#spaceparents

“We’re dead!” Starbuck cried, flopping onto the beach. “We survived, but we’re dead!”

“Shut up,” Laura hissed, wringing out her head scarf. “We’re not dead until somebody hears you.”

With difficulty, Starbuck raised her head, half her face covered in sand. “Like there’s anybody on this godforsaken island.”

“There might not be yet,” Laura said through gritted teeth. “But considering our ship was just blown to pieces by His Majesty’s Navy, they’ll be looking for survivors to imprison.”

“Captain,” Billy said, just loud enough to be heard. “We’re not alone here.”

Laura trudged farther inland through the sand, limbs aching from the swim. Billy, her favorite, her mentee, her son when she let herself feel it, stood, right arm bleeding through his hastily made tourniquet. But he stood, while the rest of her crew sank to the bottom of the ocean.

In the sand were tracks of some kind, the same size and rough shape of boots or human feet. In sand, it was hard to tell, but the large wildlife on an island like this would likely be quadrupeds.

Starbuck dragged herself up the shore to join her captain and fellow pirate.

“I don’t know what kind of person lives on this island,” Billy said, “but they can’t be more barbaric than the animals who killed everyone on our ship.”

“Can’t they?” Starbuck said. “This isn’t my legendary pessimism talking here. This island isn’t even on a map, at least not on any map I’ve ever seen.”

A shiver ran up Laura’s spine, but she wasn’t afraid. No, even with smoke from the embers of her ship blowing toward them, hope crept into her subconscious. This can’t be. It’s impossible. There are many uncharted islands on the Caribbean Sea. It doesn’t mean he’s here.

“Sir?” When Laura looked at Billy again, his brow was furrowed, as though he’d addressed her more than once. “We need to choose now whether to fight the Imperial Navy or find shelter within.”

Laura gazed out at the sea, her home, the body she’d given her life to after she lost everything. Too many ships had met their end like this, blown to bits and buried thousands of leagues below, for her to have considered the Sine Qua Non her home. But on land, she felt unmoored, unsteady, uncertain; its boundaries were finite, its dangers infinite and foreign to her. But, with only two of her crew left, as the silhouette of the British ship permeated the smoky clouds still hovering above the water, Captain Laura Roslin knew what she had to do.

“We brave the jungle,” she said, her voice firmer than her confidence. “Now, before they see us.” When neither pirate—god, had she ever noticed how young they were?—moved, she barked. “Go!”

Starbuck helped Billy along—that blood loss was starting to become a problem—and Laura followed them, walking with her back toward the maw of a beast less terrifying than the beast she’d just fought. Had they seen them? Would they risk coming ashore?

“Captain!” Starbuck called out. Laura realized that she’d stopped, just at the jungle’s edge. When she turned, Billy and Starbuck, pale and bleeding and hurting, were waiting for her. For the first time in years, she remembered her time as a teacher at the settlement, all those bright little faces, now long dead, looking to her like she could answer any questions.

Fucking hell, Billy and Starbuck looked at her that way now.

“Okay,” Laura said, shaking herself. “Next crisis.”

If anyone harbored hope for cooler temperatures in the jungle, those hopes were dashed within minutes. Figures they’d end up on an island with humidity so thick you could almost drink the air, but with no fresh water to be found. Billy waned faster by the minute. If they didn’t find a freshwater source to clean his wound with soon, he would be in real trouble.

“Alright,” Laura huffed, stopping to catch her breath, “we need to find water. Starbuck, I’m going to stay with Billy and change his bandage.” Her headscarf, free of blood and sand, would have to do. “I want you to go steadily in one direction for five minutes and come back exactly the way you came. No detours. If you get lost—”

“I’m fucked. Got it.” With a mock salute, Starbuck eased Billy down onto the ground. “Hang in there, Keikeya. Croaking is a shitty way to get out of paying me back for buying you into that poker game last week.”

A faint smile graced Billy’s face, but his eyes worried Laura. “But I’d still get out of it.”

Starbuck’s concern must have been greater than Laura thought, because she simply ruffled Billy’s soaked hair before taking off without another word.

Taking a deep breath, Laura knelt next to Billy. “I taught you better than this,” she tutted, cutting Billy’s clumsy tourniquet with her smallest blade and hoping her voice didn’t shake.

“To be fair,” Billy said, “I only had one arm.”

To Laura’s relief, the wound had stopped bleeding. “Nothing but excuses from you.”

