In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
The Demetrius standoff from last week ends particularly well: Sam goes nuts, commits a third mutiny on top of the whole bunch of other mutinies that everybody else is committing, shooting poor Felix in the leg. Kara gets it together enough to show Felix a shitload of mercy, and Helo lets her go -- with Athena and Leoben and Jean Barolay -- to the Baseship. They start the countdown to the rendezvous and wait.
Kara recognizes the Baseship as the "comet" from her visions, and meets the Baseship's Hybrid, who lets her in on the whole "harbinger of the Apocalypse" destiny, but there's so very much shit going on that she doesn't really have time to think about it. The main thing is that the Hybrid tells them to unbox the Threes, because she knows what the Final Five look like, and that will lead them to Thirteen, the truth about Laura's Kobol visions, and Earth.
Laura meets a Baltarist named Emily, played by the wonderful Nana Visitor, in Cottle's chemo camp, and various dreams plus the awesomeness of Gaius half-convince her that the One God is an Actual Thing. It is awesome; she takes her newfound hope to Bill and convinces him in turn that everything's going to be okay. It's super sweet, and though the only thing scarier than two separate religious nuts is two united religious nuts, I don't think she's going to be having tea parties with him anytime soon.
Athena meets the usual boatload of Sharons, who ask her to lead a mutiny against Natalie, because the Sixes are doing it wrong. She tells them that they are retarded, and you always have to be a total robot and commit yourself to a side 110 robot percents, even when that makes you a weirdo like her. They don't really get it at first, but then a random platinum Six freaks out on Barolay about nastiness she committed on New Caprica, and kills her. Sam -- who spends the episode wanting to play with the Cylon toys on the Baseship, but ends up shooting people the whole time -- holds a gun to her head, but it's Natalie Six that pulls the trigger, demonstrating how awesome the wonderland of Colonial justice is once again. They jump back to Demetrius with the Baseship seconds after the deadline, and both Demetrius and Baseship jump back to the Fleet.
For five seconds -- which is a record for this show -- it feels good. Five whole seconds before week tears it all down again: It feels good.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!HOPES SOARING TO SLAUGHTER
(The heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.)
Karl and Kara stare at each other across the Demetrius bridge, contemplating mutiny, thinking about Cain. Kara heads toward the jump controls, ready to spin it up herself. Athena and Felix grab her, and Anders steps forward; Helo calls as ever for peace. "What the hell are you doing, Karl?" asks Sam, still confused about how anybody can take the one star we sail by, and toss her in the brig. Seelix takes Kara's gun, trains both of them on her. In a mutiny, in civil war, we turn our guns on ourselves and our people. Our people.
"Order the Marine guards to the control room, tell them I'm placing Captain Thrace under arrest." Kara swears on the Gods that he's wrong, that it's slipping away, that he's counting down against her revelation. "Either way, we're taking Leoben and his proposal back to the Fleet. We'll let the Admiral sort it out." But Kara knows that will be too late. "And you'll be going back to Galactica as mutineers," spits Sam. "How do you think the Admiral's gonna sort through that?" Helo acknowledges that this will be Adama's call, and tells Felix to spin up for the jump to the Fleet. Sam laughs bitterly; Seelix suggests they just airlock Kara's Cylon ass. Kara struggles, explaining one more time that she's not a Cylon. What she is, nobody knows. How could they? Artemis struggles in the arms of Athena, and the guns pointed at her? They belong to her, and to Diana Seelix. We turn our guns upon ourselves. And every second, the dream dies a little more.
Deadlocked into conflict, neither side giving: neither faith nor duty willing to concede. What do you do when you can't get out? Sam trains his guns on Felix, shouting again and again to abort the jump; when it's spooled up to a hundred, he fires, and Felix goes down.
"You want to know who's in charge? You want to know who's in command? You frakkin' want to know? It's Captain Thrace, Gods damn it! Now you let her go!" Kara screams at him to back down, and Karl begs, but he will not. Everything is moving too fast. Felix's leg is an open wound, broken splintered bone and blood. Seelix drops to her knees beside him, but it's Kara that tends his wounds. She sets the bone, feels it cracking in her hands. Not because she wishes harm: Sometimes when something is broken, you have to hurt them more before they heal.
"This is gonna hurt." She pours on coag powder and he screams, unceasing, cursing her. First the bone, and then the blood, and then sleep: She injects him with morpha and he goes out, as Sam struggles and shakes in the corner. Kara and Karl get him shuffled to a bunk, and she calls out, worried, as he goes: "Be careful!"
"Wait, listen, Kara, that was ..." She doesn't even look Sam in the eye.
"So now what? Gonna give orders at gunpoint?" Kara nods. "You're right, Helo. I never should've ordered Demetrius to jump to the Baseship. Too many lives to risk on a gut instinct." So, then, Karl reminds her, Demetrius goes back to the Fleet. Again she nods. "Missing a Raptor. I'm gonna take Leoben back to the Baseship. See if his story checks out." Two madmen in a tank, headed toward devastation, full of nav coordinates and jump technology? "Are you insane? The two of you alone?" But Sam knows she's not going alone. Somebody has to protect her from the monsters.
"This is crazy," Kara says to Athena, "But I need you." Athena's surprised, of course, and terrified. "I need someone that speaks their language. If this is a trap, I want to know about it." Of all the languages she speaks, Eight and Six are not among them. Seelix is overjoyed: send all the Cylons home, Raptor or no. Athena agrees to the plan as well, without really acknowledging Seelix's bullshit. As you should. "No, listen to me. Your Raptor doesn't have enough fuel to get back to Galactica." Kara reminds him that the Baseship will. "We were sent out here by the Admiral to complete a mission. Not for me, but for the people of the Fleet. And if I'm right, the payoff is Earth."
Hotdog gives them a window of fifteen hours and seven minutes, Helo agrees, and they set the clock. It begins to tick down. And somewhere Felix lies, in blessed sleep.
FLAME LIKE THE WHIRLWIND
(The native hue of resolution is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.)
39,675 souls in the Fleet. Roslin and Tory pack up their Galactica offices, ready to return to Colonial One after the couple rounds. When she's alone, when she's with Tory, she can take the wig off, let her skin breathe. Of all the itching and the burning she can find some small relief. "So I guess just pack up everything that's here, pack up all these drafts. I'm gonna have plenty of time on my hands over the couple of days, so ... pack it up." Tory's eyes are lit with kindness; she reminds her President that the worst is over, that after two more diloxin treatments, she'll be over the hump.
