Strength, and wisdom. And a measure of acceptance. She stands on 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. Kara Thrace laughs through her tears, and puts the photograph back where it belongs, between Kat and Dualla. All the darling daughters. And of all the things she ever thought or felt about that girl in the photo, once upon a time, what used to be the hardest is the easiest of all: just to love her.

The Colony is sixty bad dreams at once, dreams about bugs and scorpions and Babylon 5, nightmares about the limits of CGI in 2009. Boomer lands the Raptor, finally, and brings Hera in through bright halls and dark corridors, code climbing up the walls. Her exhaustion is written in her back and on her face. Cavil's delighted to see her; she gives a fairly good impression of pride and triumph. John practically rubs his hands together with glee at how sad Ellen will be now, knowing she was the Trojan Horse for this.

I am just so grossed out by Cavil. There are so many lines crossed here, generationally: the way that humanity laughed off its accountability for its children, the way Cavil has worked those intergenerational lines from every angle, out of his own sickness. The stuff he wants from Boomer, that nobody should want. But I will tell you this: without Cavil, Boomer never would have gotten over Dionne, because she never would have spent those scores of jumps with Hera enough to come back to the world. She's not Boomer's daughter, but she is a daughter. Just like Boomer is. And there's something good in that. Boomer, watching Hera jumping on the bed, remembered false memories of her own never-was childhood, and that gave her something back.

I think we all repeat our worst mistakes less out of some weird Freudian masochism loop than the simple animal desire to get it right this time: again and again, until we get it right. The difference is a mile wide; it's the difference between kindness and self-hatred. Between "This has all happened before" and the shape of things to come. A closed system lacks the ability to renew itself; knowledge alone is a poor primer. It takes an angel to push you over the edge, sometimes.

Boomer balks when he takes Hera from her, but he tells her not to worry, and takes her around a frosted-glass wall. "There, there now. You'll have all sorts of new playmates pretty soon," he says, and Boomer weeps as Hera turns and puts her little hands against the glass, calling out again and again for her new friend.