Billy smiled softly, but pointedly looked away from the blood on his arm. The boy had always been squeamish, ever since she had plucked him from in the wreckage of a civilian voyager. Starbuck had joined their crew only two months prior, after nearly kicking and screaming her way out of a rescue from—

“Captain?”

“Hush. Save your strength.”

“Don’t bury me on the island if I die.”

Laura’s fingers shook as she tied the makeshift bandage around Billy’s arm. “Don’t be ridiculous, Billy—”

“Put me out to sea, like a proper pirate.”

I want to be a proper pirate, he’d said to her, only 10 years old and orphaned, when she offered to send him back to England. Will you teach me?

Tears stung Laura’s eyes, so she stood abruptly. “Stay right here. I’m going to make sure Starbuck hasn’t gone too far.” She’d only gone a few yards when she heard Billy gasp in pain. Hand at her hilt, she spun, only to find a young man, dirty with poorly sewn clothing, holding Billy upright with a knife to his throat.

“What are you doing here? Who are you?” he barked.

Laura’s eyes lingered on the knife, familiar and impossible. Only when Laura looked into the man’s eyes did she believe who she was seeing. “Lee,” she whispered. “Lee Adama.”

Lee staggered back with Billy in tow, causing him to cry out in pain.

“No, stop! Stop!” Laura dropped her knife and held both hands up. She had another strapped to her back anyway. “My name is Laura Roslin. You grew up on my ship, with your brother and—and you father.” You, your brother, you father, the love of my life, all of you lost to me.

“My brother is dead,” Lee growled. The pain in his voice matched the ache in Laura’s chest, the agony of grief and hope threatening to rip her half.

Zak is gone. But Bill…could he be?

“Lee,” Laura tried again. “Your father was captain of one ship, and I was the captain of the ship, but you used to help me sometimes. Do you remember?” She caught a flicker of doubt in his face, but his hold stayed firm. “The boy you’re threatening? His name is Billy. He had only just come to be with us, but you showed him everything you knew.” Her fingers twitched, longing for the security of a blade in her hand. “Lee, look at me.” When he complied, she smiled softly. “Since you helped me, I had a nickname for you. Captain Apollo. Do you remember that?”

As Lee’s mouth fell agape, his hold on Billy slackened, but before he could open his mouth, a thunderous cry echoed through the trees.

“Laura?”

It had been 10 years since she’d heard that voice, but it had haunted her every night since she had to leave him behind to save her crew. She couldn’t bear to raise her eyes to locate the sound, lest it be a trick, some sign of infection—anything but real.

Lee, however, had looked up, above Laura’s head, and was now staring back at her in awe.

“Let him go, Lee,” Laura breathed instead. Billy was here. Billy she could save. “Please.”

Without taking his eyes from her, Lee eased Billy to the ground, and Laura rushed over. For the first time Billy’s face, contorted in pain, meant something to Lee Adama, and he gushed apologies. “Billy, I’m sorry. We—we’ve got medicine and water. We can help you.”

We.

“Lee?” Starbuck’s voice, loud and incredulous, echoed behind Laura, and Lee took off to embrace the childhood friend he apparently recognized immediately. Who wouldn’t know Kara Thrace?

Billy stared upward at something behind Laura while she fussed over his bandage. “You should go to him,” he said, his voice still strained with pain.

“Who?”

“You know who.”

Indeed, Laura heard rustling behind her, as though someone was rushing down. “I’ll be right back,” she insisted. On trembling legs, she stood, took a few steps back, but when she turned around, she found she couldn’t move, could barely breathe.

Across the clearing, maybe 20 yards away, stood Bill Adama, a gun slung over his shoulder and his clothes hanging off his frame. The tears in his eyes glistened in the light dancing through the leaves, and when he started toward her, a stifled sob left Laura’s mouth. With both hands, she covered her mouth as Bill got closer, and closer, and closer, and then close enough to touch. Slowly, he eased the gun to the ground and took her face in his hands. God, feeling his hands on her skin again was almost enough to send her to her knees. Instead, her hands dropped to his forearms and squeezed too tight as she swallowed her sobs.

“Missed you,” Bill said, that same booming voice from before a murmur just for her.

With bravery she didn’t feel, Laura reached up and wiped a tear from Bill’s sea-weathered cheeks, humming when his touch moved to her hips. “Me too,” she whispered. Bill kissed the tear tracks on the apple of her cheeks, which just made her cry harder, and before he could pull away, before he could disappear, Laura kissed him, tears and all.