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I can't believe I'm supposed to recaplet this. Okay, so Kara's been dreaming about painting the Eye of Jupiter on the wall of her Caprican apartment (and then having sex with Leoben soon thereafter) every night since Helo showed her that image from the Temple. So Helo tells her to go see an Oracle, who ends up repeating what Leoben told Kara about her mother in "Flesh and Bone," and says Leoben's coming for her. With the fleet on a refueling jaunt on a blue-sky planet, Kara spots a phantom Raider and chases it down, only no one else sees it or believes it's there. Adama and Son discuss benching her for being crazy, but Lee declines, even though she's wiggier than normal and seeing Eyes of Jupiter in her corn flakes and Kacey's reflection in mirrors and such. She also spends the whole episode giving Adama a figurine of Aurora to remember her by, and telling Lee where to put her photo when she dies, and finally letting Lee go, romantically speaking. So you know this is all going to suck real soon. Back on the planet, this time with Lee on her wing, Kara spots yet another phantom Raider and chases it down once again, this time getting knocked on the cockpit by whatever-it-is and into Mystical Leoben Dreamworld. And he takes her into her past, where we see her awful mother didn't let something like having terminal cancer keep her from emotionally abusing her daughter. And then Not Really Leoben takes Kara to her mother's deathbed, where she can finally let it all go and make her peace and not be afraid anymore and whatnot. Which comes in handy, because Kara's still tailspinning, and Lee's chasing her, and she tells him it's okay and "I'll see you on the other side" and "they're waiting for me," and then her viper completely explodes, and there's no 'chute, and Kara Thrace just really and truly died. No dreams, no cheats, no last-second shot of her stirring on the planet's surface. Just a whole lot of stunned faces in CIC and one big crying heap of Bill Adama. So long, Starbuck. I really, really, really hope you turn out to be a Cylon. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously, Leoben was a very clever Cylon, in addition to being a nutjob. Kara beat him up super-bad but prayed for him when he died; later, he kidnapped her and kept her in an apartment and made her super-duper crazy. Which she kind of already was, because her mom was not a nice lady, but it certainly didn't help. Also: all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. In the apartment, he swore that he was just trying to show her "the truth of her life," and the reasons she suffered and struggled and acted like a world-class a-hole a lot of the time. Everybody was talking about this mysterious destiny of hers, but nothing was really going on with it, even after the Temple of Five proved to be a monument to her doodles. Then we kind of forgot about her altogether so we could concentrate on labor laws. The previouslies end on her conversation with Helo about how the Eye of Jupiter in the Temple was the same one he saw in her apartment in Delphi. (That last link is to the episode titled "Valley Of Darkness." No fear.)
to that, a girl got kidnapped on the coast of Sicily; she was taken away by a dark spirit, into the underworld, where she became a woman. If her mother had known what was going to happen -- if she'd know that this was her fate, that it keeps the world turning -- who knows what she would have done differently? Sometimes it's better to just close your eyes, especially when the Gods are involved. The girl's name was Persephone, or Proserpina, or a thousand other names; we'll call her "Kore" now. It means "daughter." What is your name? Maybe last time, she was the interrogator and he was the prisoner. The players change, the story remains the same. He kept her down there, and it changed her. Maybe he told her she had a beautiful daughter, perhaps. With a name like Kore, or Kat. Or Kara. Homer called what she became down there the Iron Queen, and she only relented once. Empedocles called her water: "Now hear the fourfold roots of everything: Enlivining Hera, Hades, shining Zeus. And Nestis, moistening mortal springs with tears." Elysium, where the dead and burnt-out wraiths of mortals make their home, comes from the word for a person struck by lightning: enelysion. It's where you go when you're a hero and you've reached your end of line; it's the place Persephone rules. It's encircled by the stream Oceanus, which goes around and around, and never ends.
Kara Thrace's eyes are going wild in her rack as she dreams, breathing heavily. There are flashes of the mandala, the Eye of Jupiter; there's a paintbrush and white paint. You already know what she's doing: you watched Boomer do it up until the second she shot the Admiral and couldn't pretend any more. Kara's in her apartment, in dead and burnt-out Delphi, in panties and a man's shirt, painting over her painting of the Eye. To the left of it there's a poem, as we've seen before: "Methodically smoking my cigarette / With every breath I breathe out the day / With every delicious sip I drink away the night..." There's only the sound of her labored breathing as she paints over the Eye, first with the brush and then in great gouts and splashes. Leoben comes to her, taking her from behind, and her breath begins to strive for something else. He turns her around, kissing her; back on Galactica she's moving. He pulls her shirt open and holds her hands against the wall, with paint all over them both; they're on the floor, covered in paint. His shirt disappears, and still the breath. One and zero, recombining. It was never about wanting him and not wanting to want him: it was knowing she wanted him, and being unable to reconcile that with the person she had agreed to be. Over his shoulder, the Eye, as the paint disappears; as she comes. Her eyes snap open in her rack; she blinks a hundred times and tries to keep it quiet, to get her breath under control, to pretend she's asleep. Hotdog, looking fabulous, is grinning down, fascinated and turned on: "What's up?" She rolls her eyes. Kara Thrace has eyes. "Nothing. Go to sleep."
Starbuck splashes water on her face, like white paint, to chase away the dreams; she's gasping as Helo walks into the head. He's awake because he has a daughter of his own. If he knew what was going to happen -- if he knew his daughter's fate -- what would he do differently? Sometimes it's better to just close your eyes: to the storm, to the shape of things to come. "Hera gets these nightmares, wakes up crying and shaking. By the time we calm her down and get her back to sleep, I'm wide awake. All that crap she went through on New Caprica really left its mark on her." Not to mention her Basestar misadventures, and getting her blood kidnapped, and being stolen back and forth by the cast a hundred times. "Yeah, I know just how she feels," says Kara. She does. She sighs about the mandala, admitting that she dreams about it, and "that bastard Leoben," every night. I feel like I'm losing my mind here. Helo tells her to see the psychiatrist aboard Incron Vale; they've already made an appointment for Hera, who though she seems never to age is apparently ready for the talking cure. Meanwhile Nicky's like 80 pounds even. Starbuck scoffs and he suggests instead that she check out the Oracle camped at Dogsville; Kara sees a child -- not Kacey, another girl; we'll call her Kore -- who appears, broken and bleeding, and disappears. Because it's Kara, she doesn't revisit the psychiatry idea from a second ago. "She interprets dreams," Helo says, like Kara's not the most religious person on the ship. "Sees things in them. Predicts events." She brushes her teeth and when he asks if she's okay, she smiles that smile she smiles and admits she doesn't know.