Tory likes it best when you can see the end of the line, when there are no more cares and no more worries; she looks at the hump and thinks it's the last. It's how she kept them both alive, on New Caprica. But there are humps Laura doesn't want anybody to know about, and she hates to let them see her sweat. Chemotherapy is the French Revolution: something wonderful, and something ugly, that kills as it heals. That says, "This is gonna hurt," and then hurts you like war.
"I'm gonna need you to really keep an eye on things until then," Laura says, and because she can't see the guarded fear in Laura's eyes, Tory grins from where she's packing up: "Don't worry. I'll make sure our friend from Picon sees the error of his ways..."
But Laura's not talking about the Quorum, she's talking about the Fleet. About the Presidency, and about Laura/Tory Lockdown. She's warning her the humps are still coming. "There was a time, a few months ago, when you seemed overwhelmed by the stresses and the pressures of this job. But lately you've really stepped up. And I'm gonna be demanding even more of that from you in the days to come, because I'm not quite sure of what I'm doing right..." She leaves off, starts again. "I'm sort of..." And again, until we get it right: "I'm just gonna need you to keep a keen eye on every single thing that comes across this desk." Tory thanks her for her confidence, and Laura smiles. "Thank you. Let's go."
Kara marches the Leoben, cuffed, into The Raptor; she reminds him that the humps are still coming. "Just remember, if this is a trap, you die first." She joins Athena at the helm, and asks her if she can be trusted. "Do I need to watch my back with you on this?" Athena is too smart to be insulted; she knows that this is the way it has to go. She will accomplish this mission and bring the worlds together. "No, I said I'd go. You have my word." Leoben murmurs creepily as she continues preflight: "Be like a homecoming for you. The other Eights talk about you all the time." Without sparing a glance, Sharon tells Barolay to keep him the frak away from her, and Barolay nods.
Sometime after the Circle, Jean Barolay cut her hair too. Her beautiful, hard, expressive face seems almost unearthly now. Kara looks her up and down: "Barolay, I didn't ask for volunteers." Barolay reminds her that it's not true: Jean volunteered for this back on Galactica. "Look, I don't give a frak what the others say, you've been kicking ass since day one. You say you can find Earth, I want to be there when you do." Kara and Leoben almost smile, in tandem.
Athena kisses Helo and boards, 14:40 left on the clock. Karl says goodbye, and Godspeed. "Copy that." And as they fly to the jump, Leoben asks Sam quietly, "Can you feel it? The anticipation. God's plan is about to be revealed." Sam says it's a worthy hope, for Leoben's sake. They jump into detritus, unspent bombs still exploding, Basestars and Raiders adrift and bloodied, the flotsam and jetsam of a brutal civil war. They jump into a killing field.
Helo visits Gaeta, who's awake. And how's he doing? Felix grins: "Never better. Those frakkers won't give me any more morpha, afraid I'll OD or something." He laughs, and Karl nods sadly. "...Will you promise me something?" Karl promises him anything: as a fellow bridge officer, as a fellow volunteer, as a friend. "Don't let Cottle take my leg." Karl reassures him, and he shakes his head. "Don't frak with me, Karl. I know every minute that we stay here means it's more likely that he's gonna have to. Please, okay? Promise me." Helo takes his hand. He knows they're not going anywhere until the Captain, until his wife, returns. Pain can talk. Felix weeps, afraid, and holds onto Helo for his strength. Karl's giving him all he can.
They dodge the ordnance and float through the eerie black, watch the Baseships dying through the screens. They mutter and they chatter, nervous, in dragon territory; Sam reminds them again that there's death all over, waiting to collide with them. A turncoat, a secret saint, an angel blazing with God's light, and the high priest of a strange and alien religion. Jean Barolay is the only true, the only mere human left aboard, winding their way through a silent dance of destruction, between the scattered bodies of creatures bigger than Galactica, and more beautiful.
Sometimes Caprica would go down to the court just before game time and scalp two tickets; she'd just be sitting down at the horn. She'd let the crowd's energy flow over her, in waves of emotion, like an electric current. Like a homecoming, like rejoicing with her sisters. Only in the crowd could she find what she so desperately missed, that roaring sense of home, those thousand indrawn breaths. She liked to pretend that Gaius was there with her. And down on the court you could see flame-haired Jean Barolay, Caprica Buccaneer, beautiful jock, basketball star. Another face selling magazines, another piece of scoreboard trivia.
After the Fall, Jean helped Anders fight the guerilla war, because it was all she had left. She was happy to see Starbuck return, even happier to go with her, back to the Fleet, and land on New Caprica. All that running, all the 33, going round and round -- she missed all that. Jean Barolay went from Hell straight to a dirty, stinking Heaven, and she thought that she'd know peace. A year later, she was a fighter again. Dreams died. They pulled her out of Hell and put her in a brief Heaven, an undiscovered country that became more poisonous than Hell. They told her they loved her; they told her it was for her own good.
But they couldn't change what they made her; couldn't ask her to bend herself back around the parts they'd already burnt off. They made her a warrior, and pushed her back into war. She put guns in the Temple and didn't think twice. And in the Second Exodus, she joined the Circle, too angry to forgive and too tired to forget.
Kara hears the sound, again. Finally, she hears it. Sam stares, but Leoben comforts him, loudly enough that everyone can hear: "The unstruck music vibrates in all of us. Few can hear it. Kara's one of the few."
Jean Barolay sits on a Raptor in the middle of dead dragon space, with a turncoat and a saint and an angel and an oracle, looking to build bridges with their hands. But her hands are burnt, and she's the only human left aboard.
Athena, weirded out by Leoben's usual crap, asks Sam for a course, and he begins plotting out at the ECO seat. "Give me the ship," Kara asks her suddenly, and with a look and a shrug, Athena passes her flight control. "...You have any idea where you're going?" No. Yes. The singularity:
Kara sees it, the Basestar, floating sadly against the backdrop of a triple-ringed gas giant, shooting across the canvas like a comet. She laughs, or cries. "The comet! The... It's the ship!" Leoben smiles, proud and calm and waiting for the music, and she turns to him, excited. "This is what I was meant to see!" He nods, and she laughs so joyfully.
That's when the first piece of wreckage hits. In mutiny we turn our guns upon ourselves. Everyone that comes after war makes their ginger way through what's left behind. Like Uwano and Onoda, like the unlucky victims of the Guardians, like you and me and the children of the Exodus. Have you ever seen Babylon 5? This is what it comes down to: not war, but everything after. The echoes and the ripples and the unspent mine fields of war.
If it echoes, if it ripples, if you're caught in it, you might never know that the war's already ended, that you're in the wreckage of somebody else's mistake. But you still have to clean it up: "From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, it shall be required of this generation."
