The sound startles a pigeon awake, on the floor of his apartment; it begins to walk and he blunders toward it, begging it to leave. He grabs a broom as it soars into the rafters, terrified. A bird in the house means death is coming; his brother has something he wants. He'll be dead soon. And Lee will feel so much guiltier about it than he knows, because this morning her face is a bird, fluttering against the glass.

He swings wildly and knocks something else off a table; he begins to curse the bird. She's caught, against the sky; she fights something she can't see because she is afraid. She fights because she doesn't know how to do anything else. Lee Adama loves Kara Thrace.

WILLIAM ADAMA

Gaius watches Lee pass by him again, and Lee watches his father go by. The old Quorum members are there, too, as everybody gathers to leave and say goodbye to the old girl. Everyone stands still. Something is happening. Something new.

There are random jumps, and there are jumps that aren't so random. Sometimes it takes a great notion to lead you places you wouldn't ever have looked.

Bill hands Kara the red ribbon of tape and proceeds down the middle of the hangar deck, laying it down, right down the middle like a line of salt. She joins him at the end of line, when they are done.

Remember the red line? It's how far you can jump before you can ever come back. You're not supposed to cross it -- technically, you shouldn't be allowed to -- but they're crossed it this time. The calculations for such a jump are so complex they are nonlinear; home is an itch you can't scratch.

"Can I have your attention, please? I'm sure you're all aware that a child was abducted from this ship recently. I thought that a rescue mission was impractical." Gaius stares at him now. "Well, I was wrong." Something happened, something changed. He knows more than he did before.

In the racks Hotdog relates what he saw. He'll never know that he was the one, who spurred the Admiral on. "Starbuck was there, so I bet he talked to Anders," Hotdog says, and shivers.

Laura listens to Ishay relating the story to Cottle. "He thought that a rescue mission was impractical because he didn't know where she was being held. But that's changed now, I guess, because he does know where she's being held."

Hera, and Bill. The President stands between the darkness and her people, all through the night. But she loves. When her mother died, she stepped up. Now she is mother to Thirteen Nations, and just one, and this is her family: Hera, the Twins, and Bill Adama.