(Tennyson: "Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals / From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure, / And bosom beating with a heart renewed. / Thy cheek begins to redden through the gloom, / Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine, / Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team / Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise, / And shake the darkness from their loosened manes, / And beat the twilight into flakes of a fire." It's from Tithonus, a poem he wrote about one of Aurora's lovers. Would you know I was fucking with you if I said "the other side of Thrace is also Thrace"? That's comedy, come on.)
Kara enters the Oracle's tent, and calls out; on an altar she sees a goddess, cast in gold: they've taken away her hands, and replaced them with wings. Kara Thrace has hands. Six years ago they gave her wings. Yolanda Brenna, who has an old-world face, appears, one eye obscured as she peeks around a wall. With one eye on Kara, she almost smiles: "The goddess Aurora. Take it, it's yours." (This was supposed to be Selloi again, but the schedule didn't work out.) "What the hell am I gonna do with this?" She'll know, when it's time. Brenna holds out her hands, asking Kara to sit. Kara kneels across an altar from the woman, a huge ceremonial bowl between them, filled with water. With the sound of dripping, with the lights playing across the water and onto their faces, you'd think we were in the presence of the Hybrid. Or on an MKULtra trip, or in the Temple of Five, or sitting with Boomer, listening to the water. Maybe last time, Kara was the interrogator and someone else was the prisoner. The players change, the story remains the same: it's not just Gaius's trial, and it never was. She takes the Oracle's hands.
"I, uh," she falters. "Uh...I can't sleep. I have these nightmares." Brenna doesn't look away, at least not in a way you could tell. "About the Cylon? The one who held you captive on New Caprica. Leoben." Starbuck swears he was just fucking with her; Brenna shakes her head. So gentle, even in her harshness. "He knows you better than you know yourself, Kara Thrace. He sees the truth about you. About your destiny." Starbuck pulls back; the Oracle's too strong, she can't get her hands free. There's a door about to slam. "Enough of that. The only destiny I have is as a world-class frak-up." Brenna almost smiles, again: "Who hurts everyone she cares about. That was your mother's gift to you, wasn't it? You were born to a woman who believed suffering was good for the soul, so you suffered." We've heard all these words before; we're hearing them again. Her voice and Leoben's begin to meld; how he was on the floor, talking, refusing to be quieted, when she was the interrogator. "Your life is a testament to pain. You want to believe it, because it means that you're bad luck. You're like a cancer that needs to be removed, because you hear her voice every day." Adama called her that once, too, and he loves her more than anyone; never more than when he said that. "And you want her to be right," says Leoben; back in the tent, Kara Thrace's eyes narrow. "Somebody told you what Leoben said to me?" A droplet runs down Brenna's cheek, like a tear. Like the rain. "Did you ever tell anyone about that? You learned the wrong lesson from your mother, Kara. You confused the messenger with the message." The Greek word for messenger is aggelos. We have a history of getting these messages confused. Six years ago, Kara ripped her wings from her mother's hands and ran, and ran, and ran, and she never looked back. "Your mother was trying to teach you something else," Brenna says, and Kara gets confused again: "You don't know crap about my mother." But Leoben does: "He sees the patterns, how it all fits together." The little girl Kore cries. Starbuck speaks harshly enough to shut her up, and Brenna too, but the Oracle doesn't blink, with her eyes. "He's coming for you. Soon." Somewhere a door slams, on a young girl's hands, breaking every finger, between the first and second knuckle. Kara's trial begins again. Kara tells her to fuck off and leaves; the water plays across Brenna's beautiful face, her eyes: "You can't stop him. And he will show you the way."
We write our own destiny, sure: that doesn't mean you can't see it coming, like a huge wave on the ocean. Everything that happens in this story is fate, unfolding out of itself. If you were to see somebody realize they already know everything that's about to happen, it would look like time moving forward. It would look like this. The wooden dialogue actually adds to the effect: every "realization" Kara has, moving forward on the tide, is just another level of acceptance. She'll get you between the eyes with it, in the end; but think about it, like hearing a sound across the ocean, getting closer. Like hearing Chip Six declare herself an angel a thousand times before you can admit the possibility. If she could admit was going to happen -- if she knew her fate, consciously, and how it keeps the world turning -- who knows what she'd do differently? Sometimes it's better to just close your eyes, especially when the Gods are involved. God has very bad manners most of the time, but this is one thing you can count on: nothing you can't handle until precisely the point that you can handle it. Until the bugs stop jumping and you realize there was never anything to be scared of, after all. This is how change works, all change: it feels like dying because it is.
Credits. 41,000 souls in the Fleet, for now. Sam's leaving after a booty call, zipping up at the side of Starbuck's rack, asking her to come away with him, for just a little while; she calls it tempting and he promises not to talk about their relationship. "I'll think about it," she says, and he knows that means no. "I hate to say this, but that whackjob Oracle, she's got a point. Your mother fracked up your head long before Leoben ever got to you." (PS: Your wife's status as a survivor of child abuse, abduction, and multiple rape? Not on the table for a fight that's basically about how she won't hang out with you. Just FYI.) She plays with the Aurora fetish, turning it in her hands, thinking about her mother. Acting a little out of character, diverging from the stream of this scene, a scene they must've played out a thousand times, takes a sudden turn. Kara turns sympathetic: "She was dealing with a lot, Sam." The message was this: that Kara was different from other kids, that she needed to be a warrior, like her mom. That fear gets you killed, and anger keeps you alive. The message was confused; the messenger was human. You can't trust us. "Well, she gave you plenty to be angry about, didn't she? Split your head open with a broomstick handle because you didn't make your bed?" Kara offers a little story, which happens to contain the key to this episode, and to...pretty much everything. (I'll tell you another story in a second that's the same, but funnier.) During the first Cylon war, Kara's mom (whose name, since "Gaia" and its brothers and derivatives are taken, was Socrata, which...) was stationed with the Fleet Marines on a jungle planet, and hated bugs as a result. Serious phobia. So Little Kara buys a bunch of rubber bugs, and leaves them all over Corporal Thrace's shoes. And Socrata screamed, and tried to smash them with her shoes, but it just made them jump around more.
... Guy gets on a train with a box, airholes in the side. The man he sits down to asks him about it, and he admits that he's got a mongoose in there. Dude B is like, "Not something normal, like a bunny or a cat?" No, there's more to the story. "It's because of my older brother. He's a drunk, among other things, and at this point he's just completely out of his tree. He sees serpents, everywhere. Everywhere he looks, he's seeing these snakes and they make him terrified." And Dude B is like, "So they're imaginary?" Yeah. "So then why the mongoose?" And the first guy smiles and looks very meaningfully at the box, which is empty. "Imaginary mongoose."