The shining waters of the Styx become the light on Kara's face; she awakes from lacuna in the arms of the enemy. Sam and Leoben tend to her wounds, the bleeding scratch on her head, as she slowly comes to. Everybody lived. She reaches for the wound -- she's Kara Thrace -- and Sam pulls her hands away. Together, Sam and Leoben take her out of the wrecked Raptor, out into the belly of the dragon.
CENTRIFUGAL FORCE REACTS TO THE ROTATING FRAME OF REFERENCE
(What makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of?)
Athena checks the Raptor as the docking bay curtains on the Basestar close, at once grotesque garage doors and beautiful shimmering flesh. There is a hand on her shoulder and she whirls, shouting, startled, cocking guns. It's the usual homecoming, the usual welcome committee of Sharons, who love her and always will. Last time, they had not fallen from Eden: there was no celebrity among the Cylon. This time, they've put on clothes.
"They call you Athena now," says the girl in front. "You even wear their uniform, like you're one of them." Athena looks at them warily. In their twinsets and sweaters and t-shirts, like they're ones of us. "You were the first to say no." To what? "The entire Plan." To kill their parents and to multiply: "You joined the humans. You had a child. You showed us that we don't have to be slaves to our programming." Athena rolls her eyes; Athena knows they never were. Without love, where would you be right now?
The Eights nearly weep, in frustration and shame: "We wanted the same thing, but it turned out to be a disaster." She swallows. "The Sixes have made one mistake after another. They have to be stopped before they get the rest of us killed." Another Eight urges her, to ask. "You could help us." Athena is sickened: "You want me to lead a mutiny against the Sixes?" The Eights are confused: why is she so angry? Why this disgust? What aren't they getting? What are they still frakking up? Why won't she just tell them how to be strong?
The word "turncoat" was once more than a metaphor: it was an answer. It meant to turn one's coat literally inside out, to hide who you really are. To take that piece of your heart you can look at, and turn it into something else. Sharon turned herself inside out, once upon a time; her strength is based on keeping herself inside that newfound skin. She's still learning to inhabit it; has tacitly allowed outrages against her own people, to prove to herself that she's earned this skin. She is more human than human, and thus proves her humanity to herself and everybody else. You can't explain that, any more than you can sell anybody independence. Not even Athena has outgrown war: she thinks you have to pick a side. And in war, you do.
"You pick your side, and you stick. You don't cut and run when things get ugly. Otherwise you'll never have anything." Seeing their unrest, their guilt and jealousy, she pushes those Eight buttons. She knows better than anybody how to twist the knife just right; she remembers: "No love, no family. No life to call your own." The Eight looks down, embarrassed. "Now you guys can either help me, or get the hell out of my way." They watch her go. They love her, and they always will.
If I took you by the hands and whirled you in a circle, you would have two forces acting on you: centrifugal (fleeing the center, flying out of my arms) and centripetal (aiming towards the center). What I'm really doing is exerting a sideways force on you that constantly changes, and acts against the continued force of our grasp on each other. Centrifugal force is a fiction created by this perpendicular motion; it is only reactive. The second we stop spinning, that force ceases to exist, because it was never there: it only looked like you were tearing yourself away from me, when really you were just moving sideways, in balance with our embrace. But that fiction only holds true, in the rotating frame of reference, as long as you hold fast: If the ties that bind us together are weaker than those that threaten to tear us apart, centrifugal force becomes a reality, and you spiral endlessly away, through the heavens. We all fall down.
"...Because He will take your hand and guide you to the other side of the river..."
Irritated, Laura wheels her meds, the Red Devil, her friendly poison, across Cottle's Sickbay, looking for the source of the Baltar Broadcast. Inside a private bedsit, curtains drawn, a woman named Emily curses the nurse as she promises to return when Emily feels better. "Can't you read a chart? I'm not gonna feel better. So take your needles and your thermometers and your catheters and stick 'em where the sun doesn't shine.
"When we shuffle off this mortal coil... The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns..."
Roslin ducks her head in, and says hello. Emily rolls her eyes: "Oh, great. Now the President." I like Emily Kowalski. So does Laura, immediately, grinning in conspiracy: "She stuck me three times today."
"It's a better place, my friends..."
Emily smiles back, nervously: "Be thankful she hasn't put a catheter in you." They smile. Laura likes the irreverence of this woman; the holy rage she rides.
"...Where we will bask in the radiance of God's love. How do we get there?"
"All this just to keep me alive for a few more days," Emily coughs. "It's so pointless."
"By reaching out to one another..."
Roslin reaches for the wireless: "No, it's not pointless. And I'm sure it isn't helping listening to Gaius Baltar..." Emily lashes out at her, shouting. "No no no! Don't touch that! The frak do you think you are?" There is nothing more powerful, nor more cutting, than the holy rage of a woman looking death in the eye. It will draw blood every time. Laura is sad, and embarrassed.
"... Accept Him into your hearts..."
Emily, sick and upset, demands that Laura leave her alone, and bursts into tears.
"Love..."
Laura leaves, feeling burned and sad, knowing it, guilty for messing with the rituals of Emily's comfort. Having fucked it up again. Having come so close to friendship, reached out and gotten burned. She wheels away her friendly medicine, her poison revolution; she spirals endlessly away, back across the loneliness of Sickbay.
"...God doesn't really care how many good deeds we've done. This is the mistake that I find that so many of the pious..."
DIVERSE CONTACT IS INEVITABLE
(The spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes.)
Leoben's all excited, of course, about getting Kara to the Hybrid immediately. Because this language that they speak, because there are lines that call him mad, he wants to see it happen, in her eyes: wants to watch as she hears the music for the first time. Natalie is appalled. (I have a macro on my keyboard and when I hit it, "Natalie is appalled" instantly appears, as if by magic.) "You want to give her access to the central nervous system of this ship?" Sam reminds her of the deal, and Leoben says they discussed it. Which I'm sure they did, and which I'm sure went just as frickin' well as it did on the Demetrius. It wasn't just one prophet sitting in the dark, begging for the angel. It was two.
"Kara's the key to our salvation..." Natalie nods, but reminds him they agreed only on the alliance, after Cavil took their sisters and brothers down. "You want an alliance, I see the Hybrid. Leoben claims it can help me find Earth." Leoben agrees that there's no way around it, but Natalie's grossed out: "We've tried to be patient about your model's obsession with this woman." Barolay stands, creeped out by this but infuriated by the bit: "Playing house with her on New Caprica was one thing, but this puts us all in jeopardy."
