracing the faint scar left by Antanov's bullet.

As they sit there in companionable silence, they are greeted by almost everyone who passes them. In the years they have been here, they have both retreated from public life, but they are still the most recognized faces amongst their people, on the planet, even. The initial talks between President Avery of the Unified Tribes of Terra and President Roslin and Admiral Adama of the joint coalition of Cylon and Man had been widely televised and tales of their long trek across the heavens have already become the stuff of myth and legends. President Avery and his cabinet had welcomed them with open arms, the presence of Four of the Final Five going a long way to ensure talks of settlement and integration had gone smoothly.

They chose to settle down in a lush green belt of islands just north of the equator. Haven it is called, their little slice of Terra and it is as good a name as any. It's just a small corner of a big, wide world; the more modest and perhaps therefore most appealing of all the choices Avery gave them. They hadn't needed much; after all, there had hardly been enough of them to fit a medium sized town to begin with, even when they first started out. In the years since they settled here, some of their people have fanned out across the archipelago, others have moved to parts unknown, eager to explore the planet and quite a few Terrans have moved into their community. Humans and Cylons and Terrans have all united under the flag of the Unified Tribes, they are all getting along. All but the Cavils and Dorals that is. The Simons chose to stay on Terra and have made themselves useful members of their little community, but the Cavils and Dorals have sequestered themselves on one of the Basestars. Bill opposed the idea at first but, as Laura so succinctly pointed out, without command over Hybrids and Raiders and Centurions, they are just a gaggle of disgruntled old men and petulant little pests, effectively powerless.

Most astonishingly of all, even the Centurions have found a way to co-exist, having pledged themselves to Laura's side, she has been teaching them and somewhere along the line, they have found a certain pride in serving without being subservient. They seem happy to help out, if such a word can be applied to them, which, Laura assures him, it can. She still shares a link with them, the one lasting remnant of her earlier Chamalla induced prescience and lately, Hera and Nicky have come to share that connection.

All in all, it's more than he could ever have hoped for, all is well, and he wonders sometimes how it is that they have been afforded a happy ending.

He hadn't thought the powers that be would grant them one, and yes, he's come to believe in the powers that be, even if Laura has distanced herself from them. How else to explain the phenomenon that is her? How else to explain the miracle of them finding a place to set down after their journey had come to an ignominious end and all hope had been lost? Laura had scoffed at his overblown notions as he finally professed to maybe believe in something bigger than them, guiding the hand that created her, bringing the two of them together to lead their peoples through hardship and loss to these beautiful shores.

Funny how that works; just as the well of her belief has all but run dry, his bubbles to the surface. As is always the case with them, they meet each other in the middle, lift each other; it's what they have always done, what they continue to do.

"What're you reading?" he asks, glancing down at the book in her lap.

"Something from off of the disks we brought up from Earth," she replies. "Gaeta managed to salvage some of the data on them. There's a whole library worth of books there, including some pretty good mysteries. Avery had them sent over after they were reprinted." The Thirteenth Tribe had been ecstatic to see they brought a piece of their long lost heritage along with them when they showed up so suddenly. Much of their technology and culture had been lost when they left Earth in the aftermath of the conflict that tore the planet apart. There hadn't been much of an opportunity to grab anything beyond the immediately needful as they fled to the stars.

As Avery told it, in the vastness of space, stunned by the devastating results of their handiwork, the last remnants of the Thirteenth Tribe had forged a kind of peace between them and had set out to follow the signs left by their forefathers to this, their New Home.

A pretty commonplace tale as commonplace as their own turned out to be, he muses, history repeating itself, over and over again, until now that is. Laura, with his help, as she will keep reminding him, had ensured the pattern would be broken, the never ending cycle of devastation and rebirth had finally ended after all.

Still, for all that, they are both all too well aware that where one cycle ends, another one begins; that every day, with everything they do, with every action they take, they are molding the future, shaping the face of things to come, fashioning a new cycle.

He can only hope that this time, the good they do will outweigh the bad.

Shaking himself from his thoughts, he smiles down at Laura, his President turned Schoolteacher again, knowing the future is in good hands. He inclines his head, squints against the sun glinting off the gold lettering on the spine of the bound volume in her hand.

"The Maltese Falcon, huh?" he teases. "Sure that's from Gaeta's files? Sounds like a cheap knock-off to me."

She smiles, their battered copy of Searider Falcon sits in a place of honor on their mantle at home. Charred and all but falling apart at the seams, it reminds them every day of what they went through to get here.

"No knock off," she enthuses, "apparently the writer, Dashiell Hammet, wrote quite a few of Earth's classic mysteries and then there's lots of other exiting material besides. Avery recommended The Long Goodbye, Farewell, my Lovely and the Big Sleep as well as any of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but the Sherlock Holmes ones seem a bit stilted, not the gritty stuff I know you like."

He turns towards her, shuts up her exited ramble by kissing her full on the lips. He feels her smile into the kiss and as one hand glides to her waist he reaches out with the other, takes the book from her and puts it in her bag.

"Hmm, I don't know that I like the sound of that. What with all that reading, where will we find the time to canoodle?"

"Canoodle, huh? Whatever happened to plain old frak?"

"Hey, I'm living with a schoolteacher now, gotta keep up the vocabulary."

She giggles at that, which turns into a shriek of laughter as he tickles her ribs. Taking her revenge, she splashes him with water and yelps when he returns the favor. Another splash and another giggle and he shakes the water from his hair, stands and picks her up and strides into the fountain, threatens to deposit her in the clear, cold water. She splutters and throws him a mock indignant scowl which quickly morphs into a full blown smile when he gently sets her on her feet instead. Water seeps into his boots, it's chilly but the sight of her standing there is stunning, has him hot for her in no time flat, so he doesn't mind.

She is already half soaked, droplets of water glistening on her face, sparkling in her eyelashes, sliding down her chest into the V of her blouse which is stuck to her skin in patches, leaving very little to the imagination. She is beautiful and he is mesmerized, so wrapped up in admiring the siren before him that when she throws herself at him, he stumbles backwards as he fumbles to catch her and they find themselves right under the spray, water cascading down on them. She squeals with laughter as they're both drenched in an instant and he can only imagine what the people in the square must think, seeing their former leaders splash around in the fountain. Glancing sideways, he sees they have indeed amassed quite an audience; there are several whistles and catcalls and he sees Kara smirking at them from amidst the crowd, Lee standing beside her, looking less than Presidential with his jaw hanging halfway to the floor. Bill doesn't care; it's worth it just to see Laura laugh like that. He picks her up, kisses her soundly, smiling into the kiss as whistles and catcalls turn into outright cheering. She doubles over in laughter as he breaks the kiss and bows extravagantly at their audience, sweeping off an imaginary hat. His mission in life, since they first settled here, is to make her laugh that same full throated, exuberant laugh at least once a day.

So far, it's mission accomplished and he intends to keep it that way.