In every house there's a little room we don't know about. And inside that room, there are insects and darkness and the sound of scratching, and a hot red heat at the back of your eyes. And a lot of us don't ever open the door, so we're surprised when the monsters in that room take us down. In the apartment on Delphi it was hidden behind the Eye of Jupiter and a poem about Socrata, and sex, and death. On Galactica they call it the brig. On the Pegasus they put up a sign: "Please Disturb." But if you open the door, and step inside, you'll find that they're just...well, we'll get there. The truth would only scare you. For now, remember: if you pretend that door's not there, it's going to open by itself, and if you're not ready when the door opens, you can do some fucking horrible things to the people you should love most. Like your kids. Or yourself: "You must have caught hell for that," Anders says, and her voice is pretty light: "She grabbed my hand, held it in the doorjamb and slammed the door." Anders curses; Starbuck smiles: "It was worth it, though." It was an imaginary mongoose: always worth it. Human psychology is based on projection.
Hotdog and Starbuck flying CAP on day four of a refueling mission that keeps fracking up with the valve failures and whatnot, down near a blue-sky planet with "synchrotron radiation," which of course we all know what that is, so whatever. Realizing they're going to be out there for hours, Hotdog starts namesaking around, flying upside down and doing whirligigs and I don't know, loop-de-loops. Frotsnoozes. He laughs and admits that the sky is like the only thing he misses about New Caprica. Even just a dip in the upper part of the atmosphere makes him happy, and that makes me happy. It makes Kara happy too, until she spots a Raider flying across the sky, at an angle not unlike that of the day she said she'd fight until she couldn't anymore.
"Galactica, Starbuck. Showtime. Bogey, my right-one. In the soup at 45. Committing." Hotdog radios that there's no such bogey, and they say pilot things like "press" and "wilco," and Adama takes her at her word, aborting the unrep (?) and getting everybody ready to jump. Dualla takes the flight school vocab section of the quiz a tad far when she issues the order to "cease all underway replenish ops." If this whole part of the episode weren't like that, hyperactive with the shoving of these words in all over the place like an episode of ER in the sky, I'd call her an asshole. Gaeta can see Starbuck and Hotdog on dradis, but not the Raider, and Tigh and Adama talk about how being able to hide from Cylons with the atom stuff happening also means that the Cylons can hide from them. Which you'd think would be self-evident, but Season Three is pretty much based on that principle, and I think the whole show. Starbuck tells the CAG about the Raider in some kind of obvious diner code that Tigh fully translates for us, like even he is irritated by the script at this point, and how it seems to be peeing its name in the snow suddenly: "One heavy Raider, no fighter escort." Which is still not on dradis; Tigh joins Adama in believing Starbuck versus the evidence of his own eyes. I mean, "eye." "Alert the Fleet to stand by for an emergency jump," says Adama, and down in the clouds, diving further toward the planet, Hotdog's blind: no visual on Starbuck, no visual on anything. Nothing but the rain.
As Starbuck drops down through the clouds, she sees a mighty storm, twisting around and around, never ending: the Eye of Jupiter, again. Her jaw drops; lightning plays across the storm below. It takes Lee's voice to wake her up, as usual: "Do you have visual?" She looks away from the Eye, and calls out the position to her CAG; she shoots and dives down toward the Raider, who shoots and scores. Alarms begin to sound, like a noise coming across the water, like a sonic boom for something that hasn't hit yet. "Took a hit. Still flying." She got her wings six years ago. Adama searches for the Raider; Gaeta notes Starbuck's velocity, her angle of approach, her descent: she's getting close to the planetary hard deck (sigh) and if she goes down too far, if she stays on course, the atmospheric density will keep her from reaching orbit again. The word is trajectory: if Boomer was always meant to die on the floor of Hera's nursery, if we did that to her, wasn't that just fate, opening like a flower? Isn't this the trajectory Kara's always been looking for: if she goes down too far, she'll be crushed, and Tigh grumbles that this will occur "like a cheap soda can," because apparently he drinks really expensive soda? Which is not a thing that I knew to exist?
Starbuck ignores Apollo as he screams, shooting down into the storm, into the Eye, and his voice climbs higher and higher. It's nothing he hasn't been saying to her since they met; nothing he doesn't scream every time they have a conversation: "Starbuck, you're getting too low. Break off and climb. I repeat, Starbuck, you're getting too low, break off and climb!" Out the Viper window as she drops into the Eye, there's a man, indistinct, in Elysium, in a white room, illuminated by lightning as it flashes and disappears again. "Starbuck, get out of there. Starbuck, come in. Can you read? Starbuck, you're getting too low. Break off and climb! Get up!" I mean to say that Lee Adama begs her to climb, and she willfully ignores him, drawn forward by music across the water. "Hotdog, do you have a visual on Starbuck? Starbuck, come in. Do you read? Starbuck, pull out! That is an order. Pull out!" (That's what she said!) Kara snaps out of it, and climbs briefly, dipping down once again as she sees the bogey, teasing her away, into the darkest parts of the storm, a will o' wisp, an angel. And still the breathing, and the rain, as she strives further, and pulls away.
"Where'd I take the hits, Chief?" Chief is sorry to admit that she took them nowhere at all: she heard the crash, felt the impact, sounded the alarm, took it on the chin. It was just the bugs jumping; it's fear that gets you killed. "What? I felt the impact. Damn Viper felt like I hit a brick wall!" He promises to keep checking, but the funny thing about getting shot at is that you can often tell just by looking with your eyeballs. In the "bonus" scene, which are hilarious in how much they piss people off with the whole being-worthless thing, and I swear it's gotta be a SciFi issue, like they think they'll somehow fool people into thinking they're getting some kind of special thing they'd be getting if they had the internet, or something. I don't know who's watching SciFi that doesn't have the internet and/or could possibly feel like they were winning something awesome with this strategy, but I also know that everybody hates the bonus scenes, and that's funny. So in the bonus scene, Kara wigs the frack out on Chief after discovering a little hydraulic fluid leak, because the seals are so old, just like on Daru Mozu, and she bitches at him about drinking "moonshine" in the Tool Room, and how meanwhile she'll be up in her "bird" and that if some gear "buckles" when she "traps," then something impenetrable and very, very masculine-sounding will happen. In a case of bonus scene mimicking art, we cut to footage of Weddle & Thompson as young men, doodling in their notebooks in elementary school, guns and bombs and a robot with guns for arms shooting a plane made out of guns that fires guns, because we get it, we get it, we get it! Wilco or whatever! Words!