Never forget the Plan; never forget that both sides of every war are ignorant and confused. One thing I love about this episode is the way it so clearly -- I would say sympathetically -- illustrates and illuminates the areas of even the 268s' continuing blindness. There are good Cylons, but to be on the right side of a civil war is still to be engaged in war; there are no good Cylons until the gravity of the destruction they've caused is something they can feel. Taking away the Resurrection Ship is a brutal step closer, as we'll see. It's a way to set the bone. But the bone is still fucked as hell: "Playing house" is not a good descriptive phrase, even if all Leoben really accomplished was to do to Kara in miniature what the Cylon did to New Caprica on a slightly larger scale: "play house," turn their dusty Heaven into Hell, tell them it was for their own good.
Natalie's got her eye on the clock: "We have their Raptor and their jump drive. We don't need them." Barolay steps forward, hand to her gun: "Frakkin' toaster!" Kara tells her to stand down, gives Natalie a stinkeye for saying stupid shit, and informs her that there isn't time to figure out the Raptor's jump systems before Cavil comes back.
"And if we do figure it out in time, do we just keep running? How long before we run out of fuel, food, and ammunition? How long before Cavil's forces hunt us down?" ("Man, wouldn't that suck if we were decimated, and thousands of us truly died, never to return, and then we had to go on the run, 33 minutes at a time, with dwindling fuel and food, waiting to be hunted down and massacred? Wouldn't that be a bitch?") "Like it or not, we have to work with the Colonials. That means Kara sees the Hybrid." Starbuck offers the alternative -- that Natalie bend over and kiss her cute ass goodbye -- but Natalie's more interested in taking it one task at a time, as Sixes must.
Athena reads the datastream in the Basestar CIC, confirms that they can do it. This part's important: "Okay, we can do this. We can give their ship jump capability again by slaving its drives to our Raptor's spin sync generator. Their Hybrid was damaged in the attack, so we're gonna have to pull her offline and execute jumps from the Raptor." Natalie is, of course, appalled, and starts bitching about Hybrid abuse, but back up with me a second. The Raptor will become basically a jump drive, in and of itself, and sync itself to the Basestar's jump capabilities. Which are intimately connected to the Hybrid, as we saw once a long time ago, emphasis on "intimately." But on the larger field, we're talking about Colonial technology and Cylon technology, truly meshing, for the first time, and using the energy from that connection to power a miracle. A miracle of synchronization; a new and joyful dance.
"Pull the Hybrid offline? Absolutely not. It's never been done on an operational ship. It would be like blinding her. It might even kill her." Kara reminds her again to stow it, citing Cavil again, and Natalie assents. Athena pulls Jean Barolay to open up and strip the jump cables, and she runs off to start. There's a platinum Six standing nearby, who jolts when she sees Jean's face; this Six is sent by Athena for data cabling for the Cylon side of the sync. Anders stands, unnoticed, with the waters of the datastream reflecting on his face, reaching out toward the waters, wondering if he also swims in the stream. What would happen, if he touched it? Where would he go? "We started the interface. Take me to this 'Hybrid.'" Kara calls Sam for backup, but he offers to stay behind: he knows more about the Raptor side of the sync. He stares back down at the stream, and Kara goes with Leoben and Natalie, to meet the Hybrid.
THEN SHALL THE MAIDENS REJOICE AT THE DANCE
(Take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.)
The Six shoves Jean's shoulder softly, as she passes, as they work. She eventually stops, leaning back against the hatch frame on the Raptor, and stares at Barolay, shaking. "What the hell are you looking at?" The Six isn't sure. Her breath stops in her throat; she remembers it like a scar.
"I know you. You were on New Caprica. You were part of the Resistance. You killed me. Watched me drown, kicking and thrashing like I was some kind of an insect."
But that was war, and you survived, and it was long ago. Jean misjudges the gravity of the situation, thinks it's a conversation. Thinks this is an alliance. They're all the same, after all: they look the same, they smell the same. They don't hold grudges, they're eternal. When you kill them, they don't really die. So how can they take it seriously? It's easy not to; it was even easier, down on New Caprica, or back in the Caprica haze. They never died. Their pain doesn't signify, because there's no associated mortality; there's no justifiable reason to compare human death and Cylon. Divide one by infinity, that's how much death matters to a toaster. Cut off a head and a thousand grow back. Drop an egg, you reach for another.
"Well, be happy to put you down again," Jean says lightly. Not meant to enrage, not meant to be anything but the boy or girl directly across the court, with Caprica Six high above, drinking in the sound and glory of the crowd. Just shit-talking. I killed you once before, when it was just a game. On Galactica we have a tradition called the Dance. There's a lot of frustration aboard warships. Arguments become grudges, then end up being feuds. The Dance allows them to let off some steam, out in the open, so everybody can participate. Rank doesn't matter. As long as you throw your tags in the box, everyone's fair game.
But it did hurt, it was still death. She crossed the river, alone for the first moment since her birth, in the darkness. The most terrifying moment of her immortal life. The same day a very pale doctor told Laura Roslin that her days were numbered, humanity was destroyed: does that make cancer less painful, or frightening, or ugly? There is no relativity to apocalypse. The Six, irritated, back there now, drowning in sewage, punches Jean Barolay in the face. The only human aboard half-rises, and Six slams her head against the hatch frame, half-awake to herself, to her strength; like sleep-addled Galen on the deck floor, watching his fists rise and fall.
Jean falls down, down the step and across the wing, onto the floor of an alien bay. The Six watches Jean stand, bleeding profusely: it's not just a game anymore, for any of us. The ties that threaten to tear us apart overpower this tender alliance, in ugly words and ugly history, and Jean goes off into the black. "I'm okay," Jean says, choking on blood, and drops. The Six stares. She is dead. We swim through the wreckage of the war, every day; we are a lost generation. If everything that rises must converge, then the opposite is true: when any of us fall, we fall apart.
Death isn't a metaphor. It's not a line of poetry; we don't hit the enjambment and jump to the line. Death is brutal and nasty. It snuffs out a light and leaves only darkness. Even for the Cylon, death is not a metaphor. They come back in pain, screaming and afraid. Their sisters gather around them, to calm their fears and help them breathe through their rebirth. It's not an empty ceremony, it's not a ritual, any more than giving birth is a ceremony or a metaphor. It's painful and it's gross and it is necessary.
Athena and Sam come running in; Sam sees his best friend, fallen on the floor in the belly of the dragon, and finds her dead. He grabs the Six -- he's strong, isn't he? -- and forces her to her knees. She is numb, half-there, terrified. Having failed the alliance. Take away the plan and Six falls apart, every time. She fucked this one up; she is ashamed. Sam holds a gun to her head, and speaks to that part of himself that they share: "You want to know what it feels like to die, huh? You're nothing! You're a frakkin' machine!" He is ashamed. He nearly touched the stream, nearly swam with the sharks, and now his oldest ally, his strongest and hardest friend, who lived through Caprica and New Caprica and the Rapture, lies dead.
