DISCLAIMER: So totally not mine. Using them without permission and hoping not to get sued. TITLE: 'Til the End of Days AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar RATING: NC-17 (yes, even this one...shut-up...:D) SPOILERS: Through "Sometimes a Great Notion" SUMMARY: "She opens her eyes to the silver-grey sky and watches the only home she's ever known moving away for the last time." D'Anna's days on Earth. WARNING: Brief Self-Injury Triggery Stuff Mucho thanks to Teddy E and for the betas (and for loving me for my weird little self). Love you both, always. For 'cause she asked nicely if I might indulge my guilty pleasure. Day 1 When the soft roar of the ship shimmers on the stagnant air, she closes her eyes. The sound feels like relief, like gentle winds washing over her tired limbs. She hasn't brought herself to step into the water. She lies on her back in the sand and the clutter of a million lifetimes lost, and she feels for the traces of heat from the motors. The blessed numbness lasts until she hears the subtle change in motor pitch, feels the mechanism in her bones as the ship sets course and gathers speed. She opens her eyes to the silver-grey sky and watches the only home she's ever known moving away for the last time. The panic is worse than any she has known. The Threes are all gone, there's no one out there to walk this road with her, and she reaches toward her retreating universe and screams. Her raw cry echoes over the stripped and barren ground and she lets the sound surround her until she slips into cold and blackness. She wakes to the traces of evening tide soaking into her boots. The light is fading and she feels the cold. For a moment Caprica's lanky warmth is spooned up behind her, and Gaius is snoring against the wrinkles of her sleeve. Then she's alone, and her lips taste like steel. She lifts her head and squints into the darkness. She's made it to Earth and this is supposed to be home. She's supposed to be home. She realizes she's never belonged anywhere at all. Day 2 She wanders. For hours. Through brush, over stone, down valleys and up slatted remnants of stairs. Her shoes aren't meant for this terrain, but she doesn't have any others, and the ground's too rough for bare feet. She moves from street to street, ruins to ruins, and touches and scans and feels. She sits for half the morning with a ceramic doll in her hand, tracing the lines of faded paint with her fingernail. She can't see the child who once held this doll. She tries and tries. The doll ends up in her pocket. The sun sinks toward the water, and D'Anna can't shake the notion she should be looking for food. She knows she stayed here to die, but a little bit of the timing is still in her hands. And the simple truth is that her stomach hurts, and she wants the comfort. She knows the scraggling bits of vegetation fit for ingestion are essentially toxic. But it's a slow toxin to her physiology, and she doesn't expect to be around long enough to care. She drinks the water and tries to forget. Day 3 She's made a bed in a corner of a half-standing building. She's gathered blankets, the makings of a fire for the chill nights, even a kind of pillow. She doesn't know why she's nesting. But the instinct for survival is far more powerful than she had surmised. She's on Earth and she can feel her ancestors around her, brushing up against her very skin. She needs to see, needs to know. In the darkest night, when her back aches and the button on her slacks is digging into her hip, she looks at this barren expanse beneath this planet's silver moon, and she thinks maybe it would be better to have been a Centurion. Cleaner. Easier. Function without flesh. Directive without pain. But she remembers a night with Caprica's desolate tears soaking into her own collarbone, limbs tangled and damp with sweat, and she knows she can't let go. She's always been the one who wanted most to feel, and was most afraid to let anyone know. She said to Caprica, "We love you, too," like it was an everyday phrase, a natural sentiment to roll off the tongue. Don't worry, I'll take this shift; hand me the scanner, I'll run the diagnostics We love you, too. Once, she thought she understood love, had a commanding grasp on its nature. Later, she sat trembling in the resurrection chamber and wondered if she knew anything of love at all. Tonight she knows unquestioningly that she did, because the memory leaves her sitting on her heels in the middle of an ancient roadway, tears tickling her sundried lips. Day 4 She finds a music box by a broken vehicle. She opens the chipped wooden lid and watches the dancer within spinning and spinning. She remembers the day Gaius taught her about dance. The concept baffled her. She'd had all the information and resources at her fingertips, but she hadn't really understood the reason, the reasoning, the...desire. So he called up some old Aerelonian folk song on the ship's database and had it blasting through their quarters. Six had been on duty on the bridge. Just the two of them, and D'Anna in her favorite white gown and t-strap heels. He had taken her hand, slipped an arm around her waist and spun her in circles. Singing to her, smiling and laughing and moving to the music until she lost hold of her skepticism and got caught in the whirl. Something in the wind of the movement took her, charmed her and held her like his arms. Like running in fresh grass on a sunlit day. Like the dreams she'd always had and never spoken of. She was smiling in the end, holding the gaze of this strange and defective and wondrous man. She was dancing. She lets the music box tinker on in the desolate courtyard. She shrugs out of her jacket, letting the mid-day sunlight touch her bare arms, and she closes her eyes and spins. She wants to be a little girl dancing in the rain. She's never been a little girl, and she realizes this could be what hurts most of all. Day 6 She loved her months on New Caprica. She hated her months on New Caprica. She walked among the humans. Watched their families, their laughter, their fear. She felt the hatred in their stares. She looked and looked at them, sitting on the sidelines and observing