Later, in the briefing room, they're watching Starbuck's gun camera, which reveals a whole lot of nothing where a Heavy Raider's supposed to be. Athena's finally like, "We watched it twice already," but since she's classy she doesn't mention her robot eyeballs that are telling her in 1080p that there is no Heavy Raider. Starbuck says it must not be her gun camera film, but Athena points out that nobody else "pulled trigger" all day. And again: she refrains from saying that this was because there were no Cylons around to shoot at. Also the Raptor's dradis and Galactica's match up. Also no robots were around to show up on dradis. Starbuck snits at him that dradis is "wonky" near the planet, Karl, and Hotdog and Sharon are like, "Here we go." Apollo rushes in to say that maybe the Raider jumped away before she opened fire, which I guess is a clue about how the gun cameras work, and Racetrack isn't letting them off that easy: "Or maybe it never existed to begin with." What!? It totally didn't! Imaginary mongoose!
Bill asks his son if he's going to ground Kara, and Lee exposits Cottle's professional opinion that she is both physically fit but an emotional basket case. For fifty episodes running, this has been true. (Fucking FIFTY? Is that for real? Did I just forget how to count or do simple math? That is AWESOME!) "In peacetime, he'd ground us all," Lee says, and you know he's right. Bill gently makes it very damned clear that this is Lee's call, and Lee expresses that this is difficult, because...some dialogue I don't want to deal with. It's like being welcomed to your own home by a guest at your party: they mean well, but they're still behaving foolishly. So I guess now is the point where the show reveals that Kara's identity as a "steely-eyed Viper jock," okay, is like all that's keeping her together. For fifty episodes this has been true. This is the point of her entire fucking character but suddenly we're too stupid? So the show merrily explains the most basic of shit for a minute, and then all of a sudden: ellipsis. If Lee grounds her, then what will happen? We're too dumb to figure it out on our own, and the show's not telling. The Adamas drink and wonder if she's crazy enough to be grounded, even though for at least the fifth time, Kara Thrace's personal craziness has interrupted a major Fleet op at its most vulnerable point, and for at least the billionth time, Bill Adama thinks that's awesome. Also awesome: explaining more basic shit. "The bottom line," he bottom-lines it for us, "is when the bullets start to fly, can she handle it?"
Whatever, stupid scene. I usually like Bill and Lee together, but that was awful. Bleep-bloop to the Wall of Remembrance, where Starbuck is sitting against the wall, across from Kat's picture. (Over her left shoulder is a photograph, of a pale horse; I can't see the guy that's sitting on him, but I'm pretty sure I know his name.) She's talking about death when Lee joins her. "So where do you want to go when you bite the big one? I wanna go right there, to Kat." Apollo calls her a "water-walking Viper jock," and Kara mercifully ignores that one, but then pulls one of her own. "Royal pain in the ass, but a hell of a stick to have on your wing." Lee points: "You can put me right here, to Duck and Nora. Good card players. Nice way to spend eternity." In hell? They agree to make sure to get the pictures in the right places, even if they're the wrong places. Kat's so pretty. Starbuck smiles sadly. "So what did the old man have to say about my combat report? Starbuck's finally gone off the deep end? Unfit for duty?" He said, correctly, that it's Lee's call. Because he's the CAG, not to mention that Bill doesn't ever seem to have been capable of making that call, where Kara's concerned. "Ah," she says. He looks down, and she swallows: "And what do you say?" That he trusts Kara Thrace's eyes over dradis any day of the week. She knows he shouldn't. "So you don't think I'm nuts?" He grins wryly; he's so cute in 3.5 it's unbelievable. "I didn't say that. You're a raving lunatic, as demented and deranged as the first day I met you." And you're a bastard, she says, and they laugh. The candles in the Hall are dripping like rain, like the water on a Basestar; like the tent in Dogsville. "Look, um. Stress has made us all twitchy. After what that Cylon put you through on New Caprica you've had more than your share." The wax from a yellow candle, and a blue, and a red, dripping down onto the deck. Forming the Eye. "Get some rest. Or you will start seeing things." She nearly weeps, but smiles instead.
So I didn't really think she was going to die until this part. Laura and Bill are walking down a corridor, discussing the refuel: another ten hours, and we're done. We can move on. Starbuck heads up the steps at the junction; as Bill calls her name the lights go out, all around her, leaving that section in darkness. My stomach flipped over; she didn't even notice. "Starbuck? What do you hear?" Nothing but the rain. "Well then, grab your gun and bring in the cat." Boom boom boom; Katee Sackhoff described her state after reading the script as, quote, "blown away." She wilcos the Admiral, and greets the President, telling her there's a hell of a view out there. "We're almost to the finish line, then we can jump the hell out of this system," says Adama, and "So say we all," says Kara. She turns to go, then comes back. "Um. actually, sorry. Boss, I have something for you." The goddess Aurora. They took her hands and replaced them with wings. "I thought that it would be a nice figurehead for your model ship." The one he was working on when Dualla explained to him the line of salt we cross when children are separated from their parents. When mothers lose their daughters, when fathers are cut off from their sons. When fathers lose their daughters. "Aurora. Goddess of the dawn." Yeah, Kara says. "Brings the morning star and a fair wind. A fresh start." Aurora: light, and wind. He thanks her, worried: "Good hunting," he says, and she's bashful. Bashful, as she thanks him, and runs off. He holds the figure up for Laura as they continue off down the hall.
Starbuck's checking her harness with the Chief, lots and lots of words, a robot with guns for arms, the whole bit, and then: a little girl, sitting in the cockpit, looking up, accusing. Bleeding, broken. Bloody. The Chief asks if Kara's okay; she asks for a moment. Down in the cockpit the little girl stares up, and the camera moves into her eye.
Socrata lights a cigarette and smokes it, over the sound of screaming, Aronofsky jump-cuts, the little girl screaming, a hand in the door, a child's painting of the Eye, Kara's mural, the Temple of Five, the supernova in the sky. She gasps, afraid, looking down into the cockpit, which is empty.