Natalie and Kara show up, screaming for him to stand down. "What do you want me to do, Kara? You want me to forget about Barolay? You want me to forget about New Caprica? No frakkin' way! She just killed Barolay!" There is no forgetting, in the river of war. There is an infinitesimal chance at the glory of forgiveness, but nobody's asking you to forget: that's the difference between "fixed" and "unbroken" right there. You can't go back. But you can go forward.
"Sam! Put the gun down. Put it down." He can't. He begins to weep. Natalie stares, in the sights of Boomer's gun. "Sam. Sam, you have no idea what's at stake here. Look at me. Put it down." Even Sharon is frustrated: "They killed one of us, and you're just ready to let it slide?" And she's not wrong. You can't go back. "She's right. You can't let this go, Kara." Natalie cries, knowing he's right. They are all right. The Six fucked it up. It was so fragile, and she struck out, too mired in her own pain and rage to stop herself. Her sister struck out, and broke something fragile. You can't go back.
"If you don't want to do this, I will." Kara orders him to stand down; calls him "soldier." It's only been seven months since he enlisted, in his grief; those magic words wouldn't work on him. Even if, in those seven months, he hadn't become something else.
Natalie kneels at her side, as Duck's Theme begins to play. "Why, sister?" Because she just couldn't let it go. (One of the retro-previouslies this week had Cavil reminding Boomer: "They started it first.") Natalie knows what she means, takes in the whole story in that moment: "She was the one?" The Six chokes on it; the unholy breach of etiquette: "I never did anything to her. We were working at the water treatment plant and she just..." Natalie sighs. "I know, I remember. After you downloaded, we tried to work through this..."
"How do you work through something like that? Never forget her expression as I tried to scream. Just..." The Six cries, Anders cries. Kara reaches for her gun without taking anguished eyes off the scene. "Just slapped tape over my mouth and threw me in that septic tank..." She died screaming silently, in the darkness of wet human sewage. Sam tells her to shut her mouth: that was long ago. Those cruelties were justified. An immortal enemy requires proportional response. Guerilla warfare must be deterrent, it's the weaker against the strong. Just shut your mouth. We did nothing wrong.
"I still see her face when I try and sleep. We were trying to help these people." Natalie nods. They would have loved them, and taken care of them. They could have shown them the glory of peace. And like God, their infinite mercy would have been matched only by their power, and complete control. Until they turned this Heaven into Hell. "I know. I wish there was something I could do." The Six doesn't look up, into the infinite mercy of Natalie: "Then I'm glad it's you." She lowers her head.
Natalie weeps, and looks upon her sister. Imagine the eyes of something infinitely loving and infinitely merciful, looking at the end of line for someone she loves most. Imagine Saul's face, as he saved Ellen from the Circle. Remember the way his body shook, as she fell asleep, and dreamed the last dream. The love in that last kiss; the impossible yearning in that final goodbye, as he put her to rest to save a greater alliance. Natalie takes the Six's face in her hands and kisses her lips, warmly. The Six sobs as Natalie stands, behind Sam, and puts her fingers over his, upon the trigger. And pulls. And together, the revolutionary and the saint give Six the final death, in the presence of an angel and a turncoat. An Eight standing by is stricken still.
"Godsdamn it!" He screams, implicated, with the woman's blood on him. He pulls his gun on Natalie, but she looks him square in the yes. "No Resurrection Ship. You understand? She's just as dead as your friend." She stalks out, stopping before Kara. "Is that enough human justice for you? Blood for blood?" It's not even an indictment, just a very Six establishment of purpose: I have proven my dedication to our alliance. You don't have to watch your back with me on this one. I will kill my sister to save us all, if you demand it. Athena looks at the other Eight: this is what they were talking about. Were the Eights right all along? This is how far the Sixes will take us, because this is how far Sixes must go. Sharon and Sam consider the body, and think about human justice: two robots with inside-out skin, begging they'll remain human after witnessing all this.
The whisper music of Gaius Baltar plays again across the Galactica sickbay; Roslin paces the floor, in a black headscarf and soft white pajamas, her kind eyes beneath the cloth like a sister, like the bride of Gods. Emily calls out to her as she passes, embarrassed. "Madam President. I wanted to apologize for before. I... I have good moments and bad." Laura smiles: "And that was ... which?" It's a wonderful moment. We cannot give excuses to our weakness, blame our behavior on anything, not even illness: we own it. It is a thing that happened; we have proven our capability of bad moments, even vicious ones. But it is over now, and forgiveness is down to the victims of our bad moments. They will give it willingly, they will reach across and hold you tightly, in your bad moments, because they love, and because they have their moments too.
Relieved, Emily laughs and calls her inside, with all the hurry and friendliness her broken body can muster. "I have something for you! Come in, come in!" She directs Laura to the drawer of her hospice dresser. Laura pulls it out: a beautiful pale scarf, grey flowers and green leaves. "This is beautiful. Thank you. That's beautiful." Emily grins, proud: "A woman on Aurora makes 'em, Leslie Stars. She makes all kinds, if you want to check it out..." Laura assures her that this one is perfect, and sits at Emily's side.
"What color are you hoping for? When it grows back in?" The conversations of women looking death in the eye; the small talk of the apocalypse. "Um, well. I was thinking maybe blue. Nice royal blue. Change of pace." They laugh, until Emily coughs. She lies back. "Oh, my hair used to be... Now look at it. Feel it, feel it." Laura touches the woman's sparse hair, gingerly, and Emily clasps a hand over hers. Laura relaxes into that grasp; accepts the intimacy in Emily's eyes. When your body is dying it most wants to be touched. "It's gonna get a lot worse," Emily says, sweet and serious. "Be prepared for that." Laura nods, and holds her hand. Women who have lost something. Women who are gaining something.
"... Because He will take our hands and guide us to the other side of the river..."
LEADING TO INFORMATION BLEED
(After death: the undiscovered country.)
Natalie and Kara enter the Hybrid Chamber, with a fiercely proud Leoben. The confirmation of a theory; the invocation of the angel. A Centurion stands in the corner, uninhibited at last, watching them all at once. He is a servant of God, and the Hybrid; he watches over her unceasingly, caring for the heart and the mind of the Basestar, his only home. He is a servant and a watchdog and a guardian. He is tall, and strong.
"All these things at once and many more ... Not because it wishes harm, but because it likes violent vibrations to change constantly ... Then shall the maidens rejoice at the dance ... Structural integrity of node seven restored repressurizing ... The children of the one reborn shall find their own country ... The intruders swarmed like flame, like the whirlwind ... Hopes soaring to slaughter, all their best against our hulls ..."
