Time can't be measured but can be chosen - a♥r Drabble
Their time had come.
Laura had heard those words from too many well-meaning idiots at the worst moments of her life. When her mother died and again when her sisters and her father were killed, those useless strangers had always said it again and again with a certain nod, like the sentence held the wisdom of the world.
It didn't.
She'd always thought it was the most ridiculous turn of phrase in the Colonies. People who died no longer had time because it stopped. Wasn’t that the reason so many killed themselves? To stop the suffering that came with time? Definitely the most misleading, hypocritical expression ever coined.
Or so she'd thought until she'd accompanied Emily on her boat ride to the shore tonight.
As Laura looked at her friend’s empty bed, it was easy to rationalize that it probably had been just a dream, but the peace she had seen on her friend's face had felt too real for one. The love she had felt coming from Emily’s family as she watched her friend run toward them had been too beautiful not to exist somewhere. It made Laura smile.
Maybe it was a suitable sentence after all.
For Emily, it was time to lay down her burdens, her struggle with the disease and with a life on the run. It was time to embrace the family waiting for her on that shore. It wasn’t life as with a beating heart, but life with a full one.
Laura wished her friend every happiness and said goodbye.
When her own family came to see her, Laura knew. It was a time of choice, but not her time to die. She had more to do. The people on the shore loved her, but there was a person on Galactica she loved more. The people in the Fleet needed her. He needed her. She turned, walked away, and opened her eyes.
Maybe it had all been just a dream, but Laura was comforted in knowing that when her heart stopped, she would find love waiting for her on the shore. Until then, she knew who she wanted to be with. Laura turned to leave life station and she smiled.
Their time had come.
Time to be together.