Lee comes to her later, after Chief says he can damn well talk to her himself, sits calmly and quietly at her side. "Feeling sorry for me?" Never. "Kara, everyone gets rattled. Even the best." She takes a moment to say it; it feels like dying. "I'm not going back out there. I don't trust myself." He responds without a pause, almost: "So, trust me. I'll fly your wing." She breaks out in laughter and sweat: "The CAG flying my number two?" And it's been so long since I bought the two of them that the look in his eyes at this moment took my breath away. "Whatever it takes," he says. It's nothing he hasn't said a million times before; that doesn't make it less. It makes it more. The word is trajectory. They are silent, looking, he tries without talking, she takes it and gets stronger. Strong enough to say goodbye: this is fate unfolding. "How are things with you and Dee?" Good. No, better than good. Best they've ever been. She says she's happy for him but he doesn't look at her until she swears she means it. "It's funny though, after all we've been through, we are right back where we started. You're a CAG, and I am your hotshot problem pilot." The music seems to think that line was touching, when what it was was on the nose, but that laugh and it is good. "I guess that's all we'll ever be now, huh?" Her beautiful face breaks for a second, just for a second but it's long enough, and then he looks at her, and she smiles. It's like the sun coming up, like a fresh breeze. He's touched. This isn't a story about a crackup, it's a story about how he helped her out of a hole, with his faith and his love and his respect for her. He'll give her wings.
CAP. "Starbuck, Apollo. How we doing?" Copacetic. Thirty minutes left on the CAP; he flies alongside her and smiles, beams, begging her to feel strong again. They've flown the whole pattern, they've done the thing she thought she couldn't do. Thirty minutes, and we head to the barn. Kara smiles back, Starbuck again, for a moment, in the blue sky. And then through his canopy she sees the Heavy Raider. "Damn it," she spits, this interruption of their moment, this last-second reprieve from fate, but there it is: coming back again.
Lee doesn't see it. Dee, back on CIC, doesn't see it. Eos kidnapped Cephalus one day, when he was hunting. Sometimes you're the interrogator, sometimes you're the prisoner. Cephalus was already married to Procris, but that didn't stop him loving Eos too. Eventually -- you know how Gods are, so impatient -- she got sick of him pining for Procris, and she sent him back, cursing them both. Procris was a jealous wife, and was spying on him one day when she heard Cephalus singing to the wind, aura. She thought he was singing to Aurora, and she surprised him, and he killed her, and they died. She thought the wind was the morning coming, and it was the scariest thing she could think of: that her husband was still in love with the goddess of the dawn. So at least Dualla's cooler than her, you have to give her that: her bug room's a lot closer to Kara's than we've gotten to hear about yet, I think.
"Apollo, Starbuck. Weapons hot. Committing. This time I'm gonna drag him back and dump his sorry ass on the hangar deck." Tigh and Adama worry and stare, on CIC; Adama calls like the twentieth Condition One since Kara started going nuts.
The storm. Apollo's lost Kara on dradis; he's blind. He can't find her, in the Eye; he begins to shout. She ignores him again, heading down after the Raider. "Starbuck, report! Starbuck, report! Do you read me? Starbuck, report! Starbuck!" Maybe she would have stopped this time, if his voice had gotten to her in time, but she's finally flown too low: her canopy cracks, or is shot through, and the wind is whistling, and she starts to pass out, flying deeper into the storm. And Lee's still screaming as she goes. "Starbuck, I have zero visibility. Starbuck, are you out there? Kara!"
Delphi, Old Caprica. The alarms of Kara's Viper become a clock radio, blaring a wakeup call. It's dawn. She slaps the clock and the radio begins to speak. "Good morning, Delphi. Got another hot one in store for you today! Time to head for the beach. Weatherman says we can expect..." A hand switches it off again: Leoben's. Leoben Conoy has hands. "Rise and shine," he says, caressing her hair, sitting down at her side on her pallet, smiling tenderly. "We have a big day ahead of us. Come on."
Later, Starbuck's not buying it: "I'm out cold on a Cylon ship, and you drugged me to play your frakkin' mind games..." I have to admit that was my first reaction, too. He shakes his head. "No games, Kara. It's about your destiny." She picks up a bottle and nails the Eye on her wall without ever looking away from him. It's one movement, a physical jerk, but I think it's my favorite moment of the whole episode. In this episode there are three Karas at least; I mean to say that there are at least three people in this episode that are Kara for sure, and we know that because they look like her. There's the little Kore one, with her bloody nose and her righteous eyes, and there's the one we know, the one in freefall. And there's the one we're about to meet, the one we met so long ago. And this movement is the definitive statement of all of these, moving as one woman, at once: a reaction to the word "destiny" and the violence it connotes. For her and for us all. We're all of us, inside, every age we've ever been, somewhere in there. Stuff this intense, and this basic, you'd be surprised sometimes who gets the talking stick. "I write my own destiny," she hisses, and sits down at the other end of the coffee table, facing away from him. This is my second favorite line, I rewound it several times to make sure: "I didn't paint that symbol, Kara. You did. In the clouds, didn't you?"
"You didn't tell anyone else. Because you're drawn to it. You feel its pull. You want to fly into it. You want to cross over, but you're afraid." Um, of a frackin' cloud? "Of the unknown. Death. All of your high-wire stunts have been an act. Time after time you skip to the edge of the abyss, then dance away again. But you never really conquered your fear. You've been afraid ever since that day." She knows; she's always known. Where this leads. The Eye is a circle, a circle is a zero, a birth canal, the beginning and the end: how you start and how you know you've become a grownup. The opposite of a one, combining with it to create everything Cylons ever knew. "What day?" she asks.
Somewhere else less interesting, in the eye of the storm, Kara dozes in the Viper, listening to the whistle of the wind and the sound of thunder.
Socrata sits in her apartment, six years ago, smoking a cigarette and reading a letter from her doctor. There's a Colonial medal on the wall, from her Marine service. "All of this has happened before, and will happen again." Kara continues not crying, watching this unfold, watching herself admit that this is happening and bringing it into existence as she does so. Human psychology is based on projection; time is a human construct the Cylons will never understand, because if humans knew everything there is to know, they'd go mad, whereas Cylons go mad only at the edges of what they know. There's a knock on Socrata's door; Kara knows who it is. Somewhere a door's about to open.
"It's open," says Socrata. It's open. Kara greets her mother, with her original haircut, which looks a little wiggy from here, and Leoben and Kara stare at her. "It's hard to believe it's only six years ago. You look so much younger." She was. "I was." Socrata greets her daughter on being the first person in the family to become an officer in the Fleet. Kara smirks: "What is the world coming to?" It's an imaginary mongoose. She's a warrior like her mother; Socrata's been told that her daughter's the best natural pilot they've ever seen. Kara jerks as her younger self admits pride, admits excitement and love, forgetting herself and the lines between mother and daughter, and admits joy: "The first time I got in that cockpit, I just...felt like I belonged." Kara jerks. One day this will be all that you are, and then that will be taken away from you too. And what you'll be then, nobody knows.