The angel beats us all against a holy anvil called war, to fix what was broken. Not because it wishes harm, but just to set the bone. Just to collapse particle and wave, and bring us to the undiscovered country just past the singularity. The Hybrid sees all these things at once, and many more: how the angel works, how the world was broken, how first human and Cylon, and then the disparate models, turned upon themselves. Threw themselves against the engines they'd built with their blood; how the best among us are the first to die along the front.
Kara stares down at her, attempting to make small talk. "I'm here. You wanted me here, so...?"
"... Replace internal control accumulators 4 through 19 ... they'll start going ripe on us pretty soon ..."
The Centurion snaps to, looking at them, at Kara. Ripening, like an apple plucked and bitten.
"... Compartmentalize integrity conflicts with the obligation to provide access..."
Self-explanatory. If you stay in the nation called You and I stay in the nation called Me, the war will never end. But if I don't defend my borders -- if I don't protect my nation's integrity -- then Me will fall apart. Without integrity, any house must fall. So we cannot share, because if I provide you access, I will be tainted. And so will you. You can't go back. Kara stares at her, confused.
"...FTL sync fault uncorrected ... No ceremonies are necessary ..."
This alliance is built on a connection between the Hybrid and the Raptor's jump drive, and the hands that build the bridge. There's still a fault in the FTL sync that stands uncorrected. She's reporting, processing, that's her job, but she's also telling them they've not yet burned off enough. It's not as simple as a funeral or as clean as resurrection, but it takes pieces of both. It's not a ceremony but a singularity. Forgiveness is simple as a single moment, and complex as any epiphany: like redemption, it's nothing more than the process of remembering.
"For what it's worth, I voted for you in the last election. And I don't like how Baltar keeps ragging on you. That is not why I listen to him." Roslin's legitimately, honestly curious: "Why do you listen to him?"
"I had an experience that made me rethink all my preconceptions. ...It happened the night after Cottle told me that my cancer had spread to my liver and I'd never be leaving this place. I was on a ferry crossing a river, and as we were approaching the other side I saw all these people standing on the bank. And we got closer, and I recognized them: My parents, my sister Kathy, who died when I was twelve. My husband, my girls." Tell me this makes sense. "I... was scared for a moment. You know: 'How is this happening?' But then I felt it. This ... presence, hovering all around me. Warm. Loving, and... it said: 'Don't be scared, Emily. I'm with you. Hold my hand and we'll cross over together.'"
Laura acknowledges that this is beautiful, and comforting as any superstition, and a ferryboat as old as the Gods, but points out that plenty of people in "our predicament" are prone to dreams of that ferry, across the river. "No. I was there. I felt the cool breeze coming from the water, the spray from the bow." We are gifted with a vision of Emily on the boat. Strong, and beautiful, and peaceful. "Maybe he's stumbled onto something, you know, he talks about the river that separates our world from the . That... That there's more to this existence than we can see with our naked eye. There's a power that we can't begin to understand." Laura stares at Emily's conviction with love, and something like jealousy.
Kara stares down at the Hybrid, across the tank from Natalie, looking at the body of her, in the water. The cold and frightening beauty of her, the way she trails off into darkness and science, with such a lovely human face.
"... Then shall the maidens rejoice at the dance ... Structural integrity of node seven restored ... Repressurizing ... The children of the one reborn shall find their own country. End of line, reset. Track mode monitor malfunction traced ... Recharge compressors... Increase the output to fifty percent ... Assume the relaxation length of photons transfers ... Contact is inevitable, leading to information bleed ... FTL sync fault stands uncorrected ... No ceremonies are necessary..."
Kara crouches down, frustrated. "I don't understand."
"... Centrifugal force reacts to the rotating frame of reference ... The obstinate toy soldier becomes pliant ... The city devours the land, the people devour the city..."
Until the bugs stop jumping, all we are is toys, obstinate tin soldiers, marching ourselves against the enemy's hull. When we become pliant we stop fleeing the center. When we become pliant, we can hear the song:
Leoben kneels beside Kara. "You can't hurry her. You have to absorb her words. Allow them to caress your associative mind. Don't expect the fate of two great races to be delivered easily."
"... Assume the relaxation length of photons in the sample atmosphere is constant ... The intruders swarmed like flame, like the whirlwind ... Hopes soaring to slaughter, all their best against our hulls..."
The memory of war is the first ingredient in its forgiveness. All these things and many more.
ALL THESE THINGS AND MANY MORE NOT BECAUSE IT WISHES HARM
(Enterprises of great pitch and moment.)
Helo stalks the CIC, terrified as the clock ticks down. Gaeta lies in his rack, shivering and gone all gray. His leg, not unbroken but temporarily fixed, pulses out pain with every heartbeat.
"...All these things at once and many more ... Not because it wishes harm, but because it likes violent vibrations to change constantly ... Then shall the ..."
Athena notes they're "rigged and ready," and tells Kara it's time to get the Hybrid offline. She asks Kara if she's any closer to deciphering it. It's not Starbuck Kara needs now; it's hard to turn herself inside-out to access the other thing, the soft and dreaming part inside, that speaks this language. No tactics, no survival reflexes: just the song.
"Not a frakkin' thing," Kara says, afraid of losing it again. The vision led her to the signpost. This meeting here, now. Covered in human and Cylon blood, evoking an angel from the dragon's heart.
"... But you are a spark of God's fire! ... Core update complete..."
Kara gives up. "Frak it, unplug the damn thing. Let's get the frak out of here." I mean to say, in the moment that she gives up, she becomes pliant. It's not yet earned -- there's more Cylon blood before that can happen -- but it's one step closer to the signpost.
"... Threat detection matrix enabled," the Hybrid says, but they don't hear her, or know what she's warning them of. The uninhibited Centurion in the corner, though, he knows: "Dendritic response bypassed ... The received dose is altered by the delayed gamma burst ... Going active. Execute. The children of the one reborn shall find their own country: End of line."
At Natalie's nod, the Eight with them opens a panel and pulls at the cord connecting the Hybrid to the ship. She erupts in an unceasing, inhuman scream. It shakes their bones with blasphemy. The Centurion steps forward, converting its guns, and Natalie shouts at him, angrily: "Stop!" He fires senselessly at the threatening Eight, and she falls. Kara -- firing two guns -- and Athena take him out as Sam enters, gun in hand. "What the hell happened?" Leoben looks down, at the unplugged cord.
The Eight's blood drips and pools as the Hybrid screams; it pollutes the holy waters of the tank.
"What do you want from me?" Starbuck says, leaning down into her scream, intimately close, begging. "Please, I need you!"
The Hybrid stops her screaming; pulls her hand from the water. She smiles up at Kara with infinite love, a beautiful calm smile. She is bathed in blood.