for hours. Mirrors of her own kind. Blood flesh bone want pain dreams belief fear. She couldn't understand why they looked at her, in her trench coat and scarf, her boots and slacks, and saw a monster. With time she came to care for the scraggly dog chained near the infirmary. He sniffed her hands and didn't turn away. He loved her without reserve. She wondered what would happen if she brought him home with her. Back to the ship. She thought he might die without grass and sunlight. She sits by the water and wishes there were a dog on Earth. Then she realizes she would never be able to leave it behind, leave it alone, and let go. She has always been alone, and it's all she's ever feared. She digs beneath heaps of rubble and finds a painting of a girl riding a horse. She takes it back to her nest and props it on the wall by her bed. She can't explain why. She's here. Day 10 She starts running the length of the shore, legs pushing through the sand, stretching and taxing her limbs and burning the air through her lungs. She screams into the empty silence. *"What happened to you? Why did you leave us?"* She's feels she's running toward something, she feels she's running away. At the end of the line, she collapses into the cool water, letting it soak her clothes and pull at her hair. She squeezes her eyes closed and fights to block out the memories. There are a thousand images in her head of what Earth was supposed to be. What her life was supposed to be. All the dreams she never spoke of. Even to herself. The desires locked so deep even the other Threes couldn't hear. She's kept those dreams at bay, forced them into hiding. But in this empty place of resonating solitude, this world of poison and cold water, the images crash upon her and flash through her mind like realities too near to touch. Day 16 She takes the sharp-edged shard she's been using to dissect plants, and starts playing at drawing pictures on the inside of her arm. She draws a simple human tent, and remembers drawing a finger over the blood on Doc Cottle's shirt, telling him it all looked the same. It looks the same to her now as the crimson liquid smears and drips on the dust of those who came before. Day 20 *"I'm not like the other Threes."* She whispered her words. Only once. Not enough to make it real, not enough to negate the option of denial. But she and Gaius had lain awake for hours, silence like a blanket across the ship, Caprica snoring on the bed while they lay some distance away on the floor. She'd been downloading and downloading until the very notion made her nauseous and cold. Searching for something she knew she had no right to find but couldn't find a way to live without. She'd been falling apart at the seams and wanting to grasp eternity all in the same breath. She'd been staring at the ceiling with tears slipping into her hair, tears she'd hoped the darkness would hide from her companion. In a moment of pure vulnerability -- an emotion over which arrogant humans held no exclusive domain --- she had whispered to this very human man, *"I'm not like the other Threes".* The words were an abomination, a horror, an unnatural aberration to engender fear, suppression, denial. He said, fingers smoothing her tear-dampened hair, "Of course you're not. You're *our* D'Anna. You're a separate creature." She looked at him as her breath caught in her throat, and she saw the valley between them like never before. In the next instant, she saw all that pulled them together. Yet she was still left alone in the dark. The man who would be a Cylon was as isolated as she. Caught between worlds and unwelcome on either extreme. Together in their loneliness; she clung to him through the night. Day 22 She stares at the girl on the horse. She cleans the painting best she can with torn clothes and sea water. Little girl. Humans are the sum of their memories, their experience, their growth. She touches the little girl and tries with all she has to imagine youth. Development. Possibilities. Her ancestors found the key. And the key was children. As she's known all along. Day 25 The water tastes sweet. Her hormones are raging. Fight of flight, live or die. Too much sleep or other times too little. Her slacks nag against her clit and there's no one here to know or care. She pulls off her top, exposes her breasts to the silver-red sun. She remembers Gaius's mouth on her nipples. The gentle suckling that every human seems to understand as a source of comfort. Like the child at mother's milk. It is all about the lifeforce and passing it on. Her breasts ache for touch. Her breath quickens, and she unzips her slacks, slides long fingers into desperate folds. She reaches climax too fast and too hard and her cries carry off into the lifeless sky. In the comedown she feels it. The culmination of a lifetime's search. Cylon sex has only ever been for pleasure. Selfish pleasure and affection shared. But for humans...it is survival, procreation, the legacy of existence. Her womb is empty and ever will be and she has never felt so hollow and defeated in all her days. The resurrection ship is gone, the Threes are gone; there is nothing she can do for her race. The ache inside has been given a name. And with the unbidden thought of Hera's warm body in her arms, soft lips against her shoulder, she understands her own suffering, the overpowering need to live on. In a child. She tries for a second orgasm, a third. Tries to white out the pain and the truth. She ends curled on the sand, sobs shaking her body as hard as the pleasure. She has nothing left to give. Day 32 She's having trouble breathing at night. Sometimes the sky is too bright. The shore is too quiet. Day 36 Rain and rainbows. Sand scratching her knuckles. Everything's grey. Day 38 She finds a dress that fits the doll. A Cavil tried to take her, once, against her will. She fought him off and the Threes hated him on her behalf. Maybe all he wanted was a child. Life. Day 42 Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight... Smell of roses. Day 44 Sing to the moonlight, dance with the stars. Miss you in whispers, you're all that we are. Day 45 Little girl. Day 47 Dance. Day 49 White dress. ***