"All that natural ability, and still you only graduated sixteenth in your class," gruffs Socrata. Kara looks down, ashamed at her younger self's exuberance and where it inevitably leads; Leoben looks back at her, concerned. "Sixteenth out of 117 cadets, Momma." That's nothing to be proud of; Socrata and I are agreed on that. This is Starbuck, dude. She just doesn't know that yet. She's still only Kara Thrace. "You should have been number one. They tell me that you have left a trail of demerits from here to Aerelon. You're undisciplined, you have no respect for authority." Kara tells her mother this is no longer her concern, and Socrata gets a little scary: "You have a gift, Kara. I've always known that, here in my gut, and I am not going to let you piss that away. You're special, don't you understand that?" Kara's exuberance squeezes out the other end of the tube. Sometimes you're the interrogator, sometimes the prisoner. "No, I'm not. Would you let go of that stupid dream of yours? Look, I am sorry as hell that you never made officer. And all you have to show for a life of dedication is this crappy apartment and that frakkin' medal on the wall. But I will not make up for it all. I can't." Socrata lights a cigarette, calls her a quitter. Kara knows what happens , watching it unfold with tears standing in her eyes; Kara doesn't know what happens , and picks up a letter from the table. "You went to an oncologist?" Socrata rages at her to put it down, but Kara's caught in the light. "What are you gonna do about this?" Nothing. "There's nothing to do, it's metastasized. Game is over." Kara tells her mother she's sorry, but that's not enough. Socrata methodically smokes her cigarette: with every breath, she breathes out the day, with every delicious sip she drinks away the night.
Kara begins to cry, watching it unfolding. The day she killed her mother. Kara sits at the table, too young and fresh to understand death. Without looking, she sits gingerly and reaches for her mother's hand. Kara Thrace has hands; Socrata has hands too. Kara almost looks away from herself, unfolding. "I don't want your pity!" Socrata shouts, pulling back, too quick for her daughter. "You haven't got it," Kara chokes. Socrata tells her where to shove her pity: "Feel sorry for yourself. You'll have to find another way to motivate your ass, I'm not gonna be around to do it any longer. Oh, don't tell me you're gonna cry about it now." Kara chokes, pushes it down, into the bug room, stands up. "I'm gonna walk out that door and you can look at it every frakkin' miserable day you have left, and know that I am never gonna come back through it again." And she won't. Socrata calls after her daughter; Kara cries, watching it unfolding. "You kept running, didn't you? For blocks." She runs, and runs; upstairs Socrata lights another cigarette; the clock ticks out her time. The ashtray is full of butts, six for every hour. The only thing more awful than your mother's strength is her weakness.
Kara and Leoben stand in an abandoned apartment, with the Corporal's medal still on the wall: stillness, quiet, loneliness, pills. "She waited here. Five weeks, hoping you'd come back. She died alone." Kara looks at nothing. "I was afraid, I couldn't watch." Time is not something this show has ever taken seriously; the level we're playing at right now, it shouldn't be a concern at all. Time a projection. "It's not too late. She's waiting, still." Kara jerks her head at him and then walks to the bedroom door. Which is about to open.
Kara slowly slides back the door: Socrata lying in the bed. She is small. Kara sits at her mother's side, and Socrata tries to smile, speaking softly. "You came back." All around her on the bed are scrapbooks: pictures, essays, stories. "I can't believe you kept all this." That's all heaven really is. "Everything. Always." Kara turns the page, like a flower unfolding: her childish paintings of the Eye. Somewhere a door slams open, and the bugs inside are pretty lifelike, for the time being. "Momma. Something's about to happen. You know that thing that you were trying to prepare me for? I don't know if I can do it." The fact that you can admit it's coming, the fact that you're not ignoring the sound any more, means you can. Three talked to Cottle, made love with Caprica and Gaius, kidnapped a baby: all the time, she felt it coming. She dreamed of it, and she wanted it, and she pretended and she denied, but she heard the call all the same. End of line. "Oh, yes you can. You can." How can she be sure? "You're my daughter."
Socrata takes Kara Thrace's hand, weak and soft like paper in her daughter's strong hands. Spring returns to Sicily. The flowers unfold from the cold ground, and the sun shines down. Kara weeps, and holds her face against that hand, and somewhere a door flies open, wide. And the bugs stop jumping, as Socrata Thrace dies, with her daughter by her side. Kara cries. It's hard.
Leoben: "See, there's nothing so terrible about death. When you finally face it, it's beautiful. You're free now. To become who you really are." (Okay, no. Death is not beautiful. Her mother just died. I know this. It's also not always death, though, so I'll give him a bye for now.) On the threshold of revelation, coming faster and faster, heading for the asymptote, into the curve, always a pilot, always on a vector, with the whistling and the rain, sparks flying from her approaching dawn: "You're not Leoben."
"I never said I was."
"I'm here to prepare you to pass through the door. To discover what hovers in the space between life and death." At the end of the line, where enjambment sings: zero's the number of the Fool, the shape of the storm. It's the beginning and the end, depending on where you start counting. It goes around and around. This Leoben's just another messenger. Like any other Leoben, like anybody else at all. God has to wear masks because you're not prepared for a faceful of infinity, but that's not the secret. The secret is: how many masks.
The wind on her exhilarated face, there in her mother's house, in the bug room, becomes the hole in her cockpit canopy. The whistling wind brought by the dawn, a portrait of the womanchild cavern of the soul under pressure-heat ratio ides of evolutions have buried their fears end of line. Kara Thrace wakes up, eyes wide, lightning everywhere. I mean to say that Kara wakes up in a storm.
No. I mean to say that in every house there's a little room we don't know about. And on the other side of that door, there are insects and darkness and the sound of scratching, and a hot red heat at the back of your eyes. And a lot of us don't ever open the door. But if you can, if you can burn off what doesn't work and step to the door and open it, if you are strong enough to accomplish the impossible, you learn an amusing fact. On the other side of that door you find the Temple of Five, the Great Hall, Heaven, Elysium: a room bigger than the universe, filled with light and singing, and all the gods and heroes you could ever want, welcoming you in. And the joke of the bugs: to think that once they were terrifying, to think that once you were so scared that they were real -- that Cylons are evil, that fear is worthwhile, that hatred is an option, that anger or violence are ever appropriate, that there are moments where God looks away, that there are times when you're alone, that anyone's destiny or fate ever went wrong, that the unfolding can be disrupted, that there's a dimension that doesn't include love, and laughter -- when those bugs are just so small, and silly, and made of plastic. That stupid joke, to think your life is a story being told by anyone but you.