"...Thus will it come to pass ... The Dying Leader will know the truth of the Opera House ... The missing Three will give you the Five, who have come from the home of the Thirteenth ... You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace ... You will lead them all to their end." Her delighted, loving smile is an undiscovered country. "End of line."
Kara shakes her head, crying, silently saying "No, no, no," begging her to take it back. The Hybrid goes limp in the dirty water, lying to the dying Eight, eyes gone empty. Athena steps around the tank to complete the Eight's job, and as she pulls the cables apart, the Hybrid makes a jump face, and the room goes dark.
BUT YOU ARE A SPARK OF GOD'S FIRE
(The dread of something after death.)
"But this God that Baltar refers to, it is the Cylon God. You know that, don't you?" Emily points out that if He's the one and true God, He belongs to everybody: "Otherwise, He's not much of a God, is He?" you know, I never actually thought of that. "Exactly," Laura says, never more of a schoolteacher than right now: "He isn't much of a God, He's a fantasy."
Emily gives her a look: "Oh, Laura. And the Lords of Kobol are real?" Laura laughs, in spite of herself, and Emily gets revved up. "Reigning from a metaphysical mountaintop in those silly outfits? Zeus, handing out fates out of an urn like they were lottery tickets. You're gonna work on a tylium ship, you're gonna be an Admiral, your family's gonna be evaporated in an attack on the Colonies but you'll survive for three more years, in a moldy compartment on a freighter, till your body starts to eat itself up alive. Those are the Gods that you worship? Capricious, vindictive?"
And that's what makes Gaius dangerous: They're a ragtag Fleet on the run, a gang. One nation, under twelve flags, numbering less than a small town. Their social systems are outdated and scary. Our institutions always form a symbiotic relationship with our religions, and the Lords of Kobol are just as obsolete as the emerging aristocracy, and just as dangerous. In the life of a people, culture shapes religion just as much as religion shapes culture. Gaius's revolution never ended. It just got bigger.
"But they're not meant to be taken literally," Laura answers the letter and not the spirit of Emily's concern. "They're metaphors, Emily." But it is too late in the day for that: "I don't need metaphors. I need answers." A physical, explicit, present experience of the divine, a sense of purpose and love. A flagstone on which to stand.
Laura nods, allowing herself -- if he's Admiral Atheist, she's President Prophecy -- to wonder, for just a moment. Like Caprica, down in the brig, going TILT. "You're like my mother. She wasn't satisfied with metaphors either. She was convinced that Aphrodite herself was gonna swoop her away when she died. And she believed it. Even after the diloxin and the radiation failed to stop her cancer. She was a teacher, she was ... Oh, she was something to behold. ... In the head of a classroom, and ... And her students..."
Laura coughs, chokes back tears, whispers the story. Ever wonder why a woman, a minister of the highest cabinet in the Colonies, a woman so on top of things that she could help run a government while carrying on a passionate affair with the President, could let the cancer get so far before she noticed? Here's how:
"Her students loved her. They... They'd walk through fire for her. And then you see this woman who seemed so eternal, she ... withered away, and I find myself having to change her diaper because she couldn't even... And at the moment she died, there was ... No gleaming fields of Elysium stretched out before her, there was this... Dark, black abyss. And she was just terrified. She was so scared... I'm sorry..."
Emily's sympathy and concern are palpable; she reaches out again. "Laura. Laura, you were terrified. You saw only darkness. You can't possibly know what your mother experienced. You're still searching, you're..." She rears up, coughing out her life. Laura screams for Cottle, her voice breaking and raw, summoning all she has to bring him, faster. He injects Emily with morpha as Laura clings to her, squeezing her hand, whispering softly to her. "Shh, it's okay. It's all right." She holds onto Emily, strong as strong, and they lay her back together.
"All we can do for her now is try to make her comfortable." Roslin weeps: is that really all? "All right." Laura bends her head down, at Emily's side, and rests her temple along the woman's hair, and lowers her head in prayer, with a pale scarf in her hands.
Death isn't a metaphor. It's a girl on a horse, cutting down everyone from the faithful to the helpless. The sun rises in the background, or it sets; the ground is soaked in blood. In war, she is every single one of us. You can see her riding across the fields of war, taking strong men and women back to Elysium, putting them on the ferry; you can see the pain in their eyes. Death is ugly and horrific and scary and annihilating. Ask Kara what it felt like, if she ever remembers. Ask her if she's willing to do the same for all humanity. In the middle of your death, no amount of future reward could ever compensate for that pain. It's why the Styx brings blessed forgetfulness, or else the dead would never stop their weeping.
You flip the Death card, you have two options. You can lie, soften the blow, say it represents change, that you're very lucky to get the death card, because so much will become clearer, and you can turn over a new leaf. Get a new haircut, start over. How much fun it will be, on the other side of the river; how neat it will be in the shape of things to come, when we sit down and have a cup of tea with the robots and pretend that nothing happened. Maybe you survive this singularity, maybe you don't. Change, real change, feels like dying because it is.
Imagine there's no Heaven: if death were a metaphor then we'd be smarter to die already, just like Hamlet said. But our bodies cry out for life, more life, more touch, more love. Our bodies know nothing of Heaven, only of pleasure and survival. If you spend your time telling yourself that it's not really death, if you aren't pinned by the pain and burnt away by it, utterly changed, then you've cheated yourself of the gifts this death can bring you. The lies are for the living.
INTEGRITY CONFLICTS WITH THE OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE ACCESS
(The respect that makes calamity of so long life.)
They gather around the Eight, watching her die. The angry Basestar walls are red with static and confusion in the darkness. Natalie stares, sick and afraid: "It's as if she doesn't even see us anymore..." Sam knows that look, from Caprica and New Caprica after that: "She's looking past us. I've seen that look many times, but never in the eyes of a Cylon." True death. The Eight reaches out to Athena, desperate to be touched, chastened in her moment of clarity: "You were right. Forgive me." Her hand hangs in the air, dipping as the strength pours out of her. Athena reaches out, nearly touching her forgotten sister, but can't bring herself to do it. The human thing is to turn her back; the Cylon thing is to reach out, and connect. Skin to skin. She can do neither, and pulls back. Natalie is appalled.
The Eight coughs, and Sam drops to his knees, touching her face. Imagine the eyes of something infinitely merciful. Imagine his exhaustion, watching yet another death on a day meant for celebration and reconciliation. "It's okay," he says. "I'm with you." He looks into her eyes as Athena looks on, bested in compassion. And when the Eight passes on, he closes her eyes tenderly, and holds her hand. He's wearing a silver bracelet that goes round and round, like the shining waters of the Styx.