"Starbuck, Apollo. Lost you on dradis. I say again, I've lost you." His voice calls her back; she's got one hand on the eject lever. She skips to the abyss and dances back again. She stops herself: the bugs aren't jumping. She should be afraid. Why isn't she afraid? Is this about death? When you're a pilot you can see the ground curve away, the way the world goes around and around. The flat Earth goes round on you, and you've gained a whole dimension to play in.
"Lee. I'm not afraid anymore." Say again? "I'm not afraid anymore," says Kara, with her mother's hand in hers, tears of love and pain and joy on her cheeks. Down in CIC, Tigh's getting nervous. You can hear it in his voice. "She should be afraid. She's damn close to the hard deck." Helo notes that the pressure is close to crushing Apollo too. It always has been. Adama urges his son to get her back, again. Always, this story: Lee bringing her back, Bill praying to the Gods he doesn't believe in, for her safe return. 90 seconds to hard deck.
"All right, Kara, listen to me. Forget the damn toaster. Climb now or you're dead."
She's already climbing, just at an angle he can't see yet. She's rising. She's bathed in light. The Viper soars, down, into the storm, on a crest of light. She's calm, and beautiful.
"Godsdamn it, Kara! Pull up now. We can still pull out of this, we haven't gone past the point of no return. Pull up!" Nothing he hasn't said before. 60 seconds to hard deck.
Gaeta and Dee get Red Section into position, alert Vipers at ready one. Lee keeps screaming.
In a wicked pack of cards you can see her, standing beneath a red, blue, and yellow star, kneeling by the water's edge. In her hands she holds two jugs of water, pouring one back into the river, and one onto the ground. She brings water to the river, life to the shore. She stands astride, enjambed upon, the line between life and death, like Three; like Three, her death and rebirth enliven and renew them both.
He finally spots her, and tells her he's coming.
"Lee...I'll see you on the other side." He begs her to listen, to come back. She begs him to let her go. It's not abandonment if you're running to; she can't explain this because we don't have the words. The message got confused.
Three stepped into the Great Hall, turning on her heel like a girl. "Is it really you?" Everywhere was the light the Hybrid sees, the songs she hears. She stepped toward one of them, one of the Five, who held out his/her hand. Her eyes went, soft, as she got the joke. "You. Forgive me. I had no idea." And if I'd written it, the last thing she'd have heard that fucker say was, "I love you. We've always loved you. You can come now."
"They're waiting for me," she says, the joy and weariness fighting in her voice. Looking down at all the Karas, from above the Eye, looking at how all of them lead in a line here, and nowhere else, looking at this story from the new dimension, seeing how she'd been hiding from herself, around corners and under bridges, inside the bug room. You have to laugh. All that time masturbating and getting too drunk to walk, all that time lying and treating boys like dirt, all that time hating yourself: it's ridiculous. You have to laugh. This is a life seen from the eye of a storm, and where it leads is here, and she knew it all along. All around her the atmosphere is getting heavier as she descends; the water spattering on her canopy cuts off all other sound. What can you hear?
Whatever face the messenger wears, and I don't honestly think it matters, the message can't come clear, through all this dirt and fear and pain. Until you burn off what doesn't work, between stars and between your lovers and your lies, until you lay down the burdens of hate that keep you tied to the pain of your childhood, unable to see your way clear, you can't hear the message properly. Until the rain washes you clean again. You'll never hear it right, until you watch it unfolding and realize it couldn't have been any other way. I don't know if the Cylons can see time this way, but I know the Hybrid can, which is why nothing surprises her, or Leoben. But it's also the way Kara can write her own destiny, and have it written for her: this is just a story she's been telling herself, all along. It's the only way we can live. If we knew what was going to happen -- if we knew the pain and fear and ugliness that's part of our fate, if we forgot that it keeps the world turning -- who knows what we'd do differently? That's why the Oracle only has one eye, because this is not part of the physics: God and time work together to tell you this story, as many times as it takes, until you start paying attention. If it doesn't hurt, if it doesn't feel like death, you're just pretending to change. Burn sage and sweetgrass and get a haircut and move to another city, go on a diet and swear off men for six months, a year, the rest of your life: that's cosmetic. Nothing really changes until you close your eyes and jump. That's half the confusion right there. Take a drop of water, or mercury, and divide it: whatever face the messenger wears, the message stays the same. Socrata, the Lords of Kobol, the Oracle, Leoben, the Hybrid. The message stays the same, it's just that we keep hearing it wrong. Over and over again, until we get it right.
In the stillness and light, with the wind in her hair, a holy smile upon her face, lit from within by the fire of a thousand wrong turns suddenly and violently wrenched straight: all those mistakes weren't mistakes, they were just the way things had to go. They were just the unfolding, from a funny angle. Whether this has all happened before and will happen again is beside the point, that's just rhetoric: seen from above, this is all happening. She closes her eyes in the unfolding. The Kore child dances in the light of the abyss, her face clean and joyful, almost too bright to see, free of the constraints of time and what we see. She smiles in absolute peace: how can you look at her, this beautiful, calm girl, this gorgeous peace, this holy calm, this rightness, and think this is a mistake? I believe that Kara Thrace will lead the Fleet to Earth, just as I believe Three will stand and walk and love again, and Caprica will know God's love, and Gaius will know peace, and Gaeta will bone a dude. Just as I believe that until the bugs stop jumping, the war will never end, because fear and violence create more bugs and more fear and more violence, and the more frightened you are, the more likely you are to both act like assholes and forget that it's just a game, fail to recognize they're only toys. I believe these things just as I believe there's a day all pawns will become queens, and the Chips stop talking, and the angel rejoins what was broken, on a holy anvil that only looks like war, from this joke of an angle.
Kara sits in the Temple of Five, and the Great Hall, and in Heaven, and between five stars, burning off what doesn't work. Beautiful. He never said he was Leoben, but Leoben's always been just another word for fate anyway. Just another messenger, just another way for her to let that fate in. Kara sits in blessed enjambment, in the sanctified unfolding, her life stretched out behind her, all one story, with a beginning and a middle and so many endings, and no endings at all.
Kara Thrace had hair, which she cut whenever things got too heavy to carry. Kara Thrace had hands, which they took away during the nova and which they keep taking away. Kara Thrace had wings, for which she gave everything, to make her mother happy, to reach a destiny that everybody knew was coming. Kara Thrace had breasts, and legs, and funny little feet, and a sexy voice, and a ready smile, and a lovely mouth. Kara Thrace had eyes that could always see the weak places, and a tactical mind, and a quick wit, and a burning fire inside that kept her moving forward faster than anybody could keep up. She faced things. She opened doors with her hands, and when that didn't work she used her feet. We were safer with her than we are without. She fought until she couldn't. She fought until she didn't have to.
Starbuck's Viper explodes, in the pressure, just as Lee sees her Raider for the first time. He screams. And Starbuck's hair, and hands, and wings, and breasts, and legs, and feet, and voice, and smile and mouth, and those eyes, and that brain, are gone faster than the time it takes for them to burn. She's taken apart in the unfolding. Starbuck is gone, shouting at the light, raging as fast as she can forward, into the arms of those heroes that went before: Ellen Tigh, D'Anna Biers, Crashdown, Kat. Socrata Thrace throws her arms and wings around that Kore child, her daughter Kara, all those broken girls made whole, and they finally know peace. In Heaven they have so many cigarettes it's ridiculous, and they're duty-free, and every week is shirtless-Helo week, and that's all I know about Heaven. And Kara can wake up in the morning and not dread what happens , and the rips in her heart are healed over, and you can barely see the scar. She'll never have to hurt anybody again, because she's got no pain in her: it's all burned off. I love her and I already miss her, but I'm not going to begrudge her that kind of grace, or that glory. Eternal Kara Thrace, dancing in the abyss and storm, forever. Strong, and smart, and wise, and powerful. Just as in life.
Adama shouts at his son to abort and Lee cranks his ship away from the accident. "Lee, do you have her in sight? Can you see her?" He doesn't answer for a bit; Helo and Dee stare at nothing, waiting for the response. Gaeta and Tigh look to the Admiral.
"Negative, she...went in. She went in." Gaeta and Dualla can't believe it: this is just more Starbuck nonsense, the wind and the light of a thousand dawns and returns from the dead and worse. She's just going in for her trip to the underworld, surely. She'll show up in the Blackbird, or a stolen Raider, or holding her daughter by the hand, like she always does, and Adama will stop making that face again, and everybody will laugh again, and the quadrangle of doom will start over again, and everything will be the same as it always was, because that's what she does: skip to the abyss, dance away again. "We're sending in the search and rescue birds right now," Adama stutters. "We'll find her." Lee's voice is ragged and painful to listen to: "No, Dad, it's no use. Her ship's in" -- his voice breaks horribly, breaks in half, breaks like a bone -- "pieces. Her ship's in pieces. No chute. We lost her."
The Admiral, standing in CIC, holding the con, looks up to the empty skies and begins to weep. Saul and Felix and Anastasia look at Bill, and look away again, and he continues to cry, becoming smaller than he's ever been. William Adama has eyes, and a throat, and they are full of tears.
Later, in his quarters, Bill sits at his desk, Aurora at his right hand. He breathes hard, striving, perfecting his model ship. He affixes the goddess to her prow: this family, every piece just right. No mothers without sons, no fathers losing daughters. Moving forward, toward the Lie of Earth that even he now believes, thanks in large part to his fallen child. He looks at the ship, moving forward with dawn upon her prow, a light breeze and the soft and rosy light, into the future. The dawn she put into his hands, when he feared she was going crazy, with the loveliest light in the back of her eyes, with her tiny hand in his, passing a goddess to him, smiling bashfully, full of love and light, even as the darkness was closing in. The moment in which they promised each other, with Laura standing witness, that everything was going to be okay: she put this dawn in his hand, and then took herself out of it. She handed him the future, a future which no longer includes Starbuck, no longer includes his favorite among all his children. A future he fights for, in large part, for her. Earth: a gift, to replace all the things New Caprica took from Kara and Saul.
The Admiral begins to weep now in earnest, now that he's got nothing to do with his hands, now that the worthless ship is complete, now that he's got nothing to think about but the hole in him. Such a small girl, to leave such a big hole: that's our Kara. What can he hear? Nothing but that. He crushes the thing, suddenly, with his hands, and throws it to the floor, and cries to the Gods he doesn't believe in, and refuses to beg for her safe return again, but begs for strength instead. From this angle things are pretty bad, and he's very angry at what we've seen unfolding. I mean to say he takes something that he loves, and destroys it, like a bottle thrown against the wall, in protest.
"Negative, she...went in. She went in." Gaeta and Dualla can't believe it: this is just more Starbuck nonsense, the wind and the light of a thousand dawns and returns from the dead and worse. She's just going in for her trip to the underworld, surely. She'll show up in the Blackbird, or a stolen Raider, or holding her daughter by the hand, like she always does, and Adama will stop making that face again, and everybody will laugh again, and the quadrangle of doom will start over again, and everything will be the same as it always was, because that's what she does: skip to the abyss, dance away again. "We're sending in the search and rescue birds right now," Adama stutters. "We'll find her." Lee's voice is ragged and painful to listen to: "No, Dad, it's no use. Her ship's in" -- his voice breaks horribly, breaks in half, breaks like a bone -- "pieces. Her ship's in pieces. No chute. We lost her."
The Admiral, standing in CIC, holding the con, looks up to the empty skies and begins to weep. Saul and Felix and Anastasia look at Bill, and look away again, and he continues to cry, becoming smaller than he's ever been. William Adama has eyes, and a throat, and they are full of tears.
Later, in his quarters, Bill sits at his desk, Aurora at his right hand. He breathes hard, striving, perfecting his model ship. He affixes the goddess to her prow: this family, every piece just right. No mothers without sons, no fathers losing daughters. Moving forward, toward the Lie of Earth that even he now believes, thanks in large part to his fallen child. He looks at the ship, moving forward with dawn upon her prow, a light breeze and the soft and rosy light, into the future. The dawn she put into his hands, when he feared she was going crazy, with the loveliest light in the back of her eyes, with her tiny hand in his, passing a goddess to him, smiling bashfully, full of love and light, even as the darkness was closing in. The moment in which they promised each other, with Laura standing witness, that everything was going to be okay: she put this dawn in his hand, and then took herself out of it. She handed him the future, a future which no longer includes Starbuck, no longer includes his favorite among all his children. A future he fights for, in large part, for her. Earth: a gift, to replace all the things New Caprica took from Kara and Saul.
The Admiral begins to weep now in earnest, now that he's got nothing to do with his hands, now that the worthless ship is complete, now that he's got nothing to think about but the hole in him. Such a small girl, to leave such a big hole: that's our Kara. What can he hear? Nothing but that. He crushes the thing, suddenly, with his hands, and throws it to the floor, and cries to the Gods he doesn't believe in, and refuses to beg for her safe return again, but begs for strength instead. From this angle things are pretty bad, and he's very angry at what we've seen unfolding. I mean to say he takes something that he loves, and destroys it, like a bottle thrown against the wall, in protest.