"...She will lead us to the end," Leoben says softly. "We will now know the truth of the Opera House." Natalie looks up: "The home of the Thirteenth..." Kara, who hasn't the practice of these two with the Hybrid, is confused. She doesn't speak their language. "The Hybrid said, 'The missing Three will get you the Five, who have come from the home of the Thirteenth.' The home of the Thirteenth Tribe of humans..." Kara stares. "And the Five is ... your Final Five Cylon models." Sam stares down at the innocent Eight.
"If they've come from the home of the Thirteenth Tribe, then they must know the way back," says Natalie, and Kara completes the thought: "They know how to get to Earth." Athena and Leoben know about the missing Three; Kara realizes her sister in prophecy can be unboxed, and identify the Five. A grand version of the Final Five music begins to play; Sam doesn't look up at all. Natalie looks at Kara, and she nods. "Let's go. Demetrius is waiting for us." Sam looks at the Eight a while longer: at the beauty and the innocence in his people. His people.
Death isn't a metaphor. The end of line, of humanity, isn't a party. Even when the Cylon hop back and forth across the line, they don't stay there more than just a moment. They come back to life; they're resurrected, and then they are alive again. Sam watched Jean Barolay fall, and the Six in her sickness, and felt their deaths inside him: those viewpoints getting burnt off, so that the show could move along into its own redemption. The horrors of war should shame us all, and they are not metaphor but truth: ugly and brutal. We ride that pale horse when we ride to war. But looking down at this fragile Eight, who did nothing but try to save her people from slavery, and died for it, on the run, no food and no fuel, when they were so close to finding an answer. This episode is as much about life, about things being born, as it is about death. Something is alive in him. That's not a metaphor either.
Emily stands on the prow of the ferry across the Styx, the sun shining on her, her beautiful hair and her peaceful smile. Laura stands beside her. All Emily's people appear, as the reach the furthest shore. "We're here," Emily says, peaceful and happy. They smile, and gather to welcome her, excited. Laura looks over, happy for her friend, and she's gone. She looks across the spray from the bow, her beautiful auburn hair caressed by the cool breeze, and there Emily is: On the shore, running into them joyfully, fairly dancing, throwing herself into them with her arms open wide. Laura smiles as her friend is gathered in, by her family, grateful for this love and this warmth.
Another group arrives upon the shore. Laura's mother, a ringer for Barbara Bush. All of Laura's dead: Cami, Billy, the Olympic Carrier. All of humanity, for she is their mother now, and the one who mourns them most. They are full of light. Laura stares at her mother and weeps with joy: "Mother. You're okay." They smile and welcome her, ready to gather her in; she's caught in a moment between the worlds. She summons up her strength, joyous for a moment in the warmth and light. "I'm not ready." She waves goodbye, and they smile at her. She trails her hand along a railing, wearing a silver bracelet that goes round and round; she wakes with joyful tears upon her face, in the empty darkness of the sickbay. The whisper music plays across her waking.
"...You no longer need to fear the unknown. Because He will take your hand and guide you to the other side of the river. What river am I talking about?"
Emily's bedsit is empty. Only the wireless remains, pumping out his unending sermon. It's the only thing left. She could turn it off, and be truly alone. She walks away, leaving it to play its song into the dark.
"I'm talking about the river that separates this world from the . There is more to reality than the things that we can touch, taste, or even see with our naked eyes. There is another realm..."
NO CEREMONIES ARE NECESSARY
(A consummation devoutly to be wished.)
Demetrius CIC with a minute to go. Karl hotdogs everyone to their stations for jump prep. Gaeta's leg is bloody and gross; it looks like the Hybrid's cable. Time is running out. Karl paces, eyes on the dradis, calling across the darkness for her safe return; bookending the arrival of a Heavy Raider and the song with a prayer for his Raptor's return. "Come on. Come on, come on!" One eye on the clock, he counts them down and checks them off. Sublight? Seelix is go. Helm? Go. Nav? Hotdog's go. Tactical? Go. Hotdog confirms the jump solutions and nav fixes. Gaeta waits for news. FTL? The drive's spun to 100% and stable. Go. Five seconds. Three. One. The timer stops. Karl doesn't move. I don't think I've ever seen a countdown like that: all buildup and then just standing around, giving the miracle one second, and two, and five, ten ... "The board is green," Helo spits, and dashes his hand against the bridge. "She's gone," says Seelix. Go. "Or they'd be back by now." Karl starts the jump count: Five, four, three...
The Basestar jumps in, appearing above them. It is huge, and beautiful, and alien. Hotdog sings out the contact. "Cylon Baseship. It's right on top of us." Karl holds the count, and Seelix confirms that it's squawking Colonial ID. "I've got a comms signal, but it's really weak." Helo seelixes for speaker transmission, and Athena speaks across the air.
"Demetrius, Athena. Demetrius, Athena." He nearly weeps. "Gods, it's good to hear your voice."
In the Raptor inside the beast, Kara watches Athena, proud. Red Cylon code runs down the Raptor's screens like water. "Copy that, Helo. The Baseship is ours," Athena says, nearly breaking down with relief. "Mission accomplished." And Karl offers to lead them all home.
Roslin knocks at Adama's quarters, and he quickly welcomes her in, offering her water. She explains her experiences, the way she dreamt of water, the pride and strength of Emily's belief; her knowledge that Emily has crossed the river into paradise. He asks if she's saying that she's suddenly into "Baltar's horse manure," and she quirks an almost grin. Wouldn't go that far: "I don't know. Something is happening here, and I don't really understand it, Bill."
Adama thinks aloud. "You both had the same dream, means..." Her back goes straight; she echoes her harsh line from their big fight, reversing it, gone soft and sweet: "What? Talk to me, what's going on?"
Bill grumbles. "Kara comes back from the dead, I let her go off chasing her vision of Earth. Well, she's overdue. Lee turns in his wings. Helo, Athena, Gaeta. Will I ever see those kids again?" She rubs his back, and his shoulder; he relaxes into the touch. "Bill. Look at me. I'm right here. Right here. We're going to find it." Earth? "Together." She smiles. Their cabin is the world.
"I used to think it was such a pipe dream. I used to use it as a carrot for the Fleet." She smiles, proud of him: "What made you change?" And the beautiful smile on his face. If you ever wondered what he felt for her, or how much he let on; if you ever wondered how much bumbling he'd able to do, to throw her off the track of his love, to tamp it down as an Admiral must, well, another wall just fell down. He can't hide it from her anymore. It's too late, and too early, and he's waited far too long.
"You. You made me believe." She smiles back, perfectly touched. She doesn't take her eyes off him, his strength; the glory in his love.